Effects of Similarity Grouping on Attentional Processes in Children

First and fifth graders sorted cards into 2 piles based on the orientation of a T figure. Cards did or did not contain irrelevant information: irrelevant information did or did not contrast in line slope with the target. The position of targets varied within arrays from 1 card to the next. Children...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child development 1978-09, Vol.49 (3), p.878-881
Main Author: Farkas, Mitchell S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Factors
Attention
Brief Reports
Child
Children
Delay lines
Discrimination Learning
Experimentation
Fall lines
Female
Figure ground
Form Perception
Humans
Information relevance
Male
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Slope of a line
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Summary:First and fifth graders sorted cards into 2 piles based on the orientation of a T figure. Cards did or did not contain irrelevant information: irrelevant information did or did not contrast in line slope with the target. The position of targets varied within arrays from 1 card to the next. Children at both grade levels sorted more slowly in the presence of contrasting irrelevant information relative to no irrelevant information, but younger children were slowed more than older ones when sorting in the presence of similar irrelevant information relative to contrasting irrelevant information. A second card-sorting experiment examined similar effects in a filtering task in which target position was constant from card to card. Effects were minimal for fifth graders, whereas first graders were slower in the presence of contrasting irrelevant information relative to no irrelevant information, and slower in the presence of similar as compared with contrasting irrelevant information. Processing differences underlying these results are discussed.
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.2307/1128261