Access Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Date of Award

January 2019

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Noa . Ofen

Abstract

Processing of low-level visual information shows robust developmental gains through childhood and adolescence, likely due to the functional maturation of the occipital cortex. Age-related gains in memory for complex visual stimuli such as scenes and faces are related to the functional maturation of regions in the ventral temporal lobes that are selectively sensitive to visual-category information. Given the concurrent development in both regions critical for visual processing, the functional maturation in the occipital cortex may also support the development of memory for complex visual stimuli. With unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution provided by direct brain recordings, the current study is intended to put to test this hypothesis in children and adolescents. Participants studied pictures of scenes in preparation for a recognition test while undergoing direct cortical monitoring. Scenes were classified as high- or low-complexity by the number of unique object categories depicted. Visual processing in the occipital cortex was assessed with alpha oscillations, a prominent feature linked to visual processing in the occipital lobes that may play a crucial role in memory formation. The results showed that recognition accuracy for high-complexity, but not low-complexity, scenes improved with age. Instantaneous alpha frequency, an estimation of the temporal resolution of visual perception, increased with age also only for viewing high-complexity scenes, suggesting that the measure captured the functional maturation of the occipital cortex. Furthermore, differential association between task-induced alpha power and recognition accuracy for high-complexity scenes was found across ages. We observed lower task-induced alpha power in children who displayed greater recognition accuracy for high-complexity scenes, whereas such a negative relationship was less obvious among adolescents. In addition, these effects were observed only at the beginning of scene presentation and only with high-complexity scenes that were subsequently remembered. Taken together, these findings suggest that visual processing in the occipital cortex may contribute to an early stage of memory formation critical for encoding complex visual information, and the magnitude of the contribution appears to increase through childhood and adolescence, lending support to the hypothesis that the functional maturation of the occipital cortex supports the development of memory for complex visual stimuli.

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