Attentional Cuing In Spelling Tasks For Hyperactive And Comparison Regular Classroom Children

Abstract

Hyperactive children were predicted to attend more readily to tasks where color was added than were normal comparison children. If color were added to relevant cues in a spelling task, this attentional selectivity could produce improved performance. Alternatively, there was evidence to suggest that adding an additional dimension (color) to the early trials of a difficult task could produce performance disruption. To determine whether added relevant stimulation or the timing of relevant stimulation was important, 20 hyperactive and 26 comparison boys were pre-assessed on spelling level and then randomly assigned to condition-order (color added to relevant letters for the first two trials of the task and all black letters for the second two trials, or the reverse order). Findings were that hyperactive children who practiced the task with all black letters first, and color added later, out-performed comparison children.