Stimulus Matching and Component Selection: Alternative Approaches to Measuring Children's Attention to Stimulus Components

Abstract

HALE, GORDON A., and LrpPs, LEANN E. T. Stimulus Matching and Component Selection: Alternative Approaches to Measuring Children's Attention to Stimulus Components. CHLD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 383-388. According to the method-of-triads stimulus-matching test, children show a developmentally increasing preference for classifying objects on the basis of shape rather than color. To further understand the processes involved in this response, children aged 3%-6% years were given the method-of-triads task, followed (after a week's delay) by a component-selection measure (from Hale & Morgan 1973). As expected, more subjects above the median age than below matched stimuli on the basis of shape. For children below the median age, the component-selection test scores partially corresponded with performance on the matching task, but the relative magnitudes of the component-selection scores did not change with age. The results suggest that, while stimulus matching may reflect certain aspects of attention deployment in young children, developmental changes in performance on this task may be attributable to factors unrelated to attention.