Darlene A. Brodeur
Acadia University
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Featured researches published by Darlene A. Brodeur.
Acta Psychologica | 1994
Dana J. Plude; James T. Enns; Darlene A. Brodeur
This paper outlines research on selective attention within a life-span developmental framework. Findings obtained in both the infancy-child and adulthood-aging literatures are reviewed and discussed in relationship to four aspects of selective attention: orienting, filtering, search, and expecting. Developmental consistencies and inconsistencies are identified and integrative theories are evaluated. Although a single theory is unlikely to accommodate the diverse patterns of age effects, emergent themes are identifiable nonetheless and the essential ingredients of a life-span theory of attentional development are enumerated. Directions for future research and theory are suggested.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology | 1989
James T. Enns; Darlene A. Brodeur
Observers aged 6, 8, and 20 years participated in a speeded classification task designed to measure covert shifts of visual attention. On each trial observers responded to a target which appeared in one of three locations arrayed horizontally across the display. Three prestimulus cues were employed: neutral (the cue was present in all three possible target locations), unpredictable (the cue was present in the target location on a random basis), and predictable (the cue was present in the target location on 80% of the trials). There were four developmental findings: (1) Observers of all ages oriented attention automatically to the cued locations, (2) children processed targets in non-cued locations more slowly than adults, (3) only adults took advantage of the predictability of the cue, and (4) all age groups provided evidence that strategic orienting competes with response priming for cognitive resources. The implications of these findings for theories of attentional development are discussed.
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology | 2001
Darlene A. Brodeur; Miranda Pond
The influence of age on a selective attention task was studied in a sample of children with and without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The impact of methylphenidate (MPH) treatment on selective attention was also investigated in the children with ADHD. Two age groups of children with ADHD and two age groups of control children were tested using a timed computer task. The task consisted of identifying visual target stimuli under various distracter conditions. Distracters varied on the basis of modality (i.e., visual, auditory, or both) and task relevance (i.e., meaningful or irrelevant). Reaction times and accuracy were measured. Children with ADHD were less efficient on the selective attention task than were children without ADHD, and older children were more efficient than younger children in both groups. Children without ADHD were influenced more by the nature of distracters than were children with ADHD. For children with ADHD, MPH improved performance overall.
Developmental Psychology | 1996
Lana M. Trick; James T. Enns; Darlene A. Brodeur
Participants from 5 groups with mean ages of 6, 8, 10, 22, and 72 years were tested on a series of speeded number discriminations: 1 vs. 2, 3 vs. 4, 6 vs. 7, and 8 vs. 9. The primary measure of interest-response time slope as a function of number size-decreased with age for numbers in the 1-4 range. However, a U-shaped age function emerged in the 6-9 range, with larger slopes for children and senior adults, and the smallest slopes for young adults. These data suggest that different processes are involved in enumerating small and large numbers of items. It is argued that subitizing, the process for small numbers, makes only minimal demands on spatial attention and thus shows developmental improvements without any decline in old age. In contrast, counting, the process for large numbers, requires sophisticated coordination of spatial attention, which has previously been shown to first improve and then decline over the life span.
