ATTENTION

DEVELOPMENT IN
PRESCHOOL
CHILDREN

Course: Developmental psychology

Student: Antonija Klemenčić
  Authors: Janet Woody-Ramsey and Patricia H. Miller
The
 Bibliography: Janet Woody-Ramsey and Patricia H. Miller.
Facilitation of Child Development: The Facilitation of Selective Attention in
Selective Preschoolers. Vol. 59, No. 6 (Dec., 1988), pp. 1497-1503.
Attention in  DOI: 10.2307/1130664
Preschoolers https://www.jstor.org/stable/1130664
  The ability to gather information from stimulus in the
environment in an organized and efficient manner

Theoretical  Visual selective attention is operating when information

gathering system involves the selection of relevant visual
background – information from the stimulus

what is
 Children see all the stimuli, but their attention to some objects
attention? is inferred from recall data or from similarity comparisons of
compound stimuli
  Preschool children do not restrict their attention to relevant stimuli
spontaneously

 It is possible when they are provided with the attentional training or if

Attention of the object is highly notable

preschool
children  They are able to point to one object that they remember when other
objects (that they do not remember) are present  a single behaviour

 Children’s examination of visual stimuli is more organized when there

is little information to process
  It is believed that children have a hierarchy of strategies for
gathering information that they bring to the mind as a result of
Attention of their previous experiences and their conceptual level

preschool
 Young children are most likely to behave strategically when
children the task requires strategies that are of value to them in their
own environment (e.g. familiar situations in kindergarten)
  Can preschool children produce a strategy of selective attention
under certain facilitating conditions?

 The highest strategy in the hierarchy and most likely strategy to

Study purpose – be used is horizontal-spatial
what did the
authors  Experimental manipulation is supposed to increase the availability
of information relevant to selectivity and bring the strategy low in
examine? the hierarchy of strategies to the top of the hierarchy

 This should result in behaviour typically found only in

older children
  Participants: 100 nursery school children  20 in each of 5 condition
group (Story=control; Reduced; Salience (colour); Reminders; All
aids)

 Materials used in a study: A box containing drawings that children had to

remember when seeing them with 2 rows of 6 doors on top of the box
Method which could be opened. Six of the doors had a drawing of a cage and
concealed a drawing of an animal and other 6 doors had a drawing of a
house and concealed a drawing of a familiar household object. There
was a vertical pair of one animal and one household object which
experimenters changed on every trial. The drawings of cages were in
one colour and the drawings of houses in other colour which served as a
difference between the relevant door and irrelevant door.
  Procedure: Each child was tested individually for 8 times (8 trials). They were
told to pretend they are a character in the story and to try to do everything
they are told. Child in the story was instructed to put away toys into proper
box where it belongs. Children were asked to pretend that each door was a
box and they were explained that animal toys were concealed with cages
and household toys were under the drawings of the houses. Half of the
children were told a story where animal toys were relevant and other half was
Method told the same story where household objects were relevant. Next they were
told to remember under which door the relevant objects were and that they
can look as many times as they want. After that they were shown the drawing
of it and instructed to point at the door where is hidden. After the last trial,
they were asked to explain what is the best way to play this game in order to
examine their awareness of the need to use strategies.
  Strategies were examined by checking:

a) Which door were opened (relevant vs irrelevant)?

b) The order in which the door were opened
c) Time spent viewing at the relevant/irrelevant objects

Results

 There is a relation between number of times relevant doors were

opened and time spent viewing at the relevant objects
  Selectivity in All Aids conditions was significantly better than in
all of the other four conditions (p< .05)

Results  Selectivity in the Reminders condition was significantly lower

than in all of the other four conditions (p< .05)

 Selectivity was enhanced only when all aids were combined

  Types of strategies that were used:
a) Selective strategy – opening all relevant doors  most often
used
b) Spatial strategy  most often used in the Reminders
conditions (exception)

Results
 In some trials, there was a partial use of this strategies
  Did the use of strategy improve as a result of task experience? There is a
improvement between the first and last trial  Developmental changes

 29 of 100 children showed improvement

Results  Children’s strategic performance improved

 83 of 100 children either verbalized or demonstrated the selective strategy

 69% of those children had used that selective strategy on over half of the
trials
  Preschoolers are capable of using the selective strategies
when the task is of a value to them and if it provides the use of
a familiar script (in a familiar context)
Conclusion
 Strategy development is a process involving: inappropriate
spatial strategies; an appropriate selective strategies; partial
selective strategies and facilitation of recall
  Confirmation of idea that strategies that demand more effort
will be replaced with less demanding strategies

