Reduce extraneous task-irrelevant information in early-childhood teaching materials when teaching rule-based concepts¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 7 claims (7 for) · 10 studies (7 causal, 2 quant-synthesis, 1 theoretical), q2–q4 · 3 of 10 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Because young children process both task-relevant and task-irrelevant information, extraneous perceptual information in materials and classrooms may impede learning of rule-based target concepts such as in mathematics and science. The article recommends that "reducing extraneous, task-irrelevant information in teaching materials and in the classrooms (cf. Fisher, Godwin, & Seltman, 2014), may have a positive effect on early classroom learning." This strategy applies the article's distributed-attention finding to instructional design for formal academic settings.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Applies when the learning goal is rule-based concepts whose acquisition benefits from focused processing of the target information

Constraints¶

• The article frames this as a possibility for early classroom learning, not a tested manipulation of this study; distributed attention may also benefit exploration and incidental learning

Target Learners¶

• young children in formal academic settings

Target Learning Goals¶

• learning rule-based concepts such as in mathematics and science

Affordances¶

• Distributed To Selective Attention Development

Claims¶

• Adults show greater visual search accuracy than young children [+W]
• In a change detection task, adults outperform 4-to-5-year-olds on cued shapes while children outperform adults on uncued shapes [+W]
• In a visual search task, children recognize search-irrelevant features better than adults while relevant-feature recognition is comparable [+W]
• Net change detection accuracy does not differ significantly between children and adults [+W]
• Selective attention reduces encoding of unattended information and induces learned inattention that makes future learning more difficult [+W]
• Coherence Principle Irrelevant Material Hurts Learning [+M]
• Interesting but irrelevant details can impair comprehension and transfer, with effects that vary with the material and the learner [+M]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

-

Key Sources¶

• Plebanek, D. J., & Sloutsky, V. M. (2017). Costs of Selective Attention: When Children Notice what Adults Miss. Psychological Science, 28(6), 723-732. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617693005