It is possible that the ability to perform adequately in VRT is limited by the capacity to cope with the amount of visual information. In our experiment, fractals of ‘complexity GW786034 clinical trial 5’ contained a higher number of elements (for instance, squares) than stimuli of ‘complexity 3’ ( Fig. 5), and greater amount of visual information may be harder to process. To analyze this effect we compared the performance between trials displaying different amounts of visual complexity using a GEE with ‘grade’ as a between-subjects factor, and ‘visual complexity’ as a within-subjects factor. We found that visual complexity had a significant main effect on VRT performance

(Wald χ2 = 6.5, p = 0.039). Specifically, the proportion of correct answers in the category ‘complexity4’ was higher than in the category ‘complexity5’ (estimated marginal mean (EMM) difference = 0.06, p = 0.026). All p-values were corrected buy TSA HDAC using sequential Bonferroni correction. Detailed grade * visual complexity interaction analyses and figures are presented in Appendix D. Overall, higher levels of visual complexity yielded worse results, especially within second graders.

General overview: correct responses by grade. On average, children attending the fourth grade (M = 0.78, SD = 0.18) had a higher proportion of correct responses in EIT than children attending the second grade (M = 0.62, SD = 0.17). This was a significant difference (Mann–Whitney U: z = −3.70, p < 0.001; Fig. 7). While buy Depsipeptide 77% of fourth graders had a proportion of correct answers above chance, only 35% of the second graders had so. This difference was also significant (χ2 = 5.2, p = 0.023). Visual strategies. We repeated the analysis described for VRT, now with the proportion of correct answers in EIT as the dependent variable. Our results suggest that, at the group level, second graders

performed randomly in the foil category ‘odd constituent’ (Proportion = 0.52, Binomial test, p = 0.556). For all other foil categories and for both grade groups, performance was significantly above chance (Binomial test, p < 0.005). Detailed comparisons across categories are presented in Appendix C. Visual complexity. We repeated the complexity analysis described for VRT, with the proportion of correct answers in EIT as the dependent variable. We again found that visual complexity had a significant main effect on performance (Wald χ2 = 12.6, p = 0.002): The proportion of correct answers in the category ‘complexity3’ was higher than in the categories ‘complexity4’ (EMM difference = 0.06, p = 0.012) and ‘complexity5’ (EMM difference = 0.07, p = 0.06). All p-values were corrected using sequential Bonferroni correction. Detailed figures, interaction analyses, and subsequent pair-wise comparisons are presented in Appendix D.