Bias and Sensitivity to Task Constraints in Spontaneous Relational Attention

Two studies examined factors that predicted children's tendencies to match objects versus relations across scenes when no instruction was given. Study 1 examined a) age and b) nationality as a proxy for cultural differences in experiences with relations. The results showed that Chinese and U.S. children across ages all showed an initial bias to match objects versus relations across scenes. However, older children in both regions were more likely to notice features of the task that indicated relational matches were a more reliable solution and shifted their responding toward relations over time. Study 2 replicated the object mapping bias and age effects within U.S. children while also examining the impact of directly manipulating children's relational experiences. Before the main scene mapping task children did a relation-generation task known to prime attention to relations (Simms & Richland, 2019). This did not override the initial bias toward object mapping, but magnified the role of age, making older children increasingly sensitive to task features that prompted relational matches, further shifting their responding toward relations over time. [This paper will be published in "Journal of Experimental Child Psychology."]