The development of conceptual categories of attention during the elementary school years

The purpose of this study was to explore the development of children's conceptual understanding of attention by focusing on their awareness of various subtypes of attention. Adults, fifth graders (mean age = 11.16 years), and third graders (9.16 years) participated in a Similarity Judgment task in which they rated the similarity of pairs of cognitive scenarios involving various attentional processes. These similarity judgments were submitted to an extended similarity tree analysis (EXTREE; J. E. Corter & A. Tversky, 1986) and the interpretations of the clusters and features that emerged were confirmed by participants in an Attribute Rating task. Three changes were found with increasing age: (1) Less emphasis was placed on the surface features of the scenarios, (2) more attentional subtypes were identified, and (3) more emphasis was placed on the role of effort in attention. We conclude that during elementary school and beyond children came to understand that intentional, effortful cognitive processes can mediate between the external world and our conscious experiences of it.