focal maintenance

Our point of view on this research:

These authors studied 6 adults using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a cued spatial-attention task to dissociate brain activity that is related to attentional control from brain activity related to selective processing of target stimuli. The findings of this study suggest that attentional control is found in a network of brain structures, including the superior frontal cortex, inferior parietal cortex, superior temporal cortex, and portions of the posterior cingulated cortex and insula. The findings support a distinction between the brain mechanisms responsible for attentional control and those responsible for the modulation of sensory signals, suggesting a role for this region of the brain in shifting attention and working memory processes, both essential for successful performance in most academic tasks.

processing depth/detail

Our point of view on this research:

This work investigated the hypothesis that movement might increase student attention. The researchers asked 55 third to fifth grade students from a traditional private school and 21 students from a nontraditional Montessori school to observe and recall landmarks on a map. Students from the traditional school who were given the opportunity to get up and view the map from multiple perspectives remembered more landmarks and locations than students who viewed the map from a single perspective; however students from a nontraditional school who are accustomed to movement while learning did not show this effect. This research indicated a benefit to attention afforded by an increase in the novelty of a situation. Further, the children who had been identified as having attention problems demonstrated improvements in performance when the teaching environment included the additional novelty of multiple perspective viewing.

focal maintenance, processing depth/detail

Our point of view on this research:

This study used 20 undergraduate college students in order to determine the differing effects of focused and divided attention on the encoding of different types of memory using a verbal and an auditory-motor task and event-related potentials. This work delineated the cerebral processes that occurred when information is encoded into episodic memory. When the participants had their attention divided by a more difficult task they experienced greater and earlier memory interference. In this work, the authors correctly hypothesized that it is the difficulty of the divided task that is most directly related to early interference, problems encoding, and disruption of conscious recollection. It is clear from this study that the depth and detail with which a memory is encoded depends heavily on the amount of attention that the stimulus is given, an idea that has implications in the classroom. Additionally, this study demonstrates that problems processing information can easily result in problems producing it.

saliency determination

Our point of view on this research:

This research used 41 adult subjects to determine if increasing an object’s relative brightness and relative size biased attentional competition in favor of the brighter or larger item. These results are in line with previous research that has suggested that items with high luminance-contrast bias competition in their favor even when brightness is an irrelevant feature for the task of finding the target. This research expands previous work in that it showed that increasing the size of an object can also bias competition in favor of the larger object even if size is irrelevant to the task. The results were interpreted to lend support to the biased-competition theory, wherein the visual system selects high contrast items by default, even when the properties of brightness and size are irrelevant to the task. This theory provides some understanding about the challenges learners face when discriminating between important and unimportant information.

saliency determination

Our point of view on this research:

The authors sought to examine the influence of mental workload and event structure on the ability of 36 undergraduate college students to accurately reproduce prose passages. Both increases in workload and decreases in structure (and their interaction) resulted in increasingly inaccurate reproductions. It is theorized that these errors resulted from an increase in interference, or decrease in attention paid to target stimuli. Organization, discreteness, and salience of stimulus are all integrally related to attention and are hypothesized to play a central role in time perception. This study emphasizes the importance of the type of structure and amount of stimuli in recall and memory, an idea central to the field of education where students are bombarded with new information with ever changing structures and quantities and then asked to exactly reproduce what they have processed.

processing depth-detail, focal maintenance, sentence comprehension

Our point of view on this research:

This study of 348 children ages 5-17 and 61 adults ages 18 to 51 sought to investigate the comprehension of sentences that vary in degree of attentional demand, auditory masking, and semantic interference. In this work, researchers had child and adult subjects attempt to comprehend stimuli from a complex sentence interpretation task while experiencing attentional, perceptual, and semantic interference (e.g. auditory presentation of words with meanings that are not relevant to the meaning of the target sentence). The results of this study indicate that attention, perception, and higher-level language processing are interdependent and develop gradually throughout childhood. Young children in this study experienced difficulty comprehending difficult sentence types under conditions with high attentional demands, like school classrooms.

cognitive activation, collaboration

Our point of view on this research:

This research included 137 high school seniors in physics classes who were taught using either cooperative instruction methods or traditional direct instruction. Participants in both learning groups showed physics achievement gains but students in the cooperative learning condition reported a greater experience of self-determination, intrinsic motivation, and cognitive activation (they endorsed the survey item; “I tried to connect what I was learning with things I already know”). Students with low academic self-concept who experienced cooperative instruction experienced a feeling of greater competence.

focal maintenance

Our point of view on this research:

This work examined the predictive power of working memory, response inhibition, and dual tasks on attention and reading difficulties among 123 six to eleven year old children with and without significant attention problems. The pattern of results suggest that some of the processes previously assumed to be predictive of attention problems may in fact reflect processes involved in reading acquisition. However, children experiencing attention problems did experience difficulty with visual memory tasks. The results of this research indicate that reading ability is closely associated with core phonological processing tasks and attention difficulties are closely associated with visual-spatial components of working memory. The authors suggest that in regards to attention difficulties and reading, separate cognitive patterns of strengths and weakness are present, thus a child with both issues will need unique support for both attention and reading.

focal maintenance

Our point of view on this research:

This study used 48 children and 48 adults to examine modality and temperament across age in order to observe the development of sustained attention (focal maintenance) as a product of the interaction of variables over time. The researchers assessed temperament with regard to reactivity and task orientation, then asked participants to perform age-appropriate visual and auditory sustained attention tasks. The key findings suggest that children with high levels of arousal and reactivity had more difficulty maintaining attention during the highly stimulating auditory condition. Also, children with high task orientation temperament scores had greater perceptual sensitivity, suggesting they had more resources available to them. Children with lower task orientation temperament scores, with fewer resources available, were most influenced by the auditory condition where the sensory experience was most intense. This study provides evidence for the diminishing effect of temperament with age. Perhaps adults have developed strategies to manage the effects of their own temperaments in order to increase the range of situations where they are optimally stimulated. For children with high levels of arousal and trouble staying on task, there are frequent struggles with focal maintenance, especially when working with auditory tasks (similar to tasks in a school environment). However, if the effect of temperament on focal maintenance reduces with age, as an individual develops it is possible to successfully employ strategies to increase the number of situations where his or her temperament is a good fit with the stimulation level of the task.

focal maintenance, active working memory

Our point of view on this research:

This study examined the effect of improvements in timing/rhythmicity on 86 first through fourth grade students' reading achievement. This non-academic intervention significantly improved the students’ phonics, phonological awareness, and reading fluency at the end of the 4 week intervention. The authors provide an analysis of the findings that suggest that training in timing/rhythmicity may result in more efficient use of an individual's working memory system by improving executive control of attention. The authors also found that this intervention most significantly affected the automatization of critical reading skills which emerge primarily during the early school grades.

facilitation-inhibition, satisfaction level, conflict resolution, political acumen, collaboration

Our point of view on this research:

The present study was designed to investigate whether the ability of self-imposed delay of gratification at age 4 can predict school-based social competences at age 9. Fifty-four children 4 years of age were examined using a self-imposed delay of gratification task and when the same young people were 9 years old the researchers measured their school-based social competences (the ability to obey rules and fulfill tasks, ability to socially function with teachers and peers, and social emotional competence). The findings revealed that the greater the ability to self-impose delay of gratification in preschool, the more school-based competencies the children demonstrated later. This work further develops the knowledge in the field regarding the connection between children’s ability to maintain attention on future or low-interest subjects and later academic competence. Children’s abilities to maintain attention during periods of low interest vary, but the exercise of good processing control when inputs are not immediately exciting is an important component of learning.