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Updated: Jul 15, 2026

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults
Published on: October 19, 2014
Scope of attention, control of attention, and intelligence in children and adults
Nelson Cowan1, Nathanael M Fristoe, Emily M Elliott
1Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, 18 McAlester Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. cowann@missouri.edu
Abstract:
Recent experimentation has shown that cognitive aptitude measures are predicted by tests of the scope of an individual's attention or capacity in simple working memory tasks and also by the ability to control attention. However, these experiments do not indicate how separate or related the scope and control of attention are. An experiment with 52 children (10 to 11 years old) and 52 college students included measures of the scope and control of attention, as well as verbal and nonverbal aptitude measures. The children showed little evidence of using sophisticated attentional control, but the scope of attention predicted intelligence in that group. In adults, both the scope and control of attention varied among individuals and accounted for considerable individual variance in intelligence. About one third that variance was shared between scope an d control, and the rest was unique to one or the other. Scope and control of attention appear to be related but distinct contributors to intelligence.
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