在高速发展的当代社会，知识空前繁荣促使信息量极大丰富，来自四面八方、目不暇接的信息流使人类无时无刻不在使用注意，因此空间选择注意成为了当代人最稀缺的资源之一：正常成人具备这种能力可以快速选择性地关注、并高效地处理信息，以更好地应对日常生活和工作中的挑战；成长中的儿童能否集中选择注意进行信息处理，是判断其发展水平与评估其注意特征的重要指标；作为民族的希望、国家的未来，儿童青少年全面健康成长是经济社会可持续发展的必然要求与题中之义，来自社会与时代的要求让中国家长更加关注学龄儿童在需要空间选择注意的特定任务（如课堂环境、考试情景、运动竞赛、家庭场景）中的表现如何进一步提升。

本研究采用158名成人、141名注意正常发展的儿童、123名被诊断患有ADHD的儿童，在四个实验研究中分别考察：空间选择注意的一般发展规律、正常与异常的发展差异、线索的注意调制机制，以及另一模态感官通道下不同注意水平对“线索-目标”关系的电生理表征差异，从注意资源有限性的角度探索关注儿童空间选择注意的发展机制与注意缺陷特征的脑电研究。

空间选择注意的一般发展过程通过两种分析手段论证：传统单通道分析结果显示，听觉刺激在不同脑区诱发的alpha频段能量偏侧化的增强（枕区）与抑制（顶区），表明了儿童与成人群体的发展特征差异，首次发现随着年龄增长，枕区诱发的alpha频段（8-13Hz）能量偏侧化（采用alpha调制系数指标，alphaMI）的增加可以表征听觉空间选择注意的发展，根据$\alpha$频段与注意资源关系的理论，这可能反映了注意资源的发展差异首先表现在具有偏向竞争（biased competition）优势的听觉目标的加工差异上；由于单通道分析在解释多个脑区同时激活具有局限性，全脑通道功能连接分析显示，采用脑电alpha频段能量的全脑功能连接与个体表征相似性等指标反映了个体发展的听觉选择注意能力，丰富了儿童听觉空间选择注意的群体与个体发展规律。

为了更好理解空间选择注意的发展过程，本研究进一步关注患有ADHD（注意缺陷多动障碍）儿童和注意能力正常发展儿童，探究可能与空间选择注意过程相联系的发展性注意缺陷特质。为了防止研究指标单一限制研究结论的生态效度，本研究选用了最近在成人被试上被广泛证明、特异性表征了听觉空间选择注意的脑电指标N2ac，该指标表征了空间选择注意对目标与非目标的差异性加工。研究首次发现，注意正常发展的儿童可以对听觉目标产生特异性的空间注意投放（N2ac），并且正常发展儿童可以通过（目标）选择与（非目标）抑制两个途径分别促进行为表现；而患有ADHD儿童群体缺失该电生理指标，这联系着较差的听觉选择注意能力与较为严重的注意缺陷临床表现。个体化的电生理指标N2ac的群体差异表明该指标可以表征听觉空间选择注意的发展水平，有助于揭示听觉领域的发展性注意缺陷特质。

前两个研究关注了听觉空间选择注意的发展特征，这为评估与提升不同注意发展阶段人群的空间选择注意能力提供实证依据与潜在可能。为了进一步理解不同发展水平人群的空间选择注意增强机制，本研究首先在成人群体中探究空间选择注意发生改变的认知神经机制。考虑到有效干预认知的光、电、磁刺激手段不能直接用于儿童领域的探索研究中，为了方便日后发展性研究的可比性，研究加入“儿童友好”的前置线索来探究空间选择注意改变的一般性认知神经机制。结果显示，前置视觉线索诱发的枕区alphaMI越大，伴随着随后听觉刺激诱发的N2ac波幅越大，表明有效线索增强了听觉空间选择注意；由于空间选择性注意既是对目标的定向、转移与保持，也是对非目标（干扰分心物）的抑制与分离，进一步研究发现，促进成人被试听觉空间选择注意的提升主要来自对分心物的抑制增强机制，而与听觉目标的选择增强无关。内隐注意转移带来的自上而下的调控对分心物的抑制过程，注意资源首先保证具有偏向竞争（biased competition）优势的目标得到加工，随后冗余的注意资源才会分配给分心物进行抑制，这个过程反映在分心物抑制产生的电生理指标与线索阶段alpha频段能量相关联。这意味着，对于注意资源充足的成人，只有进一步增强非目标的抑制，才能提高目标特异的听觉选择注意（N2ac）；这也从注意资源角度暗示该任务具有较低的知觉负载难度，具有进一步在儿童群体中开展的可能性。

