Open AccessFLEXIBILITY OF CHILDREN'S ATTENTION: INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING DEPLOYMENT OF ATTENTION IN A COMPONENT SELECTION TASK 1
Author(s) -
Hale Gordon A.,
Taweel Suzanne S.,
Green Roberta Z.,
Flaugher Jan
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
ets research bulletin series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2333-8504
pISSN - 0424-6144
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.1974.tb01032.x
Subject(s) - psychology , stimulus (psychology) , developmental psychology , flexibility (engineering) , component (thermodynamics) , cognitive psychology , selective attention , cognition , neuroscience , statistics , physics , mathematics , thermodynamics
The effects of instructions on children's component selection were examined in three experiments. In Experiment 1, 5‐ and 8‐year‐old children were given: (a) instructions to attend to the dominant stimulus component (shape), (b) instructions to attend to the nondominant or secondary feature (color), or (c) no instructions regarding the components of the stimuli. Both age groups showed an ability to vary their attention to the secondary feature in accord with the instructions. However, the 8‐year‐olds showed greater flexibility in that they employed a type of attentional trading–withdrawing attention from the dominant shape component in exchange for increased attention to color. Experiment 2 replicated conditions (b) and (c) above with 5‐, 9‐ and 12‐year‐olds and also included a condition requiring attention to both stimulus components. Again, only children beyond age 5 tended to withdraw attention from the dominant shape component as they increased attention to color. Instructions to attend to both features proved relatively unsuccessful with 5‐ and 9‐year‐olds and were accommodated with only moderate success by 12‐year‐olds. In Experiment 3 the latter instructions, applied to stimuli with spatially separated components, were accommodated quite successfully by 9‐year‐olds, although not by 6‐year‐olds. Active attention to two components is apparently within the capabilities of 9‐year‐old children when the components are spatially separated and can readily be viewed as independent entities. However, purposeful attention to two integrated features is believed to require additional analytic abilities which do not develop until a later age.