Developmental changes in the effect of dimensional salience on the discriminability of object relations.
Two experiments explored three issues regarding the nature of perceptual development in 5- and 10-year-old children and adults: (a) the role of featural discriminability, (b) the facilitatory role of identity relations, and (c) the role of salience in a task context designed to minimize the likelihood of attention-switching between dimensions during perceptual processing. In Experiment 1, perceptual salience for size and achromatic color dimensions was determined for each participant based on their best-fitting triad classification task response pattern. These same persons participated in Experiment 2, which employed a speeded visual discrimination task. The primary finding was that preassessed salience significantly influenced the 5-year-olds' ability to discriminate between two objects, while salience did not affect 10-year-olds' or adults' response times. The results of both experiments support Odom & Cook's (1992) differential-sensitivity view of perceptual development, but these data contribute important information by showing that salience effects in perceptual processing occur even when the observer is selectively attending to a particular dimension, likely during early component processes prior to classification.
Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001, USA.
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D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D012858:Size Perception / Q000502:physiology