Cognitive load theory (CLT) applies what is known about human cognitive architecture to the study of learning and instruction, to generate insights into the characteristics and conditions of effective instruction and learning. Recent developments in CLT suggest that the human motor system plays an important role in cognition and learning; however,…

An ever increasing amount of research in the fields of developmental psychology and adult cognitive neuroscience explores attentional control as a driver of visual short-term and working memory capacity limits ("VSTM" and "VWM", respectively). However, these literatures have thus far been disparate: they use different measures or different labels,…

Individual differences in psychophysiological function have been shown to influence the balance between flexibility and distractibility during attentional set-shifting [e.g., Dreisbach et al. (2005). Dopamine and cognitive control: The influence of spontaneous eyeblink rate and dopamine gene polymorphisms on perseveration and distractibility.…

A latent variable analysis was conducted to examine the nature of individual differences in lapses of attention and their relation to executive and fluid abilities. Participants performed a sustained attention task along with multiple measures of executive control and fluid abilities. Lapses of attention were indexed based on the slowest reaction…

The authors explored different aspects of encoding strategy use in primary school children by including (a) an encoding strategy task in which children's encoding strategy use was recorded through a remote eye-tracking device and, later, free recall and recognition for target items was assessed; and (b) tasks measuring resistance to interference…

Even in the absence of major disabilities, children born prematurely are at high risk for academic delays and deficits. Research suggests that some differences in outcomes may relate to problems with self-regulation, especially attention regulation. Previous research has demonstrated that individual differences in attention regulation is…

Temperament refers to individual differences in two broad aspects of behavior: (1) emotional, motor, and attentional reactivity and (2) self-regulatory processes that modulate such reactivity. These individual differences are grounded in people's constitution and influence both stress reactions and patterns of coping. In this chapter, we examine…

Persons with mental retardation often exhibit greater interference in visual selective attention tasks than do persons matched with them on CA. My goal here was to evaluate whether differences in distractor interference between persons with and without mental retardation may be related to differences in negative priming. Fifteen participants with…

This study examined relations among effortful control, motivation, and attention regulation in preschoolers within the context of parent-child interactions. Sixty-one low-income children and their mothers participated in a puzzle-matching task. One week later, the children completed a puzzle-matching task independently. Hierarchical regression…

Dual-process theories of the mind are ubiquitous in psychology. A central principle of these theories is that behavior is determined by the interplay of automatic and controlled processing. In this article, the authors examine individual differences in the capacity to control attention as a major contributor to differences in working memory…

Performance on antisaccade trials requires the inhibition of a prepotent response (i.e., don't look at the flashing cue) and the generation and execution of a correct saccade in the opposite direction. The authors attempted to further specify the role of working memory (WM) span differences in the antisaccade task. They tested high- and low-span…