Findings of this study indicate that children can learn to control their attending or orienting responses in the face of some distracting stimuli by the age of 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 years. This study was adapted from a dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of Yale University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree.…

The capability of young high ability children to cope with extraneous distractive stimuli during performance on a two-choice discrimination task was investigated. Results indicate that existing interpretations of the development of attentive abilities in children based on the notion of an increasing attention span are in need of elaboration or…

Studies reported showed retarded children less inattentive and distractible than the literature has suggested, and suggested that increased non-task orientations (glancing) in the presence of an adult might best be interpreted as information seeking rather than evidence of distractibility. (Author/KW)

The effect of same sex and cross sex experimenters on the attentive behaviors and learning of 64 educable mentally retarded children were examined under two conditions: experimenter not present; and experimenter present and providing cues relevant to task mastery. Female Ss were found to perform significantly better with male experimenters than…