This article reviews the hypothesis that mind wandering can be integrated into executive models of attention. Evidence suggests that mind wandering shares many similarities with traditional notions of executive control. When mind wandering occurs, the executive components of attention appear to shift away from the primary task, leading to failures…

Findings indicated no differences between 17 learning disabled and 32 normal elementary students on attention tasks, no difference in sustained attention, and no evidence of a developmental lag. A significant difference in attention was found favoring special classes over regular, small groups over large, and teacher-directed over independent…

THE PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN 5 1/2, 6 1/2, AND 7 1/2 YEARS OF AGE ON AN ODDITY PROBLEM UNDER THREE CONDITIONS OF DISTRACTION WAS INVESTIGATED. SUBJECT'S GLANCES AWAY FROM THE TASK WERE RECORDED ALONG WITH THEIR LEARNING DATA. ON THE BASIS OF EARLIER FINDINGS AND AN HYPOTHESIS THAT THE ABILITY OF CHILDREN TO MOBILIZE AND DIRECT THEIR ATTENTION…

The spans of apprehension (the amount of information processed simultaneously from a brief visual display) of 19 hyperactive and 19 normal boys (6-10 years old) were compared with a forced-choice letter-recognition task developed by W. Estes. (Author/CL)

Three groups of three boys (6-12 years old) referred to a hospital study unit for evaluation of hyperactive behavior were tested on a classification task involving selective attention while on either dextroamphetamine or placebo. (Author/CL)

The sustained attention of 23 young adults with mild mental retardation and nonretarded subjects was assessed. Findings suggested that the sustained attention of the retarded differs from that of the nonretarded on those vigilance tasks that place demands on memory abilities. (Author/DB)

RESEARCH LITERATURE ON ATTENTION WAS REVIEWED, APPROACHES TO THE MEASUREMENT OF ATTENTION IN A CLASSROOM SETTING WERE STUDIED, AND CLASSROOM EXPERIMENTS IN WHICH ATTENTION WOULD BE STUDIED AS A DEPENDENT OR INDEPENDENT VARIABLE WERE DESIGNED. THE RESEARCH LITERATURE INDICATES THAT NOVELTY, VARIETY, CHANGE, AND COMPLEXITY ARE VARIABLES RELATED TO…

A qualitative study determined which factors in the museum exhibit environment or within the museum visitor may influence the visitor to attend an exhibit. Observations and interviews were conducted of 14 groups that visited a Chesapeake & Ohio steam locomotive at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. An inductive or grounded theory…

Examined adult age differences in the effects of perceptual grouping on attentional performance. All three age groups were slowed by the presence of similar irrelevant information, but the elderly were slowed more than were the young adults. (Author)

Findings suggest that impairment in sustained attention is associated with difficulty in learning in second grade children and that such impairment can be identified at an earlier age, and in children with less marked academic underachievement than is commonly believed. (EVH)

Performances of 12 hyperactive learning disabled (LD) boys and 12 non-hyperactive LD boys were compared with two groups of 12 normal control boys (6-11 years old) on a visual search task. Ss were asked to locate a target letter appearing within an array of randomly selected letters during cued and non-cued trials. Results indicated that in the…

Kindergarten children were pretested on attention and conservation tasks. Natural conservers performed better than nonconservers on attention tasks during the pretest. Training in attention led experimental groups to perform better than a control group on both attention and conservation tasks. Younger children seemed to benefit from attention…