Journal of Attention Disorders | 2009
Brendan F. Andrade; Darlene A. Brodeur; Daniel A. Waschbusch; Sherry H. Stewart; Robin McGee
Objective: Investigated the relationship between selective and sustained attention and social behavior in children with different degrees of attentional disturbance. Method: Participants were 101 6- to 12-year-old children, including 18 who were diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD), 61 who were clinically referred for attentional difficulties but did not meet criteria for ADHD, and 22 typically developing children. Two groups of children completed either a sustained attention task or a selective attention task. Task performance was compared with teacher reported social behavior. Results: In support of the investigators hypothesis poor performance on the sustained attention task correlated with social behavior problems. However, contrary to expectation, poor performance on the selective attention task was not correlated with teacher reported social problems. Results are discussed with specific emphasis on the need to identify underlying cognitive contributions to social dysfunction. Conclusion: The findings support a growing body of research highlighting the negative relationship between inattention and social functioning. (J. of Att. Dis. 2009; 12(4) 341-352)
Journal of Learning Disabilities | 1999
Catherine Boden; Darlene A. Brodeur
This study investigated whether a group of children with reading disabilities (RD) were slower at processing visual information in general (compared to a group of children of comparable age and a group of children of comparable reading level), or whether their deficit was specific to the written word. Computerized backward masking and temporal integration tasks were used to assess the speed of visual information processing. Stimulus complexity (simple, complex) and type (verbal, nonverbal) were varied, creating a 2 x 2 matrix of stimulus conditions: simple nonverbal, complex nonverbal, simple verbal, and complex verbal. Adolescents with RD demonstrated difficulties in processing rapidly presented verbal and nonverbal visual stimuli, although the effect was magnified when they were processing verbal stimuli. Thus, the results of this study suggest that some youth with reading disabilities have visual temporal processing deficits that compound difficulties in processing verbal information during reading.
Cognitive Development | 2000
Darlene A. Brodeur; Catherine Boden
Abstract Visual orienting was studied using a task that required participants to respond to stimuli at various locations that were either accurately or inaccurately cued. Orienting abilities of children ages 6 to 8 years, and young adults (21 years) were tested under conditions of spatial uncertainty (i.e., multiple possible target locations), and variable cue predictability (i.e., variable proportion of validly cued targets). The results indicate that children orient their attentional resources automatically to abrupt visual onsets, and do so under conditions when it is not beneficial to overall performance. Adults, on the other hand, are able to control their orienting in such a way that it is limited to conditions where it improves their task efficiency. There appears to be developmental change in the ability to assess the utility of a location cue and/or to moderate responses in accordance with the utility of a cue. This finding is discussed in terms of the development of attentional control and inhibitory processes in children.
Psychological Research-psychologische Forschung | 1994
Darlene A. Brodeur; Stephen J. Lupker
Is the size of a semantic-priming effect a function of the strength of the semantic context? This issue was examined in four studies using a single categorically related prime as the weaker context and four categorically related primes as the stronger context. Results indicate that, independently of prime-target SOA, four primes provide a larger priming effect than a single prime in a lexical-decision task, but not in a naming task. These data provide further support for the argument that different mechanisms mediate priming in the two tasks. In particular, only the lexical-decision task appears to be susceptible to higher-level processes that can be influenced by the number of primes. Priming in a naming task appears to be driven by more automatic processes. Possible accounts of this multiple-prime advantage in lexical-decision tasks are considered.
Advances in psychology | 1990
Darlene A. Brodeur
Visual orienting serves several functions for the developing child, including automatically alerting her to salient events, actively preparing him to encounter events that are expected, and facilitating the selective processing of information in the visual field. Research with adults has revealed an important distinction between overt (i.e., shifts of attention accompanied by shifts in gaze) and covert orienting (i.e., shifts of attention independent of shifts in gaze). Covert orienting is of particular interest to developmental researchers because it allows attention to be studied independently from the muscular and motoric components involved in overt orienting. The purpose of the present chapter is to review recent research, summarize important unanswered questions, and suggest future directions for research on the development of covert orienting.
Autism Research | 2014
Darlene A. Brodeur; Cathryn Gordon Green; Heidi Flores; Jacob A. Burack
Time estimation of short durations (under 1 sec) was examined in low‐functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children matched on mental age. Temporal bisection and generalization tasks were used to examine basic perceptual timing mechanisms. For both tasks, the participants with ASD demonstrated less sensitivity to variability in short durations than the TD children, adding to a growing body of literature suggesting deficits in timing exist for longer durations. The results highlight the need to examine multiple levels of processing of time‐related information from basic perceptual mechanisms to higher level cognitive mechanisms. Autism Res 2014, 7: 237–244.