Children's Avoidance of Environmental, Simple Task Internal, and Complex Task Internal Distractors

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The study examined distraction effects in terms of the information processing necessary to discriminate distractors from task-relevant information and a child''s ability to meet those demands. Environmental distractors, those not part of the task materials, required only task-nontask decisions. Distractors which were part of the task materials required either the processing of single-stimulus features (simple internal distraction) or multiple-stimulus features (complex internal distraction) for distractor-target discrminations. Preschool, kindergarten, 2nd- and 4th-grade children''s visual recall and recognition performance, under both nondistraction and one of the 3 types of distraction, revealed complex internal distraction was most disruptive, followed by simple internal distraction, and environmental distraction least disruptive. Within grade levels, preschoolers were disrupted by all distraction, kindergartners showed performance decrements for both simple and complex internal distraction, and second graders showed performance decrements for only complex internal distraction. Fourth graders did not show any distraction effects.