The development of selective attention: holistic perception versus resource allocation.
In two experiments, a speeded sorting task was administered to children. In each sorting, the child was instructed to sort a deck of cards according to values on one dimension while the values of a second irrelevant dimension were held constant, were correlated, or were varied orthogonally. Experiment 1 evaluated developmental changes in perceived structure as compared with such changes in the control of attention. Different groups of kindergarten, 2d-, and 5th-grade children performed the task with spatially integrated vs spatially separated dimensions. The results indicate that with spatially integrated dimensions there is a trend from holistic to featural perception and an increase in attentional control with increasing age. Spatially separate dimensions are perceived dimensionally at all ages, but show a trend in attentional development. In Experiment 2, the spatially integrated dimensions of Experiment 1 were made separable by portraying different targets within a configuration in different colors. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed.
D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003118:Color Perception; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual