The detection of constancy amidst change in children: A dissociation of preattentive and intentional processing

This study examined whether 7-9-year-old children preattentively build memo ries of constancy for individual stimulus features, and if these representa tions are affected by variability of other stimulus features. This was achi eved by looking at the mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related potential to a duration deviant occurring in a stimulus environment in which one or two other features constantly changed. Performance data were also collected, t o look at the correspondence between the effects of this manipulation on pr eattentive, and intentional deviance, detection. MMN data indicated that th e children built a preattentive feature-based memory of constancy that was not affected by the number of varying features. In contrast, intentional de viance detection was considerably impaired by the introduction of feature v ariability. This dissociation is at variance with previous studies that usu ally report close association between MMN and behavior.