A cross-sequential analysis of developmental differences in speed of visual information processing

doi:10.1016/0022-0965(85)90063-3

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Volume 40, Issue 1, August 1985, Pages 1-22

https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(85)90063-3 Get rights and content

Abstract

Development of processing speed was examined in three backward masking studies. The first verified the central nature of backward masking for children aged 8 and 11 years and for adults. The second suggested that task requirements were equivalent for children similar to those in Study 1, and that age differences in performance were not attributable to nonprocessing variables. The main cross-sequential study estimated speed of processing in 80 children (approximately 6 years to 13 years) and young adults using an inspection time task. Target exposure duration was varied to establish the time required to achieve a high level of discriminative accuracy. Estimates of processing speed increased until about 11–13 years of age; beyond this, the trend was less obvious, and it is possible that inspection time asymptotes at around the onset of adolescence. Performance improvement after 1 year could not be explained as resulting from practice since improvement among controls over a period of 2 weeks was significantly less. Correlations between estimates of inspection time made up to 2 years apart found the measure to be reliable.

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To estimate practice effects, we used a version of the twice-minus-once-tested method (Anderson et al., 2001; Salthouse, 2015) by comparing longitudinally-determined change over the 1-year test interval and change estimated from cross-sectionally-determined developmental trajectories. Some studies have shown that the greatest practice effect occurs between the first and second testing (Ibrahim et al., 2015; Waber et al., 2012) but diminishes at later repeated testing, observed in studies of pre-adolescence and adolescence development (Falleti et al., 2006; Thomas et al., 2016) and of healthy adults (e.g., Anderson et al., 2001; Ivnik et al., 2000; Nettelbeck and Wilson, 1985; Salthouse and Tucker-Drob, 2008). Whether developmental change ultimately overrides practice effects with later follow-up testing remains to be examined.
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These arguments could explain their extensive long-term memory abilities and their relatively poor performance in conventional tests of cognitive performance; this argument also brings to mind studies on the rare savant syndrome in humans (i.e., extraordinary memory abilities often in the context of intellectual impairment), which is often associated with autism (Hart et al., 2008; Heaton & Wallace, 2004). Finally, it is important to emphasize that the processing speed provides a necessary but insufficient condition for intelligence (Nettelbeck & Wilson, 1985). Furthermore, the learning speed cannot be used as a measure of intelligence (Pearce, 2008).
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We studied the age-related differences in inspection time and multiple cognitive domains in a group of monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins aged 7 to 17 years. Data from 111 twin pairs and 19 singleton siblings were included. We found clear age-related trends towards more efficient visual information processing in older participants. There were substantial correlations between inspection time and cognitive abilities. The heritability of inspection time was 45%, and ranged from 73% to 85% for cognitive abilities. There were significant non-shared environmental effects on inspection time and Wechsler IQ scores, but no shared environmental effects. The genetic correlation between inspection time and Performance IQ was 0.55 and with Verbal IQ it was 0.28. There was a significant non-shared environmental correlation of 0.24 between inspection time and Verbal IQ.
Inspection time and speed of processing: Sex differences on perceptual speed but not IT
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Inspection time (IT) is a pattern backward masking task that correlates with IQ. Recently, IT has been shown mainly to measure general speed of processing (Gs). Females outperform males on tests of Gs, for example Digit Symbol (DS) from the Wechsler scales. Combining data from several studies we examined whether there were sex differences in IT. N = 653 adults and children completed a standard IT task and DS. Expected female superiority on DS was confirmed but there were no sex differences on IT. Nonetheless, DS and IT correlated with each other. These results confirm the psychological complexity of IT and support suggestions that IT may be useful as a biomarker to monitor cognitive changes that accompany ageing.
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Inspection time (IT) and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) scores from 75 school children aged 6–13 years in 2001 were compared with the performances of 70 children aged 6–13 years who had attended the same primary school in 1981 [J. Exp. Child Psychol. 40 (1985) 1.]. ITs for the 2001 sample were measured with the same four-field tachistoscope and identical computer-based procedures followed by Wilson in 1981. The 2001 sample completed two versions of PPVT concurrently: PPVT (1965, Form A) as used in 1981 and PPVT-III (1997, Form IIIA). Mean ITs from both samples, 20 years apart, were essentially the same (123±87 and 116±71 ms in 1981 and 2001, respectively). There was, therefore, no evidence that speed of processing had improved. Correlations between IT and raw PPVT scores were significant (P<.01) for both 1981 (r=−.43) and 2001 (r=−.31). Within the 2001 sample, concurrent PPVT scores correlated .68; however, means revealed a significant Flynn effect. Thus, scores for the 2001 cohort on the earlier PPVT were higher (M standardized IQ 118.52±16.62) than the recently restandardized PPVT-III (113.97±12.23), although, compared in terms of the most recent standardization sample, the 2001 cohort was equivalent to the 1981 sample (113.66±16.72). The Flynn effect has nothing to do with speed of processing as measured by IT, despite the effect being strongest for ability tests that earn bonus scores for quick performance. Because IT correlates with IQ but appears to be stable across 20 years, whereas IQ is not, IT may have promise as a useful biological marker for an important component of cognitive decline during old age.
Correlation between inspection time and psychometric abilities: A personal interpretation
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More than 25 years of research suggests that the measure inspection time (IT) does capture low-level aspects of cognitive functioning that contribute to human intelligence. However, recent evidence does not support earlier claims that IT estimates the speed of a single mechanism like “sampling input” or “apprehension.” Rather, together with other tasks that employ pattern backward masking to limit the duration for which information is available for processing, IT is probably sensitive both to focused attentional capacities to detect organization and change under severe time constraints and to decision processes, ongoing beyond mask onset, that monitor responding. Among normal young adults, IT is correlated with the broad psychometric factor Gs (“speediness”). This mediates correlation with general intelligence. In this group, IT is not correlated with Gf. However, whether this outcome generalizes to samples of persons with an intellectual disability, to young children, or to elderly persons is not yet known. Psychological processes underpinning IT are currently only speculatively defined, but it should prove possible to unravel these by experimentation. To this end, backward masking procedures are arguably more theoretically tractable than reaction time tasks because they reduce the impact of higher-level cognitive strategies on performance. On this basis, IT may hold promise as a means for developing partial explanations for intelligence in psychological terms. However, whether this is realized depends on identifying the psychological functions that support IT.

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^☆: This work was supported by ARGS Grant A281/15381 to the first author. Commputer programs were written by T. Walwyn. All research work was carried out entirely by the second author as part of the requirements for a doctoral thesis supervised by the first author. Contributions to writing were about equal.

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A cross-sequential analysis of developmental differences in speed of visual information processing☆

Abstract

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Longitudinal and cross-sectional sequences in the study of age and generation effects

Human Development

The visual information processing speed of lower and middle-class children

Child Development

General intelligence and mental speed: Their relationship and development

Age differences in the speed of processing: A critique

Developmental Psychology

Visual backward masking in children and adults

The impending demise of the icon: A critique of the concept of iconic storage in visual information processing

The Behavioral and Brain Sciences

The effect of practice on age differences in central perceptual processing

Journal of Gerontology