前三个研究关注听觉模态的空间选择注意领域，研究四进一步采用其他模态的电生理证据进行相互佐证以便更好推广到一般性的空间选择注意领域。视觉与听觉作为最主要的两个感官通道，在日常感知、获取外部刺激信息过程中（例如驾驶车辆等需要高度注意的场景）起到了极为重要的作用；同时大量以成人为被试的研究汇报了视觉线索与视觉目标的关系，为儿童研究提供了参考。研究四发现不同注意发展水平人群在“线索-目标”范式中的脑电特征与注意资源分配方式不同：成人仅通过线索阶段的注意分配完成随后的简单视觉搜索，表现为特异性的电生理指标alphaMI直接联系着随后的行为表现；注意正常发展的儿童则需要利用线索增强的视觉空间选择注意完成当前任务，表现为特异性的电生理指标N2pc直接联系着随后的行为表现，其中，N2pc的潜伏期随着alphaMI幅值提升而加速；而患有ADHD的儿童，必须同时利用线索和视觉搜索，才能补偿性地改善行为表现，表现为试次水平的alphaMI与N2pc的“功能性连接”增强改善了行为表现、缓解了发展性注意缺陷严重程度。这说明了自身发展和线索调制共同促进了视觉空间选择注意的特征。与前三个在听觉注意领域的研究相比较，虽然分析方法不同，但观点相似，结论相辅相成；虽然模态不同，但提升了生态效度，可以相互佐证。

因此，综合这四项研究，通过采用视觉和听觉两个感觉通道、不同注意发展水平的群体、不同分析方法，得到以下结论：
一、特异性脑电指标可以表征儿童发展过程中的不同空间选择注意机制与过程，如alpha频段（8-13Hz）能量偏侧化表征线索阶段的内隐注意转移或目标搜索阶段的听觉空间注意指向、N2ac与N2pc分别表征听觉与视觉目标选择注意过程。
二、发展水平差异影响了空间选择注意能力，根据目标的偏向竞争与任务的知觉负载理论，注意资源是否充足决定了空间选择注意的投放程度与分配策略，这反映在特异性的电生理指标或电生理指标之间的紧密连接程度。
三、有效的前置线索可以改善空间选择注意的早期感知觉加工阶段（表现为特异性指标N2ac与N2pc），根据发展水平不同，线索的注意增强效应可以反映在非目标的抑制增强（如听觉空间选择注意N2ac的波幅增强）或者目标选择的加速（如视觉空间选择注意N2pc的潜伏期提前），同时，对线索的利用一定程度上可以弥补自身发展水平的不足。

以上结论丰富和完善了儿童空间选择注意的发展机制与注意缺陷特征的脑电研究，在实践中为中国学龄儿童的全面成长与健康发展丰富了新的思路与证据。

In today's rapidly developing society, the unprecedented prosperity of knowledge has led to an overwhelming abundance of information. The constant influx of information from all directions has emphasized the use of attention in daily life, thus spatial selective attention has become one of the most scarce resources for modern individuals. Having the ability to selectively focus and efficiently process information is crucial for coping with challenges in daily life and work. For growing children, the ability to concentrate and selectively allocate attention for information processing is an important indicator of their developmental level and attention characteristics. As the hope of the nation and the future of the country, the comprehensive and healthy growth of children and adolescents is an inevitable requirement and significant meaning for sustainable economic and social development. The demands from society and the times have led Chinese parents to pay more attention to how school-aged children can further improve their performance in specific tasks that require spatial selective attention, such as classroom environments, exam situations, sports competitions, and family scenarios.

The current study employed a sample of 158 adults, 141 typically developing children with normal attention, and 123 children diagnosed with ADHD. Four experiments were conducted to investigate the general developmental patterns of spatial selective attention, differences in developmental trajectories between typically developing children and those with ADHD, the modulation  of attention by cues, and the electrophysiological differences in the representation of the "cue-target" relationship at different levels of attention in another sensory modality. From the perspective of limited attentional resources, this study aimed to explore the developmental mechanisms of spatial selective attention in children and the neuroelectrophysiological research on attention deficit characteristics.

The general developmental process of spatial selective attention was demonstrated through two analytical approaches. Results from traditional single-channel analysis showed that the enhancement (in the occipital area) and inhibition (in the parietal area) of alpha-band (8-13Hz) lateralization of auditory stimuli in different brain regions indicated developmental differences between children and adults. For the first time, it was discovered that the increase in lateralization of alpha-band (8-13Hz) energy (measured by alpha modulation index, alpha-MI) in the occipital area with age could reflect the development of auditory spatial selective attention. According to the theory of the relationship between alpha-band and attentional resources, this may reflect that the developmental differences in attentional resources are first manifested in the differential processing of auditory targets with biased competition advantage. As single-channel analysis has limitations in interpreting simultaneous activation of multiple brain regions, whole-brain functional connectivity analysis using alpha-band energy revealed that measures such as whole-brain functional connectivity and individual representational similarity index reflected individual developmental levels of auditory selective attention, enriching the understanding of developmental patterns of auditory spatial selective attention in children at both group and individual levels.

In order to better understand the developmental process of spatial selective attention, we further investigated children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and typically developing children to explore potential developmental deficits in attention related to spatial selective attention. To avoid the limitation of relying on a single indicator that may compromise the ecological validity of the research findings, we used N2ac, an electrophysiological marker recently widely demonstrated in adult participants to specifically represent the differential processing of auditory spatial selective attention to target and non-target stimuli. For the first time, we discovered that typically developing children exhibited specific spatial attention allocation (N2ac) to auditory targets and showed distinct behavioral performance in promoting target selection and non-target inhibition. In contrast, children with ADHD showed a lack of this electrophysiological marker, which was associated with poorer auditory selective attention ability and more severe clinical symptoms of attention deficit. The population differences in individualized electrophysiological marker N2ac indicated that this marker can represent the developmental level of auditory spatial selective attention, and can contribute to uncovering developmental deficits in attention related to auditory domain.

