Tae Han Lee

Child Development
November 16, 2016
taehanl@andrew.cmu.edu

1. Provide us with the full citation of the article you have chosen to read.
Fisher, A. V. (2011). Automatic shifts of attention in the Dimensional Change Card
Sort task: Subtle changes in task materials lead to flexible switching. Journal of
Experimental Child Psychology, 108(1), 211-219. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.07.001

2. State each hypothesis that was tested.

- The Entire Study: Reducing burdens on executive control in a Dimensional Change
Card Sort task will lead to a better performance in 3-year-olds.

- Experiment 1: Changing attention from a more saliency dimension to a less saliency

one is expected to result in more errors, while changing attention from a less
noticeable dimension to a more noticeable dimension is expected to result in fewer
errors.

- Experiment 2: Changing attention away from high attentional weights would require
more effort than to shift away attention from a low attentional weights.

3. Identify the independent variable(s).

- Experiment 1: Independent variable is the level of noticeability of a single dimension.

- Experiment 2: Independent variable is the number of values in each dimensions.

4. Identify the dependent variable(s).

- Experiment 1: Dependent variable is the accuracy of children sorting objects.

- Experiment 2: Dependent variable is the accuracy of children sorting objects.

5. Briefly summarize the methods.

- Experiment1: 27 of 3-year-olds from day care centers in a large city were presented
on computers with two target pictures that differed in two dimensions. There was a
pre and a post-switch phases. During the pre-switch phase, children were asked to
match the test pictures with one of the target pictures from one dimension. Then
during the post-switch phase, they were asked to match the test pictures with the other
target picture from the other dimension. There were a total of 8 trials of matching,
half of them were no-conflict trials, meaning these matched one of the target pictures
on both dimensions, and half of them were conflict trials, meaning only one of the
dimensions was matching. The dimension of color in the experiment was very similar
making one of the dimension less noticeable.

- Experiment2: 38 of 3-year-olds from day care centers in a large city were tested in
this experiment. There were also a pre and a post-switch phases. Each phase had four
 conflict trials and four no-conflict trials, and children were randomly assigned to
experimental conditions and to the starting dimension. There were two conditions to
groups: high attentional weights and low attentional weights. In High Attentional
Weights condition, they were tested to sort objects that differed on two dimensions. In
low attentional weights condition, they were presented with objects that also differed
on two dimensions but each having four values.

6. Briefly summarize the results.

- Experiment1: When the postswitch dimension difference was more noticeable, there
is an improvement in childrens postswitch sorting accuracy.

- Experiment2: Postswitch accuracy on the conflict trials was higher in the LAW
condition than in the HAW condition.

7. In your view, what were the methodological strengths of this work?

- I think the methodological strength of this work is that two separate experiments were
conducted to test or provide support to a single hypothesis. Also, I think the
independent variables of both of the experiment were varied reasonably, and they
showed what the researcher wanted to see.

8. In your view, what were the methodological weaknesses of this work?

- I think the study could have done better recruiting subjects or at least stating in what
big city the kids were recruited from. Other than that, it was hard for me to find the
flaw of the study.

9. Would the results that were obtained generalize to people of other ages, socioeconomic
backgrounds, and/or to other settings? Why or why not?
- I would say we can generalize to people with any other backgrounds except for ages,
because once peoples brain is fully mature, such errors in the experiment is unlikely
to happen with most of the people. Also, there might be a slight difference depending
on the wealth level, because there are more likely to be more children with
developmental disabilities in poor areas than in wealthy areas.

10. Name one thing you learned from this article that you didnt know before.
- I learned that prefrontal cortex is a part of brain people use while exercising the
executive control to achieve goals and that it is the last area to mature in the
brain.

11. Describe a theory discussed in the article.

- Children as young as three year olds can flexibly switch their attention between
many dimensions when the demand on executive control is reduced.

12. What questions do you have after reading the article?

- After reading the entire study, the only one confusion I have is the subjects that were
discriminated in each experiments. So my question is, would the result of the study be
a lot different if they were included and why did they have to do that? (They are a
part of 3-year-olds in the world)