EXPRESS: Children's attention to object inconsistencies during scene viewing

The effects of object inconsistencies on attention during scene viewing have been extensively documented in adults. However, comparatively little is known about how these inconsistencies affect scene viewing behaviour during development, particularly across middle childhood following changes to the processing of local elements (i.e. objects) within scenes. The current study tasked children aged 5-6 years, 9-10 years, and adults with exploring natural scenes while their eye movements were recorded. To create object inconsistencies while controlling for potential developmental differences in contextual world knowledge, we manipulated object orientation, adding an inverted and upright object to each scene. Effects of these local-level changes were characterised by the time taken to first fixate the relative objects, the time spent on each object, and the exploration of the overall scene. Our findings suggest that by 5-6 years children are already very good at detecting inverted (relative to upright) objects within natural scenes. However, younger children spend more time viewing inverted objects at the cost of overall scene exploration. While this behaviour towards inconsistent objects became more adultlike with age, differences in broader scene exploration between 9-10-year-old children and adults were also evident, suggesting that the mechanisms driving scene viewing behaviour continue to develop beyond the ages tested here.