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Paying Attention to Development: Understanding Developmental Differences in Selectivity

Plebanek, Daniel Joseph
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499425770379572

Abstract Details

2017, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Psychology.
Selective attention is a critical component of cognitive development and learning. Despite, the importance of selective attention, past research has demonstrated that children’s early patterns of attention are typically limited by immature selectivity. To this extent, children often fail to prioritize goal- or task-relevant information, and allocate their attention or encode information more indiscriminately than adults. In a series of studies, we identified differences in children’s and adult’s patterns of attention allocation and explored filtering and distracter suppression as the possible mechanisms responsible for developmental changes in selectivity. In Chapter 2, we used two tasks with cued and uncued streams of information to establish differences in patterns of early and mature attention. These experiments revealed that children had more diffused patterns of attention than adults, even when relevant information was selectively cued. In Chapter 3, we used a series of visual search tasks to explore developmental differences in distracter interference and target selection. While performance with minimal distracting information was successful, the presence of extraneous information interfered with target processing even at six years of age. These results indicate that delayed filtering development may be a key factor in the protracted development of selective attention. In Chapter 4, we examined individual and developmental differences in the development of filtering and working memory, revealing filtering as one of the prominent mechanisms of information processing and attention allocation.
Vladimir Sloutsky (Advisor)
Andrew Leber (Committee Member)
John Opfer (Committee Member)
83 p.
Developmental Psychology
Attention; Filtering; Cognitive Development

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Plebanek, D. J. (2017). Paying Attention to Development: Understanding Developmental Differences in Selectivity [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499425770379572

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Plebanek, Daniel. Paying Attention to Development: Understanding Developmental Differences in Selectivity. 2017. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499425770379572.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Plebanek, Daniel. "Paying Attention to Development: Understanding Developmental Differences in Selectivity." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499425770379572

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1499425770379572
247
© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.
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