 It is shown that it is important having the relevant script

Conclusion knowledge to be able to access and use efficient strategies
(e.g. use of a story as in this case)
  There is a evidence of slowdown in development  between gaining the
strategy and having benefits from it (e.g. improved recall)

 Selectivity was high, but the recall was not + no effect of conditions and type
of relevance of the object

 With the increase in age, the use of strategies requires less capacity
Conclusion
 The knowledge on how, when and where to apply specific strategies is limited
to a familiar context

 Although in some cases it may be without full understanding, the children did
show the awareness of their behaviour in some extent
Selective
 Author: Natacha Akshoomoff
Attention and
Active  Bibliography: Natacha Akshoomoff. (2002). Developmental

Engagement Neuropsychology. 22(3), 625–642.

in Young  https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5nk3z4n0

Children
  The increases in self-control and inhibitory control during infancy
and early childhood have an important role in the development of
attention

Theoretical  The developmental transition between 3 and 5 years is a change

toward more voluntary and independent control of attention
background
 Children perform activities that are more planned, self-directed
and activities that need continued attention in order to finish it
completely  This is connected with changes in prefrontal cortex
during this period ( 3-5 ages)
  The most common procedure for examining attentional functions is
reaction time tasks – participants are required to focus their attention to
something that may not be intrinsically interesting  sometimes is
difficult to distinguish if a young child is not able or unwilling to perform
this type of task
Theoretical
background  The reaction time decreases with age
  The authors suggested that as children mature they become
more able to sustain their attention in different situations
Theoretical
background
 Focused attention in an unstructured situation may improve
attentional control in a more structured situation
  It is expected that younger children will have more mistakes in
vigilance tasks than older children because they need more time to
respond
Study purpose –  Difficulties in maintaining task instructions in their working memory
especially if being distracted by something
what did the
authors  It is predicted that with age there will be changes in active participation
examine?  In this study authors go step further by asking children to constantly
monitor the stimuli in order to give an appropriate response
  Participants: 52 children (23 boys and 29 girls)
 Age: from 3 and a half to 5 and a half years

 Procedure: Each child was tested individually 3 times and in

various tasks (free play, simple reaction time task, distractor
task, raisin delay task, nesting cups task, picture selection
task). Children were sitting in front of the computer and were
Method told to press the yellow button in each task every time they
see the specific target (e.g. a duck; a circle).
  The average reaction time was measured and calculated for all target
trials
 Active engagement is defined as the percentage of time not spent
looking away from the screen or doing off-task behavior

Method
  Data from 12 children is eliminated from analyses because they did not fulfil
the criteria for the distractor task

 Percentage of time in active engagement:

Results a) Simple reaction time task = .91
b) Picture selection task = .92
c) Distractor task = .97
  To determine the effect of age on children’s performance
examiners divided them into three age groups

Results  Children in the youngest age group were significantly slower

than children in the oldest age group in terms of average
reaction time (on the simple reaction time task and picture
selection task)
  46% of children younger than 4 and a half years were not able
to achieve task demands

 The rest of them (54%) who did manage, have made

Results significantly more mistakes than older children

 For all children the active engagement was high during the
reaction time tasks
  This study showed that some preschool children can quickly and
Conclusion correctly respond to a specific target that is appearing as a visual
stimuli

 Average time response was relatively fast

 Active engagement was very high regardless of the age  This is

consistent with a hypothesis that there is a significant change
happening in child’s ability to voluntarily direct attention (around 4
years of age)
  Children appear to be slower in response initiation and selection and,
in a less degree, motor execution

Conclusion  Therefore, it is possible that younger children may have sometimes

failed to respond by the time another stimuli appeared, despite having
made a decision to do respond = refractory effect

 Author suggests that additional studies are needed to determine what

circumstances lead to more impulsive errors, for example like it is
more typical for children with ADHD
  Children’s reaction time was slower and they made more mistakes in
distractor task compared to the picture selection task  possible
explanations:

Conclusion
 The picture selection task was after the distractor task so relatively better
performance in the picture selection task was due to a “practice effect”

 Distractor task targets were black shapes while picture selections task
targets were colourful drawings of familiar objects  if more interested in
task children showed more attention
Thank you for your
attention!