News Finding: Cognitive scientists Catarina Vales and Linda Smith say that their findings open up new avenues for research into the way language shapes the course of developmental disabilities such as ADHD, difficulties with school, and other attention-related problems.
Paper Finding: Adults are faster when the target is labeled prior to search .
News Context: The study, published in Developmental Science, reveals that spoken language -- more so than images -- taps into a child's cognitive system and enhances their ability to learn, as well as to navigate cluttered environments. Cognitive scientists Catarina Vales and Linda Smith say that their findings open up new avenues for research into the way language shapes the course of developmental disabilities such as ADHD, difficulties with school, and other attention-related problems. "If the name of the target object was also said, the children were much faster at finding it and less distracted by the other objects in the scene," Vales, a graduate student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, said in a recent statement.
Paper Context: The overall pattern fits contemporary theories of how the contents of visual working memory interact with visual search and attention, and shows that even in very young children heard words affect the processing of visual information. Adults are faster when the target is labeled prior to search . Adults are also faster at finding the target when they are holding information in memory that matches the target or when they have been presented with a visual preview of the specific target .