Your Child’s Short Attention Span Actually Helps Them Learn.
A child’s short attention span can be something special. One moment they’re playing with their train, the next moment they’re spinning in circles, and now they’re asking to watch a TV show when all you want them to do is put their shoes away like you asked. However, as a recent study shows, this wandering attention is an important part of the learning process that helps them make sense of an uncertain environment. In some select situations, this wandering attention can even help children avoid the learning trap that adults can sometimes fall into with their more focused attention.
Wandering attention is useful when you don’t know the rules.
During the study, two groups of participants – one of 4- and 5-year-old children, and the second – adults – played a computer game in which they were asked to distinguish between two types of creatures, without being told which is which. To determine when their attention wandered, the researchers used eye trackers to record where their attention was.
In the middle of the game, the feature that distinguished the two creatures changed, and the participants were not told that the rules had changed. When this happened, adults, who learned to play the game much faster and were more focused on their attention, took longer to figure out what was going on. In contrast, children who were far less effective at play from the start and whose attention span was all over the place were much quicker to pick up on the changes.
As noted by Vladimir Slutsky , an Ohio State University professor and one of the researchers who conducted the study, adults tend to have a good grasp of the rules of the world, including what is stable and what is very dynamic. However, for young children, he says, “you just don’t know what’s stable and what’s dynamic.”
Because young children are still learning how the world works, including what often changes and what stays the same, wandering attention helps them notice all sorts of details that, when they get older, they will learn to notice. selectively filter out as unimportant. However, in the beginning, when they are very young and still learning how the world works, this process of noticing anything and everything is an important part of figuring out what is important and what is not.
Wandering attention can be useful in highly dynamic environments.
For the most part, developing a selective focus is very beneficial. “Adults do not lose the ability to distribute attention, they just want to perform the task in an optimal way, so they tend to concentrate their attention,” Slutsky said. This includes developing the ability to focus in an academic or professional environment, which is incredibly important.
However, in some situations it can help to let go of this selective focus and instead notice all sorts of random details, some of which may be unexpectedly important. For example, in a different country, with a different culture, there must be social expectations, such as taking off your shoes on the doorstep, that might otherwise escape your notice. “In a new environment, you don’t know what’s important and what’s not, and that’s the key,” Slutsky said.
Over time, children will learn to concentrate
As Slutsky points out, there is a distinct advantage to developing the ability to selectively focus on important details. “The point is not that adults get dumber when they grow up, but that adults become efficient,” Slutsky said. However, “this efficiency sometimes comes at a price.”
Over time, children will learn to control their attention and notice the most important details. However, it is this process of noticing everything and everything and jumping from one random detail to another that is an important part of their development. “This is how they learn,” Slutsky said. “Yes, it’s hard and unpleasant, but there is a reason for that.”