Voluntary Attentional Orienting in Schoolchildren: How Visual Orienting Skills Change During Primary School

Voluntary attentional orienting is the foundation of the capacity to highlight relevant stimuli and suppress competing distractions. It plays a role in the scholastic skills. This study investigated the changes in the orienting skills in 630 schoolchildren (age range: 5.7-10.2 years old), who attended the first (N = 205, M = 6.1, SD = 0.4), third (212 children, M = 8.2, SD = 0.6), and fifth grade (213 children, M = 10, SD = 0.4) of four primary schools in Italy. Simple attentional orienting, choice attentional orienting on written stimuli, double attentional orienting (auditory and visual), and re-orienting were investigated. The tasks required pressing a key in response to some target stimuli. The stimuli were digits, images of objects, written words, letters, geometric forms, and auditory verbal stimuli. Results showed that attentional orienting improved with age. The children's performances depended on the type of stimuli and activities required for the task. The accuracy of re-orienting with written verbal stimuli did not improve during primary school. With increasing age, children became faster but not more able to focus on written verbal stimuli when shifting of attention was required.