Abstract
Change detection is a powerful tool to study visual attention to objects and scenes because successful change detection requires attention. For example, people are better able to detect a change to the only face in an array than they are changes to other objects (Ro et al., 2001), suggesting that faces draw attention. To the extent that such attention advantages depend on experience, they might vary with age. Our study had two primary goals: (a) to explore the nature and limitations of the change detection advantage for faces, and (b) to determine whether that advantage changes with age and experience. Children, ages 7 to 12 years, viewed an original and changed array of objects that alternated repeatedly, separated by a blank screen, until they detected the one changing object. The arrays consisted of varying numbers of faces or houses, any one of which could change to another exemplar from the same category. Consistent with earlier work, in the presence of a singleton face, changes to that face were detected more quickly and changes to houses in the array were detected more slowly, suggesting that the singleton face drew attention. This advantage was specific to faces–singleton houses show no benefit. However, the advantage for faces occurred only for singleton faces–when multiple faces were present in the display, change detection was no better for faces than for houses. This singleton advantage for faces was present for all age groups even though older subjects showed better overall change detection performance. Apparently, people prioritize single faces over other objects, but they do not generally prioritize faces over other objects when multiple faces appear in a display.