Open AccessAGE DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN'S PERFORMANCE ON MEASURES OF COMPONENT SELECTION AND INCIDENTAL LEARNING 1
Author(s) -
Hale Gordon A.,
Taweel Suzanne S.
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
ets research bulletin series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2333-8504
pISSN - 0424-6144
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.1973.tb00647.x
Subject(s) - component (thermodynamics) , incidental learning , recall , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , task (project management) , cognitive psychology , selection (genetic algorithm) , flexibility (engineering) , developmental psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , statistics , physics , management , economics , thermodynamics
Children of ages 5 and 8 years were given one of three learning tasks: (a) a component selection problem, in which two stimulus components were redundant and (b) two incidental learning tasks, in which one component of the stimuli was task‐relevant and the other was incidental. A posttest, measuring the children's recall for information about each component separately, was assumed to reflect the degree of attention directed to each component during learning. Attention to the nondominant component was found to increase with age when this feature was redundant with the dominant component and could thus serve as a second functional cue (component selection task), but not when it was incidental. These results suggest a developmental increase in the flexibility of attention deployment, as the tendency for children to exercise selective attention varies with the requirements of the task.