What is it to ‘pay attention’? Why is it that sometimes I can be having a conversation when all of a sudden my attention is called elsewhere, only to come back to realise that I need to respond to something that I missed? What was it that initially drew my attention away from what I was initially talking about? Was it the notification ping on my phone, or did I just lose myself in my own thoughts?

Attention and Learning

The very first step to learning is ‘paying attention’. Dedicating undivided attention is vital, whether in a classroom, while reading a textbook, listening to a podcast, or when honing a skill for work. These activities all include learning. Keep in mind that ‘paying’ is an activity. In essence, you are devoting your time, attention, and ideas to what is happening in the moment. ‘Are you paying attention to me?’ is a question that friends, family members, or co-workers may ask you.

Parents and educators are intuitively aware of the significance of attention to learning. You won’t learn much if you can’t concentrate in class or when reading a book. In saying this, attention is much more foundational than just ‘paying attention’, because it is crucial for memory and the processes that ensure successful retention. Attention is essential for learning. Attention skills impact self-control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, which are known collectively as executive function skills.

However, the invisible nature of attention places teachers in a difficult position as they can never be certain of the extent to which their pupils are focusing on what they need to, even if their outward behaviour suggests they are.

So, what exactly happens when someone ‘pays attention’, and how can teachers help students maintain their focus?

What is it to ‘pay attention’?

There are various definitions of attention, but they all emphasise the act of choosing information that is relevant to the job at hand and minimising information that is not (Hanania & Smith, 2010). Hence, selecting what is necessary at a given time and eliminating the competition are consequently two concerns of attention. It involves focusing on what is being stated, discussed, or shown, using the senses to literally bring information into the brain. It is obvious why this skill is crucial in the classroom, not the least because of how closely it relates to memory; after all, if we aren’t paying attention, we probably won’t recall anything very clearly.

However, it’s not only about selecting information, it’s also about switching between several streams of information, often at a rapid pace. Humans are pretty adept at this, despite cognitive limitations. Yet, while people are exposed to multiple competing inputs, they need to focus on just one. Even though this selective attention may appear to be rather simple, attention is a finite resource, and our own experiences would indicate that it is highly challenging to divide our attention between multiple tasks. When we do attempt to divide our attention, cognitive resources must be shared, which hinders performance on all of the tasks. In fact, information that isn’t fully processed isn’t retained for very long and is more likely to be forgotten.

Attention also involves sustaining focus over time, and time is a limited resource. Sustained attention is a process that enables the maintenance of response persistence and continuous effort over extended periods (Li-Wei et al., 2017). In order to successfully complete jobs requiring considerable attention, one must be able to block out a range of distractions and inhibit attention shifts to irrelevant activities.

The development of attention, like all executive functions, occurs in stages.  Young children are far less skilled at focusing their attention than older children. As a result, primary school students will be more susceptible to distractions than teenagers, and older individuals are better at focusing on a particular subject than those younger in age. This may be constrained by some individual variations, including anxiety, depression, and conditions such as, ADHD and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. However, other biological and physiological factors, such as the quality of sleep and certain medication, also come into play.

What distracts?

Imagine a class of children studying the Pythagorean theorem. The instructor is presenting the theorem while standing at the front of the class and using illustrations. Now envisage loud road works nearby; learning would be very challenging as a result.

It is known that individuals have a propensity to be distracted by things that have little to do with the task at hand. Life is full of minor distractions and these distractions appear to have increased significantly since the introduction of mobile phones and social media. Mobile devices are undoubtedly a significant and growing source of distraction in daily life, so it seems reasonable that some schools have outright bans on their use while others have rigorous rules.

Another interesting potential distraction is classroom displays. At Carnegie Mellon University, Anna Fisher and her colleagues discovered that classrooms with elaborate decorations were detrimental to learning and focus (Fisher, Godwin, & Seltman, 2014), particularly problematic for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (Hanley et al., 2017).

Other potential sources of distraction include idle conversation, noises in the hallway, and activities taking place outside the classroom window. Not all distractions can be ignored, and some can even strengthen your ability to avoid them.

Phones and classroom displays are examples of external causes of distraction, but one’s thoughts are another frequent source of distraction. Since it is harder to recognise and, therefore, to address, mind-wandering might be a bigger issue than exterior distractions.

When our minds become disengaged from a task and our thoughts start to stray, this is known as mind-wandering. According to Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010), humans participate in mind wandering about 50% of the time, and new neuroimaging studies have connected the phenomenon to a collection of brain regions generally referred to as the Default Mode Network, or DMN. The DMN is thought to be the brain’s default mode because it only engages when the brain is at rest or after we have finished a task. Research has also shown that mind-wandering is associated with creativity and problem-solving, so in reality, ‘mind-wandering’ is not at all bad (Fox & Beaty, 2019).

