Adult Studies
Attention and memory in adults are shown to be flexible and influenced by different factors in the environment and task design. Changes in experience, distraction, and task conditions can affect how well people focus and remember information.
Attention and memory in adults are shown to be flexible and influenced by different factors in the environment and task design. Changes in experience, distraction, and task conditions can affect how well people focus and remember information.
How does exercise affect attention and memory in men and women?
Ages: 18-35 years old
In this study, participants completed brief sessions of moderate-intensity exercise before performing tasks that measured attention and memory. The results showed that exercise improved selective attention, leading to faster responses for both men and women. Effects on memory were more nuanced: women demonstrated stronger recognition memory overall, while exercise enhanced object-location memory for men in specific conditions. Together, these findings suggest that even short periods of physical activity can influence cognitive performance, improving attention and, in some cases, memory. The results also highlight that the cognitive benefits of exercise may vary across individuals.
Why Children Pay Attention to Faces
Ages: 3-6 years old
Children watch short scenes of people and objects while we gently track where their eyes move using a completely safe, camera-based system. We’re especially curious about whether kids naturally focus more on faces — and whether certain expressions or social interactions grab their attention more than others. By seeing what children look at first and longest, we can better understand how they begin learning about other people. These early attention patterns give us insight into how social understanding develops during childhood.
Can musical experience change the way people distribute their attention across space?
Ages: College-aged adults
People naturally tend to allocate slightly more attention to the left side of space, particularly during demanding visual tasks. This study found that both musical experience and auditory context can influence that pattern. Individuals with less musical experience showed the typical leftward attention bias, becoming faster to detect targets on the left as visual search demands increased. In contrast, those with greater musical experience distributed their attention more evenly across left and right space, suggesting a more balanced allocation of visual attention. The study also found that brief exposure to low-frequency tones increased attention toward the left side, demonstrating that both long-term musical training and momentary auditory experiences can shape how attention is directed in real time.
Do children show race-based attention biases when viewing faces?
Ages: 6-10 years old
Kids play a simple, age-appropriate computer game while pictures of people briefly appear on the screen. Even when they’re focused on winning, do faces pull their attention away? That’s what we’re exploring. Understanding these natural shifts in attention helps us learn how children become aware of social differences and how their understanding of others grows over time.
How do the number and type of distractors affect learning and memory?
Ages: College-aged adults
Not all distractions are harmful. This research shows that memory depends less on how many distractions are present and more on how they shape attention during learning. A single meaningful distractor can strongly compete with the target and disrupt encoding, while multiple distractors can sometimes dilute that interference by spreading attention more thinly. Rather than simply blocking out irrelevant input, the brain manages competition between stimuli. So, what gets remembered depends on how attention is divided at the moment of learning.
How Familiar Faces Capture Children's Attention
Ages: 6-10 years old
During a fast-paced search game, children try to find a target picture as quickly as possible. Occasionally, different faces pop up on the screen. What stands out? Children are much more distracted by their caregiver’s face than by a stranger’s. Even when concentrating, meaningful relationships naturally capture their attention. These findings highlight how close bonds shape attention, learning, and the way children experience the world around them.
Do different types of attention orienting affect recognition memory differently?
Ages: College-aged adults
This study examined whether all types of attention help memory in the same way. Using a spatial cueing task, researchers compared simple attention orienting to a version that also includes distractor suppression. They found that memory was stronger when attention involved suppressing the previously attended location, not just focusing on a target. Brain results also showed that this suppression improved activity in visual processing areas and helped encode objects more effectively. Overall, the study suggests that attention that filters out distractions leads to better memory than attention that only shifts focus.
How does task pacing affect implicit sequence learning in children and adults?
Ages: 4-year-old children and young adults
Comparing how 4-year-old children and adults learn patterns without being explicitly told showed clear differences in how task design affects learning. They used a task where people responded to sequences that were either self-paced or shown at a fixed speed. Adults learned the sequences well in both formats. Preschoolers showed weaker learning overall but did better when they could control the pace themselves. The results suggest that young children’s learning is more affected by task conditions like timing and control, likely because attention and motivation play a bigger role at that age.
How does attention to faces in cluttered scenes change across development?
Ages: 4-months to 24-years old
This study looked at how attention to faces changes from infancy to adulthood. Using eye-tracking, researchers showed people natural scenes with faces that were either visually salient or not. They found that very young infants didn’t strongly use visual salience to find faces, but after about age 1, people became much more likely to quickly focus on the most visually noticeable faces. The results suggest that attention becomes more guided by visual features as the visual system develops, and that early life experiences can also shape how people orient to faces in complex scenes.