The first two studies focused on the developmental characteristics of auditory spatial selective attention, providing empirical evidence and potential interventions for enhancing spatial selective attention in different developmental stages. In order to further understand the mechanisms underlying the enhancement of spatial selective attention in different developmental populations, we first investigated the cognitive neurophysiological mechanisms of spatial selective attention changes in an adult sample. Considering that effective interventions using optical, electrical, or magnetic stimulation cannot be directly applied to exploratory research in the field of child development, we included "child-friendly" pre-cues to investigate the general cognitive neurophysiological mechanisms of changes in spatial selective attention for the purpose of future comparative developmental research. The results showed that larger alpha modulation in the parietal area induced by the pre-visual cues was associated with larger N2ac amplitudes elicited by subsequent auditory stimuli, indicating that effective cues enhanced auditory spatial selective attention. Considering that spatially selective attention involves both target orientation, shifting, and maintenance, as well as inhibition and separation of non-target (distracting) stimuli, we further found that the enhancement of auditory spatial selective attention in adults was primarily achieved through the mechanism of enhanced inhibition of distractors, rather than the enhancement of target selection. Implicit top-down regulation of distractor inhibition through attentional shift is reflected in the electrophysiological markers associated with distractor inhibition and alpha-band energy during the cueing stage. This suggested that attentional resources first ensured processing of the target with biased competition advantage, and then redundant attentional resources were allocated to inhibit distractors. This process was reflected in the electrophysiological markers associated with distractor inhibition and alpha-band energy during the cueing stage. This implied that for adults with sufficient attentional resources, enhancing inhibition of non-targets was necessary to improve target-specific auditory selective attention (N2ac). This also suggested from the perspective of attentional resources that this task had a low perceptual load difficulty and had the potential for further investigation in child samples.

The first three studies focused on the spatial selective attention in the auditory modality, and we further corroborated the findings using electrophysiological evidence from other modalities to better generalize to the domain of general spatial selective attention. In daily perception and acquisition of external stimuli, vision and audition, as the two primary sensory channels, play a crucial role in highly attention-demanding situations such as driving vehicles. Additionally, a large body of research with adults has reported on the relationship between visual cues and visual targets, providing reference and comparison possibilities for child research. We found that populations with different levels of attentional development exhibited different EEG features and attentional resource allocation in the "cue-target" paradigm. Adults allocated attention solely during the cue stage to complete subsequent simple visual search, as evidenced by specific electrophysiological indicator, alpha modulation index (alpha MI), being directly linked to subsequent behavioral performance. Typically developing children, on the other hand, needed to utilize cue-enhanced visual spatial selective attention to complete the current task, as evidenced by the specific electrophysiological indicator, N2pc, being directly linked to subsequent behavioral performance, with the latency of N2pc accelerating with increased alpha modulation index (alpha MI) amplitude. In contrast, children with ADHD needed to utilize both cues and visual search simultaneously in order to compensatorily improve behavioral performance, as evidenced by the enhancement of "functional connectivity" between alphaMI and N2pc at the trial level, which alleviated the severity of developmental attention deficit. This indicated that both self-development and cue modulation jointly contributed to the features of visual spatial selective attention. Compared with the first three studies in the auditory attention domain, although the analysis methods were different, the findings were similar and complement each other's conclusions. Despite the different modalities, the ecological validity has been enhanced, and the findings could mutually corroborate each other.

Therefore, combining these four studies and using visual and auditory sensory channels, different developmental levels of attention, and different analysis methods, the following conclusions can be drawn:

Specific neurophysiological indicators can characterize different mechanisms and processes of spatial selective attention in developmental children, such as lateralized power in the alpha frequency range (8-13Hz) reflecting implicit attentional shifting during the cue stage or auditory spatial attentional orienting during the target search stage, and N2ac and N2pc respectively representing the auditory and visual target selection processes.
Developmental level differences influence spatial selective attention abilities. According to the theory of biased competition and perceptual load, the adequacy of attentional resources determines the extent and allocation strategy of spatial selective attention, which is reflected in the degree of connectivity between specific electrophysiological indicators or between different electrophysiological indicators.
Effective pre-cues can improve the early perceptual processing stage of spatial selective attention, as evidenced by specific indicators such as N2ac and N2pc. Depending on the developmental level, the attention-enhancing effect of cues can be reflected in enhanced inhibition of non-targets (such as increased amplitude of N2ac in auditory spatial selective attention) or accelerated target selection (such as earlier latency of N2pc in visual spatial selective attention). Moreover, the utilization of cues can partially compensate for developmental deficits.

These conclusions enrich and refine the neurophysiological research on the developmental mechanisms of spatial selective attention and attention deficit features in children, providing new ideas and evidence for the comprehensive growth and healthy development of school-age children in China in practice.