Attention
- yushuhuang
- Feb 21, 2023
- 1 min read
Updated: Apr 21, 2023
Preschool children’s ability to control and sustain their attention is related to school readiness. A recent research study revealed that television watching, and video game playing were both linked to attention problems in children.
(Rothbart, 2011; Swing & others, 2010)
Sustained attention: is the ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a pro- longed period of time. Sustained attention is also called focused attention and vigilance. (Santrock, 2014)
Executive attention: involves planning actions, allocating attention to goals, detecting and compensating for errors, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances. (Santrock, 2014)
As adolescents are required to engage in larger, more complex tasks that require longer time periods to complete, their ability to maintain attention is crucial to their success. An increase in executive attention supports the rapid increase in effortful control required to effectively engage in these complex academic tasks.
(Rothbart & Gartstein, 2008).
Is this multitasking beneficial or distracting?
Multitasking expands the information adolescents attend to and forces the brain to
share processing resources, which can distract the adolescent’s attention from what might be most important at the moment. And, if the key task is at all complex and challenging, such as trying to figure out how to solve a homework problem, multitasking considerably reduces attention to the key task (Begley & Interlandi, 2008; Myers, 2008)
Exercises to improve attention
One eye-contact exercise, the teacher sits in the center of a circle of children, and each child is required to catch the teacher’s eye before being permitted to leave the group.
Teachers have children participate in stop-go activities during which they have to listen for a specific signal, such as a drumbeat or an exact number of rhythmic beats, before stopping the activity.
Five days of computer exercises that involved learning how to use a joystick, applying working memory, and resolving conflict improved the attention of 4- to 6-year-old children. In one of the computer games young children have to move a joystick to keep a cat on the grass and out of the mud, and in another they help a cat find a duck in a pond. (Rueda & others, 2005)
Literature Reviews on Attention
Attention in Class
Short Lit Review on Attention in Class
Connection between Sleep and Attention
Short Lit Review on the Connection Between Sleep and Attention