Visual selective attention was investigated in children aged 5, 7 and 9 and in adults. The groups were compared on a filtering task in which conditions varied with regard to number (0, 2, 8) and location (close, far) of the non-relevant stimuli surrounding the targeted stimuli and the presence or absence of a solid-line border around the target stimuli. The results were analyzed with regard to development differences between the age groups. Contrary to expectations, the presence of non-relevant stimuli was not related to impaired performance nor was the presence of a solid-line border related to enhanced performance. No effect of border was found in any of the groups. However, the reaction times of older children and adults were faster with 8 non-relevant stimuli far from the target. Five year old children did not show this effect. This indicates that older children and adults can utilize this group of non-relevant stimuli as a tool to focus the attentional lens.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.61280 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Dagenais, Catherine |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Educational Psychology and Counselling.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001313882, proquestno: AAIMM80279, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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