Distractibility and Concentration of Attention in Children's Development

HIGGINS, ANNE T., and TURNURE, JAMES E. Distractibility and Concentration of Attention in Children's Development. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1799-1810. Preschool, second-, and sixth-grade children performed developmentally gradated, easy and difficult visual discrimination tasks in a quiet room or with 1 of 2 levels of extraneous auditory stimulation present. Subjects' errors, response latencies, and glances away from the task were recorded. Extraneous stimulation was found to impair performance significantly for younger children but to facilitate the performance of older children. Younger children made more errors and glanced away from the task more when performing with extraneous stimulation present, but these findings were generally reversed for older subjects. At all ages children glanced away from the task more and responded faster after learning the task. Learning and glancing correlated significantly in all experimental conditions. The findings provided support for the contention that there is developmental change in the ability to direct attention to an arbitrarily assigned task in the presence of extraneous stimulation. Findings are related to prior research and to practical concerns regarding attending to arbitrary tasks as well as research on theories of cognitive capacity and effects of arousal.