Children's Attention: the Relation Between Teacher's Perceptions and Performance on Experimental Measures.
Domanskis, Frances Constance Laucka
1980
Abstract
The relation between teachers' perceptions of children's attention in the classroom and performance on individually administered tasks of attention was assessed. Tasks representing sustained attention, selective attention in perception, selective attention in memory and divided attention were used. In addition, Factor C on the WISC-R was used as a general measure of attention. The tasks were administered to third grade boys from regular classrooms who were identified by their teachers as either good (N = 35) or poor (N = 34) attenders. A Teacher Rating Scale for Classroom Attention, developed for this research, was used to obtain detailed information about teachers' perceptions of the boys' behavior in class. Four particular questions were addressed: (1) What are the differences between teachers' ratings of children whom they describe as good and poor attenders? (2) What is the relation between teachers' classification of children's attention as good and poor and performance on experimental tasks representing sustained, selective and divided attention? (3) How is performance on one measure of attention related to performance on other measures of attention? (4) What is the relation between Factor C, a general measure of attention, and teachers' perceptions of attention? The comparison between good and poor attenders of scores on the Teacher Rating Scale for Classroom Attention demonstrates that teachers' simple classification of boys as good or poor attenders is highly consistent with the ratings. In general, the good attenders are perceived as engaging in more on-task behavior than poor attenders. Furthermore, although teachers may evaluate attention as though it were a unitary skill, teachers report that there is no single cause for poor attention. Good attenders performed better than poor attenders on the task of sustained attention, selective attention in perception, divided attention and on Factor C, the WISC-R measure. There were no differences between groups on the task of selective attention in memory. These results are interpreted as providing some support for the use of teachers' evaluations of attention as a screen for deficits in the attentional process. The generally low correlations among the individual tasks of attention suggest that the components of attention tend to represent related but fairly independent skills. The good attenders tend to show slightly greater consistency in their performance across tasks than the poor attenders. Nonetheless, the results demonstrate that there is extensive variability in attentional skill among both good and poor attenders. The results of the correlational analysis are interpreted as supporting a multicomponent approach to the study of children's attention. The low to moderate correlations between Factor C and the other tasks of attention support the labeling of Factor C as an attentional factor. Recommendations for the use of Factor C by clinicians are discussed.Types
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