ABSTRACT

Developmental change in how children gather information for further processing is a fundamental component of cognitive development. As Gibson (1988, p. 7) comments, “Intellectual development is built on information-gathering, and this is what young creatures (not only human ones) are predestined to do.” This behavior eventually becomes strategic: Children planfully use procedures to select certain information in a systematic, organized way. Because this chapter focuses on the selection of task-relevant information from a larger set of available information, the strategies discussed here are closely related to the process of selective attention. These strategies of selective attention are particularly important in real-life situations, where typically only some, not all, of the available information should be attended to and processed further. Strategies of attention are much less studied than are strategies of memory such as rehearsal, organization, and elaboration in situations in which the relevant stimuli already have been identified. Although much of this chapter examines selective attention in the context of memory tasks, the emphasis is on the initial step of information processing, the selection of information.