Children have a secret power that helps them avoid a “learning trap” that adults can sometimes fall into: children simply can’t focus their attention.
A new study has used eye-tracking technology to show that children’s attention wandered over a computer screen as they tried to complete a task – even when adults quickly realized they could do the job. task more efficiently by focusing on particular objects.
But this tendency to have a wandering eye helped 4- and 5-year-olds when the task changed unexpectedly – and they noticed important things on the screen that adults weren’t paying attention to.
“Adults’ ability to focus their attention is usually very useful in everyday life,” said Vladimir Slutskyco-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University.
“But sometimes it’s helpful to see the world more as a kid and notice things that may not seem so important or relevant at the time.”
Sloutsky conducted the research with Nathaniel Blanco, postdoctoral researcher, and Brandon Turner, professor, both in psychology at Ohio State. The study was published online recently in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
The study involved 30 children aged 4 and 5 and 38 adults who participated in a lab, where they were fitted with eye trackers that could tell where they were looking on a computer screen.
They were then shown colorful pictures of creatures that had seven identifiable features, including a head, tail and antennae.
Participants were told that there were two types of creatures, called Flurps and Jalets, and they had to figure out which were which.
One characteristic was always different on the two types of creatures – for example, Jalets can have a blue tail and Flurps can have an orange tail. Additionally, children and adults have been told that most (but not all) Flurps have some type of feature, such as pink antennae.
One of the characteristics was never mentioned in the instructions and it didn’t differ between creature types. This is what the researchers called the “irrelevant feature”.
After the training, the participants saw a series of images of the creatures on the computer screen and were asked what type of creature it was.
During the first part of the experiment, the adults quickly learned which characteristic always determined whether the creature was a Flurp or a Jalet, and the eye-tracker showed that they then focused almost all of their attention on that characteristic. .
The children were slower to learn which feature was more important in determining which creature was which – and the eye-tracker showed that they kept looking at all the features of both creatures, even those that weren’t relevant.
“Children weren’t as efficient as adults at learning quickly,” Sloutsky said. “They kept looking around even when they didn’t need to.”
But halfway through the experiment, the researchers made an unexpected change: the irrelevant feature – the part of the body that previously had no bearing on what type of creature it was – became the feature that would determine if it was a Flurp or a Jalet. This functionality, which was the same for both creatures before the change, was now different for each.
After the change, adults were more oblivious to the importance of the new feature than children. Instead, they relied on the less important features learned earlier.
The children, on the other hand, had paid attention to everything, so they noticed more quickly that the rules had changed.
“Adults suffered from learned inattention,” Sloutsky said. “They weren’t paying attention to features that weren’t important during the first part of the experiment, so they missed the moment when those features became important.”
Sloutsky said the brains of 4- and 5-year-olds aren’t mature enough to focus attention the way adults do. This fact can help them learn more as they explore the world.
And adults certainly have the ability to spread their attention widely like children did in this study — but they often choose selective attention because it’s helpful for achieving efficiency, he said.
The lesson for adults, however, is to realize that selective attention, while increasing learning and performance efficiency, can also lead to a learning trap in some situations, Sloutsky said.
“When you know something very well or a solution to a problem seems obvious, it can help to broaden your attention, to look for clues that may not seem relevant at first glance – to think like a child again.”
The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health.