Memory-Guided Attention across Development: Past Experiences Influence Attention in the Present

As an infant or young child, learning to navigate the environment is an extraordinarily challenging task, particularly given their lack of experience with the world. In this chaotic environment, how do they select what information to attend to and what to ignore? And, importantly, what controls this allocation of attention? Traditionally, research has focussed on the idea that visual attention is governed by two primary factors: 1) stimulus salience and 2) task goal. Despite the theoretical importance of this dichotomy, the emphasis on this has, to some extent, eclipsed the role of memory and learning mechanisms in guiding attention allocation. Understanding how we make sense of the world requires studying both how we select information and how we store (and flexibly retrieve) this information in order to guide behaviour. The current work presents novel behavioural and neural evidence of memory guidance over visual attention. Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive overview of the main theories of attention that constitute the theoretical foundation of this thesis. Chapter 2 outlines the physical and experimental principles of eye-tracking and fNIRS technologies, the primary research methods employed in this thesis. Chapter 3 presents new evidence on the influence of learning and memory on visual attention in infancy, investigating how this mechanism unfolds, its impact on attention orienting and distraction, and its neural underpinnings. Chapter 4 further explores this interaction through a series of behavioural studies on contextual regularity learning in toddlers and young children, with a focus on developmental trajectories. Chapter 5 introduces a novel fNIRS protocol for studying the neural correlates of visual sustained attention during free play in infancy, aiming to extend attention research to naturalistic settings. Chapter 6 presents the concluding remarks, with a summary of the findings and directions for future research. Keywords: attention, learning, memory, brain and cognitive development.