Effects of speed and accuracy instructions on performance in a visual search task by children with good or poor attention

Children rated by teachers as having good or poor attention ability carried out a visual search task in which they were required to find a series of targets in a complex display. Different groups were told to concentrate on either speed or accuracy. Previous studies using this task have consistently shown that children rated as having poor attention make more errors (false alarms to non‐targets in the display), but do not differ in the time to make a correct response; this result was replicated. Though the instructions produced wide differences in speed and error rates in the expected directions, these differences were similar in both attention groups and the differences in error rates between the two groups remained unchanged. It is suggested that these findings are not compatible with the view that children with poor attention make errors primarily due to fast impulsive responding, nor with an explanation in terms of slower processing of the input by such children. An alternative explanation of the high error rates in such children is offered in terms of weak executive function resulting in poor ability to inhibit false alarms to non‐targets

Audiology · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Executive functions · Task (project management) · Visual Search · Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder · EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies · Neuroscience · Psychology

• Family Socioeconomic Status and Adolescents’ Academic Achievement

  Open Access•Feng Zhang, Ying Jiang et al.•Journal of Youth and Adolescence•2020

  Incluir item

• Executive Functions and Developmental Psychopathology

  Open Access•Bruce F Pennington, Sally Ozonoff•Journal of Child Psychology and…•1996

  Incluir item

• The Attention System of the Human Brain

  Michael I Posner, Steven E Petersen•Annual Review of Neuroscience•1990

  Incluir item

• Impulsivity and speed-accuracy tradeoffs in information processing

  Scott J Dickman, David E Meyer•Journal of Personality and Social…•1988

  Incluir item

• The nature of attentional differences between groups of children differentiated by teacher ratings of attention and hyperactivity

  Open Access•John Wilding, Fehmidah Munir et al.•British Journal of Psychology•2001

  Incluir item

• Attentional difficulties in children

  Open Access•John M Wilding•British Journal of Psychology•2003

  Incluir item

• Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions

  Russell A Barkley•Psychological Bulletin•1997

  Incluir item