The Development of Selective Attention under Distracting Conditions

Coherence of the irrelevant-sound effect: Individual profiles of short-term memory and susceptibility to task-irrelevant materials

“…This is surprising because one might have imagined the same mechanisms that account for development of span to account for the developmental decrease in the magnitude of the ISE. Such factors could include the developmental improvement in both covert verbal rehearsal ability (e.g., Cowan & Kail, 1996;Flavell et al, 1966;Ornstein & Naus, 1978) and the control of attention (e.g., Lane & Pearson, 1982;Zukier & Hagen, 1978). It seemed natural to suppose that the same factors would operate within an age group to cause individuals with higher spans to have smaller ISEs.…”

“…changing abilities of not only rehearsal but also attention (Lane & Pearson, 1982;Zukier & Hagen, 1978), helped us address the issue of correlations between measures of span and the ISE by including more individual difference variability. Furthermore, we already know that there is an increase in the ISE with speech as opposed to tone distractors in children, more than in adults (Elliott, 2002), but the relation between irrelevant-speech and irrelevanttone effects has not been examined in this age group.…”

“…One can see, though, several ways in which the assumptions could be wrong. For example, development includes not only an improvement in attention (Lane & Pearson, 1982;Zukier & Hagen, 1978), but also in covert verbal rehearsal (Cowan & Kail, 1996;Flavell, Beach, & Chinsky, 1966;Ornstein & Naus, 1978). It is always possible that span and diminution of the ISE depend on attention and rehearsal in different ways or that these two factors play different roles in developmental versus individual-difference data.…”

Developmental change in the cross-modal Stroop effect

“…It has been argued (e.g., Driver & Baylis, 1993;Neill, 1977;Neill & Westberry, 1987;Tipper et al, 1989) that the magnitude of the negative priming effect is a direct reflection of the efficiency of suppression mechanisms and is negatively correlated with susceptibility to distraction. Tipper et al proposed that the developmental differences seen in studies of selective attention (e.g., Doyle, 1973;Gerstadt et al, 1994;Jerger et al, 1988;Zuckier & Hagan, 1978) are due to children's underutilization of the suppression mechanism. In support of this idea, Tipper et al observed that 7-to 8-year-olds showed greater Stroop interference than did adults and that adults showed greater negative priming than did 7-to 8-year-olds.…”

An Event-related Potential Study of Selective Auditory Attention in Children and Adults

“…Both the abilities to selectively attend to relevant stimuli and to successfully ignore irrelevant stimuli improve progressively with increasing age across childhood (Lane & Pearson, 1982;Hiscock & Kinsbourne, 1980;Geffen & Wale, 1979;Sexton & Geffen, 1979;Geffen & Sexton, 1978;Zukier & Hagen, 1978;Doyle, 1973;Maccoby & Konrad, 1966). The ability to shift attention quickly and effectively also develops across childhood at least until adolescence (Pearson & Lane, 1991;Hiscock & Kinsbourne, 1980;Geffen & Wale, 1979).…”