ASSESSMENT OF ATTENTION - RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGICAL-TESTING AND INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACHES

Examined the relationship between the psychological testing and inform ation processing approaches in assessing attention. Eighty-seven subje cts (57 females, 30 males) undertook eight psychological tests of atte ntion and a visual-spatial reaction-time task. Using the cognitive-cor relate method (Posner & McLeod, 1982), it was found that three compone nts of attention (viz., visual-motor scanning, sustained selective pro cessing, and visual/auditory spanning) derived from the psychological tests could be significantly predicted by specific, yet different, com binations of six indices of information processing (mean reaction time (RT), mean movement time (MT), feature extraction, identification, re sponse selection, and motor adjustment): (a) mean RT and mean MT were found to be the most important indices for predicitng performance on v isual-motor scanning; (b) the motor-adjustment stage was found to be t he most important index for predicting performance on sustained select ive processing; (c) the response-selection stage was found to be the m ost important index for predicting performance on visual/auditory span ning. These relationships are important for supporting the construct-r elated validity of the psychological tests of attention and for extend ing the generality and applicability of the RT task.