Visual consciousness studies in humans have primarily focused on adults. However, whether young children’s visual consciousness is similar to or different from that of adults remains unknown. This study examined young children’s and adults’ subjective awareness and objective discrimination for thresholds and emergent processes of visual consciousness in two experiments. In Experiment 1, 20 5–6-year-olds and 20 adults attempted a figure discrimination task using a square or a diamond as the target stimulus and responded, using a two-point scale, to a question on subjective awareness of the target stimulus with stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) from 20 to 260 ms. In Experiment 2, 31 5–6-year-olds and 16 adults attempted the task and responded, using a four-point scale, to a question on subjective awareness with SOA from 50 to 550 ms. We measured the discrimination accuracy and the awareness scale with SOA and fit them to the sigmoid function. The results showed that the objective accuracy threshold of young children was larger than that of adults. Moreover, young children’s subjective awareness threshold was larger than that of adults in the four-point but not in the two-point scale responses. Finally, there were no age differences in the emergent process of consciousness. This study suggests that the emergent process of consciousness in young children is similar to that in adults, however, the threshold in young children is larger than that in adults.

人类视觉意识研究主要集中在成年人身上。然而，幼儿的视觉意识与成人是否相似或不同仍然未知。这项研究通过两个实验考察了幼儿和成人对视觉意识阈值和涌现过程的主观意识和客观辨别力。在实验 1 中，20 名 5-6 岁儿童和 20 名成年人尝试使用正方形或菱形作为目标刺激进行图形辨别任务，并使用两点量表回答有关目标刺激的主观意识的问题刺激起始异步 (SOA) 为 20 至 260 毫秒。在实验 2 中，31 名 5-6 岁儿童和 16 名成年人尝试了这项任务，并使用四分制回答了关于 SOA 主观意识的问题，时间为 50 到 550 毫秒。我们使用 SOA 测量了辨别准确度和认知量表，并将它们拟合到 sigmoid 函数。结果表明，幼儿的客观准确度阈值大于成人。此外，幼儿的主观意识阈值在四点量表反应中高于成人，但在两点量表反应中则不然。最后，意识的出现过程不存在年龄差异。这项研究表明，幼儿的意识涌现过程与成人相似，但幼儿的阈值比成人大。