Children's Attention Allocation, Understanding of Attention, and Performance on the Incidental Learning Task

Abstract

MILLER, PATRICIA H., and WEISS, MICHAEL G. Children's Attention Allocation, Understanding of Attention, and Performance on the Incidental Learning Task. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 11883-1190. 60 children from grades 2, 5, and 8 were given 2 tasks. One task assessed children's strategies of allocating attention to information in a situation similar to the incidental learning task. Children selected either relevant or irrelevant objects to look at by deciding which doors to open on the apparatus. The other task was the typical incidental learning task in which certain objects are to be remembered and others are not. In addition, children's predictions about their recall of incidental objects and their answers to a posttest questionnaire provided verbal measures of their understanding of attention. Most of the increase in the selective allocation of attention and the understanding of attention came between grades 2 and 5. In contrast, most of the improvement in performance on the incidental learning task came between grades 5 and 8. Strategies of attention allocation and performance on the incidental learning task were not significantly related. Second graders' inefficient attention allocation and fifth graders' inefficient performance on the incidental learning task were discussed in terms of metacognitive deficiencies and competing response tendencies.