Children’s perception of visual and auditory ambiguity and its link to executive function and creativity

Taranu, Mihaela and Wimmer, Marina and Ross, Josephine and Farkas, Dávid and van Ee, Raymond and Winkler, István and Denham, Susan L. (2019) Children’s perception of visual and auditory ambiguity and its link to executive function and creativity. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY, 184. pp. 123-138. ISSN 0022-0965

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Abstract

The phenomenon of perceptual bistability provides insights into aspects of perceptual processing not normally accessible to everyday experience. However, most experiments have been conducted in adults and it is not clear to what extent key aspects of perceptual switching change through development. The current research examined the ability of 6-, 8-, and 10-year olds (N = 66) to switch between competing percepts of ambiguous visual and auditory stimuli, and links between switching rate, executive functions and creativity. The number of switches participants reported in two visual (ambiguous figure, ambiguous structure-from-motion) and two auditory (verbal transformation, auditory streaming) tasks were measured in three 60-second blocks. Additionally, inhibitory control was measured with a Stroop task, set-shifting with a verbal fluency task, and creativity with a divergent thinking task. The number of perceptual switches increased in all four tasks between 6 and 10 years of age, but differed across tasks in that it was higher in the verbal transformation and ambiguous structure-from-motion tasks than in the ambiguous figure and auditory streaming tasks for all age groups. Although perceptual switching rates differed across tasks, there were predictive relationships between switching rates in some tasks. However, little evidence for the influence of central processes on perceptual switching was found. Overall, the results support the notion that perceptual switching is largely modality- and task-specific and this property is already evident when perceptual switching emerges.

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