Developmental trends in children's component selection

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Abstract

A new method is introduced for assessing children's component selection—i.e., the disposition to attend to a single feature of multifaceted stimuli. Eight-year-old children were found to exercise component selection to a lesser degree than 4-year-olds; while children at both age levels attended primarily to one stimulus component (shape), the older children showed a moderate amount of attention to a secondary redundant feature (color) as well. However, a comparable age difference in attention deployment was not observed when a single stimulus dimension (shape) was “relevant” in two variant tasks. These results imply a developmentally increasing ability to distinguish between conditions in which attending to redundant stimulus information can and cannot be useful. That this ability undergoes little further development beyond age 8 was suggested in a second experiment with 8- and 12-year-olds in which the three tasks produced relatively similar developmental trends in performance.

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This research was supported in part by grant No. OEG-2-9-400443-1060(010) from the U. S. Office of Education. The authors extend their appreciation to the Pennsbury and Council Rock school systems in Bucks County, Pa., and to the following nusery schools, also in Bucks County: Bensalem, Bucks County Montessori Society, Crossing Cooperative, and Pickwick. Particular gratitude is expressed to Joanne S. Goldenbaum for help in collection of data, to Linda A. Kozelski for secretarial assistance, and to Marvin W. Daehler and William C. Ward for a critical reading of this manuscript. A portion of the study was reported at the meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, 1971.

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