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  • Review Article
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The attentive brain: insights from developmental cognitive neuroscience

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 16, pages 606–619 (2015)Cite this article

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Key Points

  • Attention is a computation applied to competing environmental information to bias the selection of one option and avoid distraction from alternative inputs. Studying the development of visual attention in children can provide information on attention processes in adults.

  • We propose a framework that embeds the development of visual attention into the emerging functionality of the hierarchical architectural organization of visual pathways, extending from the primary visual cortex to the prefrontal cortex. The cumulative development of visual areas feeding forward into higher-level regions may function as the catalyst for top-down attentional modulation of these same visual pathways.

  • Separable visual attention mechanisms are involved in encoding visual short-term memory, maintenance of working memory and long-term recognition memory. These effects of developing attention on distinct memory processes can be dissociated at different developmental time points.

  • Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, fragile X syndrome and autism spectrum disorder are among the many neurodevelopmental disorders associated with disruptions to visual attention. Identification of the causative mechanisms of these abnormalities, a critical step to intervention and prevention, can come only from longitudinal developmental studies.

  • Studies have shown that genetic variability influences basic cortical organization and connections that underlie the development of visual attention, rather than predetermining attentional control itself. This insight is important for understanding why attention disruptions do not occur in isolation in neurodevelopmental disorders and are often comorbid with other disruptions to cognition and perceptual operations.

  • The goal of attention training is the transfer of improved attentional control skills from the narrow realm of the training task to other related cognitive processes or educational outcomes. This goal is best served through a mechanistic developmental understanding of the links between visual processing, attention, memory and learning.

Abstract

Visual attention functions as a filter to select environmental information for learning and memory, making it the first step in the eventual cascade of thought and action systems. Here, we review studies of typical and atypical visual attention development and explain how they offer insights into the mechanisms of adult visual attention. We detail interactions between visual processing and visual attention, as well as the contribution of visual attention to memory. Finally, we discuss genetic mechanisms underlying attention disorders and how attention may be modified by training.

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Figure 1: Primate dorsal and ventral visual pathways and possible sites of disruption.
Figure 2: Visual attention correlates with working memory capacity.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank their team members and collaborators for all discussions and ideas informing the points raised here. In particular, D. Astle and K. Baker were instrumental in developing the authors' thinking on functional connectivity development and functional gene networks. The overview of the research and models presented herewith were funded by two ongoing James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Awards (to D.A. and G.S.), US National Institutes of Health grants P20GM103645 and R01 MH099078 (to D.A.), and past project grants by the Wellcome Trust, Oxford University Press Fell Fund and Newlife Foundation (to G.S.).

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  1. Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, 02912, Rhode Island, USA

    Dima Amso

  2. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3UD, UK

    Gaia Scerif

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  1. Dima Amso
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Correspondence to Gaia Scerif.

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PowerPoint slides

Glossary

Working memory

A cognitive operation that involves manipulating the contents of short-term memory to direct goal-relevant action.

Attentional network task

(ANT). An attentional cueing paradigm designed to provide separable indices of alerting, orienting and executive attention.

Executive control functions

Functions deployed across modalities to implement task goals, including maintenance of working memory (also known as updating), inhibition of responses (also known as inhibitory control) and cognitive flexibility (also known as shifting).

Attentional biases

Processes by which rich sensory, motor or internally held information is modified by attention to enhance the processing of aspects that are relevant to the task at hand and to inhibit task-irrelevant dimensions.

Feedforward

Efferent flow of information away from a lower cortical region to a higher cortical region.

Feedback

Afferent flow of information from a higher cortical region to a lower cortical area.

Connectomics

An emerging field that identifies functional coupling of brain regions to form networks by assessing correlated activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses.

Contextual cueing

A visual search paradigm designed to improve attention selection of targets that appear repeatedly in the same scene (context) compared with attention directed towards targets that appear in novel contexts.

Polygenic risk

Genetic risk for a particular phenotype (for example, the likelihood of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis) captured as the cumulative effect of differences at multiple genetic loci.

Functional gene networks

Genes operating in concert to regulate particular neural or developmental functions (for example, dendritic dynamics and receptor clustering, intracellular transport and regulation of gene transcription).

Transfer

The outcome of a cognitive or neural training regime that may improve untrained tasks that use the specific skill being trained (such as attention), improve closely related functions (referred to as narrow transfer) or improve more-distally related system functions (referred to as wide or far transfer; for example, mathematical achievement or intelligence improving after attention training).

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Amso, D., Scerif, G. The attentive brain: insights from developmental cognitive neuroscience. Nat Rev Neurosci 16, 606–619 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn4025

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