Attentional deficits of learning-disabled children: Effects of rewards and practice

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of rewards and practice on the attentional task performance of learning-disabled (LD) and normally achieving children. Contingent feedback and rewards resulted in faster but less accurate performance by the LD children. Despite the speed-accuracy trade-off, the LD children still responded more slowly than the controls. However, limited practice on the tasks resulted in significantly improved performance, such that the groups performed similarly. Poorer performance of LD children on their first encounter with laboratory measures of attention may be due to inefficient strategies rather than to actual deficits in ability to attend.

A cross-level units-of-analysis approach to individual differences in skill acquisition.

“…The experienced computer user may thus move through the initial stage of skill acquisition more rapidly. Indirect evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from a variety of fields (Kinsey, 1986; Kistner, 1985; Koopmans, 1987), although it has not been directly tested in tasks similar to the air traffic control (ATC) task that we used.…”