~Class 16 - Development of Attention

Question 1

___ is a way of conceptualizing cognitive development that has a bunch of different intintiations that researchers come up with and use.

Answer 1

Information Processing Theory

Question 2

Information Processing Theory approaches will often use the metaphor as the mind being like a ___ to explain major changes that occur in cognitive development.

Answer 2

computer

Question 3

In the Information Processing Theory computer analogy, the Hardware is the ___ changes, and the software changes are in ___ skills.

Answer 3

physical // cognitive

Question 4

Information processing theories use an analogy of the mind as a computer: Brain development is like upgrading the “hardware” that allows us to perform cognitive tasks.

From this perspective, maturation of the ________ is implicated in the development of children’s attention spans. Maturation of the ________ is implicated in the development of inhibition.

Answer 4

reticular formation // frontal lobes

Question 5

Why did a Harvard study show that children who are the youngest amongst their class are more likely to get diagnosed with ADHD?

Answer 5

This is because development at this age occurs quickly, so two classmates who are 12 months apart may show very vast differences in ability to sustain attention. So it appears like the youngest may have a problem and might have ADHD, but the reality is they just don’t have the same cognitive abilities as their older classmates

Question 6

What is Sustained attention?

Answer 6

Sustained attention is the ability to maintain focus on a select stimulus for prolonged periods of time.

Question 7

Infants and young toddlers are not great at ___.

Answer 7

Sustained attention

Question 8

When we see some degree of sustained attention in infants, they tend to focus on ___ in the environment, something that is new and interesting, or something that is salient.

Answer 8

novelty

Question 9

Why do infants struggle with sustained attention?

Answer 9

Because their focus is easily captured by salient stuff in the environment.

Question 10

What is Joint Attention?

Answer 10

Joint Attention is the ability to coordinate your attention with that of somebody else who you are interacting with.

Question 11

Joint Attention is the type of skill that is really useful for the development of other things in the child’s development, things like ___ and ___.

Answer 11

word-learning // vocabulary

Question 12

When joint attention first starts to develop, it tends to be ___ joint attention, meaning that it’s the other person, not the infant, driving the coordinated attention. As babies get closer to ___y/o, you start to see them engaging in a lot more ___ joint attention, where they will initiate the coordination.

Answer 12

“other-led” // 1 // infant-led

Question 13

___-led joint attention is a particularly good predictor of vocabulary development.

Answer 13

“other”

Question 14

When does Joint Attention first develop?

Answer 14

9-10 months

Question 15

Toddlers are increasingly capable of ___ behaviour.

Answer 15

goal-directed

Question 16

Why do toddlers struggle with attention, even when doing something they enjoy?

Answer 16

Toddlers also have poor inhibition, so even while doing something they enjoy, something salient can pull their attention away, and they cannot inhibit that. They will also struggle to inhibit thoughts or ideas that aren’t relevant to the task at hand.

Question 17

At what age does growth in Sustained Attention capacity plateau?

Answer 17

10-11y/o, shortly before puberty

Question 18

Why does Sustained Attention plateau at age 10-11?

Answer 18

Parts of the brain that are strongly implicated in attentional abilities, tend to Myelinate fully shortly before, or at the beginning of puberty.

Question 19

What is Selective Attention?

Answer 19

Selective Attention is the ability to focus on task-relevant aspects of a situation, and ignore irrelevant information.

Question 20

Processing of relevant information ___ from elementary into highschool, whilst processing of irrelevant information tends to ___ in the teenage years.

Answer 20

improves // drop off

Question 21

___ are remembering a lot about the animals as well as the household items, they remember more about the task irrelevant details than the ___. The ___ remember more about the animal locations than the ___.

Answer 21

7y/o // 13y/o’s // 13y/o’s // 7y/o’s

Question 22

Why do Preschoolers/early school years tend to struggle with selective attention?

Answer 22

Because they focus on irrelevant-info as well as relevant-info, so they’re focusing on everything instead of picking and choosing what’s important.

Question 23

As kids get older, ___ and up, they are much better able to focus their attention on the thing they were told to remember

Answer 23

8

Question 24

___ ability is important for educational success, skill development, and managing cognitive load more generally.

Answer 24

Selective Attention

Question 25

What is Meta-Attention?

Answer 25

Meta-Attention is a child’s conscious understanding of how attention works broadly, and what strategies are useful for learning from things that you focus on.

Question 26

Young children show ___ Attention even when they struggle to deploy ___ Attention.

Answer 26

Meta- // Selective

Question 27

What is Executive attention?

Answer 27

Executive attention involves strategically planning actions, allocating attention to goals, and monitoring progress.

Question 28

How would a 6.5y/o tackle a “spot the difference” vs. a child under 6.5?

Answer 28

A 6.5y/o would employ systematic searching when looking at a “spot the difference”, whilst a child under 6.5y/o will just quickly dart their eyes around the page.

Question 29

___-aged children are generally not strategic in how they deploy their attention.

Answer 29

Preschool

Question 30

At age ___+, they begin to get better at using executive attention and can formulate systematic plans.

Answer 30

6.5

Question 31

___ information-gathering facilitates ___ throughout childhood.

Answer 31

Planful // problem-solving

Question 32

The task ___ matters in how well the child is able to control their attention.

Answer 32

context

Question 33

How can you help young children regulate their attention to complete a task?

Answer 33

Young children are better able to regulate attention when a task is embedded in a story or done with a partner.

Question 34

Young kids in the ___ stage struggle with their attentional control, it’s not that they are incapable of controlling their attention, but rather they have limitations in that system that make it hard for them to do so, but if they get the right support, they can show those skills.

Answer 34

preoperational

Question 35

Fostering ___ at an early age helps kids develop that skill.

Answer 35

attentional control

Question 36

___ in children is expected to be the same across cultures, but the ___ is different depending on the cultural context you were raised in.

Answer 36

Hardware // software

Question 37

In cultures that give young children freedom to choose activities from an early age, and where learning by attending to others is encouraged, we tend to see higher levels of ___ motivation and a stronger ability to sustain ___.

Answer 37

intrinsic // attention

Question 38

Were Mayan or American children found to pay better sustained attention?

Answer 38

Mayan children (aged 5 to 11) paid sustained attention 2/3 of the time, even when they didn’t have to. 2x more than American children.

Question 39

Did children learn more in the spare-classroom or the visual-classroom?

Answer 39

Children learned more in the spare-classroom (60%) than in the visual-classroom (45%)

Question 40

Did children spend more time off-task in the decorated classroom or the sparse one?

Answer 40

Overall, children spent more time off task in the decorated classroom than the sparse one.