The purpose of this research was to examine developmental changes in the knowledge about what variables affect performance on the incidental learning task. Kindergarteners, second graders, fifth graders, and college students indicated on a rating scale how many animals a hypothetical person would remember under easy and difficult levels of each…

Strategies of allocating attention to information and incidental learning task performance were assessed among 60 children from grades 2, 5, and 8. Children's predictions about their recall of incidental objects and answers to a posttest questionnaire provided verbal measures of their understanding of attention. (Author/RH)