“Everyone knows what attention is,” wrote William James in his Principles of Psychology (1890). “It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought… It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state.”
Attention or concentration (the words attention and concentration are synonyms) is a fundamental learning skill.
When we pay attention, we focus on one thing in particular and ignore distractions competing for our awareness. Paying attention is important for a child’s development, as it allows them to engage in tasks long enough to learn various skills.
A study from Duke University examined how early attention problems affect academic performance. By fifth grade, children had lower grades and reading achievement scores than their peers. The impact continued to reverberate throughout the children’s academic careers. Lower reading achievement scores and grades in fifth grade contributed to reduced grades in middle school, contributing to a 40 percent lower high school graduation rate.
Poor attention ability can be a sign of behavior and learning disorders such as hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder (ADD), and there are five types.
Types of attention
1.) Focused attention,
2.) Sustained attention,
3.) Shifting attention,
4.) Divided attention and
5.) Situational awareness.
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It is helpful to think of attention as the beam from a flashlight. The beam can be narrow or broad; it can point in any direction but can only supply so much light at a time.
• Focused attention is like pointing a narrow beam from your flashlight in the right direction. It refers to paying attention to the essential things in your environment while screening out distractions. For example, you use focused attention when conversing with one person at a party. You focus on what this single person is saying while screening out all the other conversations around you.
The degree of focused attention people have varies. Some people have low attentional levels, particularly if they have learning disorders like ADD. ADD can make it challenging for a learner to stay appropriately focused, and any distraction can cause a learner to lose focus.
• Sustained attention is like holding your flashlight on the right thing for an extended period. It refers to how well someone can concentrate on a single thought over time.
Most healthy teenagers and adults cannot sustain attention on one thing for more than 20 minutes at a time, although they can choose to refocus on the same thing repeatedly. This ability to renew attention permits people to pay attention to things that last longer than a few minutes, such as long movies.
Monkey-mind is an expression used for the inability to concentrate on a single thought — the mind is constantly chattering away, endlessly creating noise and thus dimming its true power, abilities, and effectiveness.
• Shifting attention is like pointing your flashlight at a moving target. It refers to altering your attention’s width and direction at will.
Imagine driving along a busy road. While keeping your eyes on the road, you must also attend to cars on each side, pedestrians crossing the street, upcoming signs, and changing traffic lights. In such a situation, accident-free driving is only possible because one can quickly shift one’s focus, thereby temporarily “lightening up” representations of the most relevant objects in the visual scene.
It might — or might not — surprise you to learn that the parts of the brain that control eye movements are the same as those that shift attention.
• Divided attention occurs when we are required to perform two (or more) tasks simultaneously, and attention is needed to perform both (or all) the tasks. Examples include driving a car while conversing with a passenger or eating dinner while watching the news.
When people are required to do more than one task simultaneously, performance on at least one of the tasks often declines. Scholars generally agree that humans have a limited capacity to process information. When several tasks have to be performed at the same time, their demands may exceed processing capacity.
Research has shown a link between reading difficulties and deficiencies in divided attention. For example, studies have shown that people with dyslexia make more errors and need more time on Stroop tasks than non-dyslexics.
In psychology, the Stroop effect refers to a phenomenon whereby it is easier to say the color of a word if it matches the semantic meaning of the word. For example, when the name of a color (e.g., “blue,” “green,” or “red”) is printed in a color not denoted by the name (e.g., the word “red” printed in blue ink instead of red ink), naming the color of the word takes longer and is more prone to errors than when the color of the ink matches the name of the color. Stroop tasks are commonly used to measure divided attention.
• Situational awareness is like shining a broad beam from your flashlight all around you to help you decide what direction to go. It refers to the ability to size up the situation and make appropriate decisions.
Lacking or inadequate situation awareness is one of the primary factors in accidents attributed to human error. Thus, situational awareness is imperative in work domains that require high information flow; poor decisions may lead to serious consequences (e.g., piloting an airplane, functioning as a soldier, or treating critically ill or injured patients).
Improving attention
The good news is that attention can improve with practice.
Assessing divided attention, Spelke, Hirst, and Neisser studied the accuracy and response time of performance by participants reading short stories and writing down dictated words. The participants’ initial performance was poor when they had to do both tasks simultaneously. But, after participants practiced the tasks five days a week for 85 sessions, their performance in both tasks improved.
In June 2014, Edublox hosted the FUNtastic Brain Clinic in Singapore. The program was presented to 27 students, ages 10 to 12, for five days, for seven or eight half-hour sessions per day. A control group comprising 25 learners of similar age, gender, and ability also completed the pre- and post-tests. This group did not attend the Clinic but continued to go to school.
The Center for Evaluation and Assessment (CEA) at the University of Pretoria analyzed the results. Results of the study show an improvement in focused attention in just five days. On top of that, the effect size is large, which lies beyond what Professor John Hattie calls the hinge point or the desired effects point in education.
