Previous research showed that adults can discriminate between what they have seen or not with high confidence in a momentary (<133ms, masked) visual experience (Liang et al., 2019). However, how and when children develop the discriminative and metacognitive ability (e.g., high confidence with correct trials and low confidence with incorrect trials) for visual experience is still unclear. In the present study, we examined these abilities in 5-12-year-old children and adults using a paradigm developed by Liang et al. Twenty-five 5-6-year-old, thirty-six 7-9-year-old, thirty-one 10-12-year-old, and thirty-three adults participated in an online experiment. In each trial, participants were presented with a natural scene image (e.g., a woman cooking in a kitchen) for 267ms first, and then presented some image patches. The image patches consisted of present patches (made from the target image) and absent patches (made from different images). Participants were asked to judge whether the image patch was present or absent in the target images with high or low confidence. There are no age effects on discriminative and metacognitive performance. Therefore, children can discriminate between what they have seen or not with high confidence in a momentary visual experience. Interestingly, there was an age effect on the metacognitive performance on the absent patch. This suggests that it is difficult for children to identify what was not experienced with confidence. The present study was the first to examine the development of children’s rapid natural scene perception. The findings contribute to the understanding of the development of visual experience.
