EFFECTS OF PRACTICE ON SPEED OF INFORMATION-PROCESSING IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS - AGE SENSITIVITY AND AGE INVARIANCE

In 2 experiments, children and adults were ''posed to 4 different info rmation-processing tasks. Consistent with the global trend hypothesis, age-sensitive linear relations were observed between child and adult latencies, and 10- and 11-year-olds were approximately 1.7 and 1.6 tim es slower than 19-year-olds as predicted by R. Kail's (1991) growth fu nction. In Experiment 1, the relation between child and adult latencie s did not change over 4 sessions of practice, implying that practice h as equivalent effects on corresponding processing steps in children an d adults. In both experiments, an age-invariant linear relation betwee n dispersion and central tendency was observed, indicating that childr en's greater within-subject variability is entirely due to their dower speed of processing.