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A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF ATTENTION
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1972
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Developmental Cognitive NeuroscienceSelective AttentionEducationCognitionAttentionSocial SciencesPsychologyDevelopmental PsychologyCognitive DevelopmentExecutive FunctionAuditory Vigilance TaskDevelopmental DisorderCognitive FactorChild PsychologyCognitive ScienceTask PerformanceEarly Childhood DevelopmentHuman CognitionChild DevelopmentAttention ControlCognitive PerformanceYoung ChildrenVigilance Performance
S ummary . This is a study of the development of attention in young children. A continuous response, 40‐minute auditory vigilance task, was administered to 612 children between the ages of 7 to 13. Performance improved with age, with greatest improvement between the ages of 8 and 9. Girls were significantly better than boys at ages 7, 8 and 12. There were no correlations (within sub‐samples) between vigilance performance and intelligence (Raven's Progressive Matrices and Crichton Vocabulary Scale) or between vigilance performance and personality (extraversion and neuroticism scores on the Junior Eysenck Personality Inventory). All age groups showed variation in performance (the ‘vigilance decrement’) within the task. Results are compared with previous findings and it is concluded that (i) attentional capacity is independent of intelligence and (ii) that critical changes in this capacity may occur between ages 8 and 9.