The Role Of Selective Attention In 3～4 Years Old Children's Rule Use

Research about rule use has become one of important aspects in cognitive psychology and developmental psychology recently. Rule use has been linked to the development of executive function, and many researches of rule use were derived from the research of executive function. The article summarized the research of selective attention, rule use and the relation between the two, and found that psychologists engaged in a great number of studies in children's rule use, but the basic reason of young children's difficulty in rule use was highly controversial. At the same time previous researches usually emphasized the role of inhibitory control and rule complexity, the role of selective attention was neglected.The current study consisted of three experiments to examine the role of selective attention in 3 to 4 years old children's rule use. Experiment 1 and 2 adopted the advanced'same-silly' dimensional change card sort task to investigate the role of selective attention in 3 to 4 years old children's rule use. In experiment 1, the colors of the model and test cards matched. Experiment 2 adopted different colors for the model cards and the test cards to eliminate the color match present in the materials of experiment 1, this was designed in order that children summarized that they just focused the shape rather than the color. To further investigate the role of selective attention in rule use,3 to 4 years old children were tested in one of two conditions on dimensional change card sort task:standard and label in experiment 3. In the standard condition, children were required to sort cards after experimenter introduced the rules and labeled the test cards by the relevant dimension. In the label condition, children labeled the relevant sorting dimention on each test card before experimenter introduced the rules. The goal of experiment 3 was to examine the effect of labeling on children's performance in rule use, in other words, labeling helped them refocus their attention, overcoming' attentional inertia'. The conclusions were follows:(1)Selective attention played an important role in young children's rule use. Most 3-year-olds failed to perform the task because they could not just focus the shape rather than the color, but most 4-year-olds successfully performed the task.(2)For eliminating the 'visual clash' between model and test cards, we adopted different colors for the model cards and the test cards. However,3-year-olds still failed to perform the task. Thereby, young chidren appeared to have linitation in selective attention that restricted their ability to focus on the shape dimension.(3)Labeling helped them refocus their attention, overcoming 'attentional inertia' However, overt labeling was not necessary for successful performance because some children labeled the cards accurately but performed poorly.(4)3-4 years old children have difficult in cognitive flexiblility, they failed to switch quickly and flexibly between the two conflicting rules. Labeling improved young children's performance in rule-switching flexibility.