Visual Clutter and Attention in Relation to Visual Learning Experiences Across Populations

The aim of the present study is to 1) document how visually cluttered scenes affect sustained attention and 2) compare the effect across populations whose attentional experiences differ. The present study focuses specifically on children with autism spectrum disorder, typically developing deaf children, and typically developing hearing children. The observation method was used to record child-parent object play with which we recorded a play scene (wall mounted camera) and the child’s looking behavior (a mini camera fitted to the child's head).  These videos were manually annotated for how child attention was distributed and whether or not the distribution was related to the number of objects presented in the play. The hypothesis is that children’s sustained attention changes as a function of available objects presented at the moment of play. Results suggest an inverse relationship between visual attention and number of objects presented.