Body weight and attentional capture in children.

Abstract

The present study examined whether numerical representations of body weight capture visual attention in young children. Developmental studies showed that even newborn infants could distinguish between typical and atypical human bodies, and infants aged around six months detect multisensory events occurring on their bodies. These findings suggest that the body image develops earlier and continues to establish. However, the development of recognition of numerical own body information such as body weight is less understood. Therefore, we employed an attentional capture task where children identified a target embedded in a visual stream, preceded by their body weight number presented before the target. A total of 44 Japanese children (ages 8-9 years; equal number of boys and girls) participated. Results indicated that girls exhibited attentional bias toward their weight, whereas boys did not. Compared to boys, girls showed the attentional capture of body weight.