Report Study: While adults focus their attention, children see everything

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Although adults can beat children at most cognitive tasks, new research shows that children's limitations can sometimes be their strength.

In two studies, researchers found that adults were very good at remembering information they were told to focus on, and ignoring the rest. In contrast, 4- to 5-year-olds tended to pay attention to all the information that was presented to them - even when they were told to focus on one particular item. That helped children to notice things that adults didn't catch because of the grownups' selective attention.

"We often think of children as deficient in many skills when compared to adults. But sometimes what seems like a deficiency can actually be an advantage," said Vladimir Sloutsky, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.

"That's what we found in our study. Children are extremely curious and they tend to explore everything, which means their attention is spread out, even when they're asked to focus. That can sometimes be helpful."

The results have important implications for understanding how education environments affect children's learning, he said.

Sloutsky conducted the study with Daniel Plebanek, a graduate student in psychology at Ohio State. Their results were just published in the journal Psychological Science.

The first study involved 35 adults and 34 children who were 4 to 5 years old.

The participants were shown a computer screen with two shapes, with one shape overlaying the other. One of the shapes was red, the other green. The participants were told to pay attention to a shape of a particular color (say, the red shape).

 
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