Flexibility of Children's Attention: Instructions Regarding Deployment of Attention in a Component Selection Task1

Abstract

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.

Children's Attention to Stimulus Components With Variation in Relative Salience of Components and Degree of Stimulus Integration1

“…1974bHale, Taweel, Green & Flaugher, 1974).2 In these studies, one stimulus component has tended to be dominant with any given set of materials, in the sense that subjects direct the majority of their attention to that feature. Of particular interest is how this dominance relationship varies as a function of the task conditions, and how the pattern of results is influenced by the subjects' age.…”

“…Of particular interest is how this dominance relationship varies as a function of the task conditions, and how the pattern of results is influenced by the subjects' age. One recent result is quite suggestive; when children were instructed to concentrate on the nondominant component (color), both 5-and 8-to 9-year-olds increased their attention to that feature, but only the older children withdrew attention from the dominant shape component at the same time (Hale, Taweel, Green & Flaugher, 1974). These -2-results point to a developmental increase in attentional flexibility, or a decrease in children's rigid reliance on a single feature as the primary functional cue.…”