Attention and selection in the growing child: Views derived from developmental psychophysiology.

The developmental changes in attentional selection in the growing child has been advanced substantially by the results of studies undertaken from a psychophysiological perspective. Attentional filtering as well as selective set, the processes necessary for attentional selection, are in essence available even to the young child. Under optimal conditions, filtering is performed at early stages of information processing. When early selection is constrained, young children are substantially more sensitive to the adverse effects of response competition. In selective set, sub-optimal conditions lead to a shift in the age at which asymptote efficiency is attained. The authors proposed hierarchical regression analysis as a useful technique to examine whether age-related differences in attention effects, as observed in specific event related potential (ERP) components and in RT, are reflections of an age effect on a single source of attentional selection or of separate sources that each contribute uniquely to the developmental trends seen in RT. Re-analyses of existing data demonstrated that (again depending on task specifics) many but not all of the different component processes involved in attentional selection contributed unique variance to the age-related changes in attention effects.