نقش توجه انتخابی در استفاده از قانون پیش دبستانی در یک نوع کارت بعدی جدید

Preschoolers often fail in switching between dimensions in sorting cards. To evaluate proposed cognitive constraints, we introduced a “same-silly” task, not requiring an extra-dimensional shift. Instructions were to sort cards so that the shapes were the same (“same” game) or not the same (“silly” game) as targets. In Experiment 1, using b/w line drawings, 3-year-olds successfully played both “same” and “silly” games. In Experiments 2 and 3, with the irrelevant dimension of color added to cards, most children below 4;6 perseverated on the “same” game, revealing an effect of stimulus complexity on rule-based reasoning. Thus, with uni-dimensional stimuli, 3-year-olds flexibly alternated between “same” and “silly” rules, but could not follow identical rules with bi-dimensional stimuli requiring selective attention to shape. We suggest that preschoolers’ difficulties in selective attention, rather than the presence of an extra-dimensional shift, lead to card sorting failure.