Improving attention

The good news is that attention skills can be trained. Children do better in school and in life when they develop their attention abilities. The challenge in training attention skills is that attention cannot be observed directly, so we can measure attention only by observing the way it affects our information processing, learning, and memory.  Many efforts to train attention centre on enhancing abilities like working memory. The following strategies can be adopted to enhance attention:

1. Take the Mystery Away

Assuring that every student understands how attention functions, and recognises their own unique profiles of attention strengths and weaknesses is the first and, arguably, the most crucial management method of teaching and learning. Then, skills for regulation of attention should be given to students.

2. Routine and Study Habits

Executive function includes the capacity to retain focus and attention, therefore actions aimed at enhancing these higher-order cognitive abilities will be beneficial. These would involve behavioural adjustments like enforcing routines and promoting the development of effective study habits. Targeted interventions related to executive function and games in turn-taking and concentration (Benzing et al. 2019), as well as, mindfulness and yoga (Shapiro et al., 2014), have produced promising results.

3. Chunking Lessons

Additionally, chunking lessons into smaller, more manageable portions, is a particularly effective and convenient technique to overcome attention deficits. Given that attention spans are finite, even the most seasoned teacher will eventually see a decline in focus. Although the manner in which teachers present the material is crucial, breaking down the lesson plan will help students who struggle with attention and/or working memory deficits.

4. Interleaving

One intriguing discovery is that people pay greater attention to the information that is interleaved, that is, interconnected with other information, rather than being provided as a block of related things. In fact, mind wandering becomes more prevalent when the information is provided in a block (Firth, Rivers, & Boyle, 2019). This would suggest that teachers might decrease mind wandering and improve attention by delivering several topics over a shorter amount of time and interconnecting (or interleaving) these topics.

5. Good Posture and Questioning Technique

By emphasising posture and specifically telling students to listen, teachers can help students get ready to pay attention, which can encourage good learning habits. Asking and answering questions provides teacher feedback, which can also be thought of as a proxy for attention.

6. Allow for Movement and Breaks

Giving students the chance to move around is beneficial for those who struggle with fluctuating alertness and mental exertion. At school, for instance, a pupil might be asked to clear the board, gather papers, or deliver a message to the office. At home, parents may set up regular breaks and have the student switch work locations. Additionally, while seated, children may need to be engaged in hand-related activities; they may doodle, roll some clay, or engage in other manual activities that raise their attentiveness and arousal.

7. Vary Instructional Strategies and Be Relevant

Teachers should use a variety of instructional strategies and these should be changed approximately every 15 to 20 minutes. Retrieval practice, providing information as an explanation, collaborative learning, individual seatwork, multisensory activities, quizzes, and debates are a few examples of these. Furthermore, our students need to know why our lessons are important to them. To get students to pay attention in class, teachers need to relate specific subjects to everyday life and the students need to know how this information will impact their lives. For instance, when teaching students how to use a chronological timeline, the teacher might start by having them create a timeline of the significant events in their own lives.

8. Novelty

Novelty has been widely investigated as a strategy to promote better learning. It corresponds to something that is new and exciting, resulting in the releasing of dopamine in the brain as a reward. In this sense, it captures our attention and interest to find out more, activating important neural pathways, and affecting other cognitive functions, such as perception and motivation. Parts of the brain are triggered when a child detects that something has changed or is new, leading to a re-examination of static concepts or ideas. The students exposed to a novelty tend to present better attention and memory skills, thus improving learning.

9. Minimise Noise and Other Distractions

The most obvious course of action is to minimise distractions and noise for everyone. A structured auditory environment should be helpful for students who are easily distracted and might require special seating near the front of the room.

Concluding Thoughts

How many times did your attention shift away while reading this article? Even with strong motivation to focus, it is natural that many types of attention are occurring in the classroom all the time, including fluctuations between internal and external attention, as well as on-topic and off-topic attention. Due to a better understanding of the developmental components of attention, particularly how it relates to other cognitive processes, teachers can develop and create strategies to enhance attention with all students, contributing to learning and memory improvement. After all, learning success depends on students being focused during lessons!

References

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Benzing, V., Schmidt, M., Jäger, K., Egger, F., Conzelmann, A., & Roebers, C. M. (2019). A classroom intervention to improve executive functions in late primary school children: Too ‘old’ for improvements? British Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(2), 225–238.

Cowan, N. (2000). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 87–185.

Firth, J., Rivers, I., & Boyle, J. (2019). A Systematic Review of Interleaving as a Concept Learning Strategy. Social Science Protocols, 2(July), 1–7.

Fisher, A. V., Godwin, K. E., & Seltman, H. (2014). Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children: When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad. Psychological Science, 25(7), 1362–1370.

Fox, K. C., & Beaty, R. E. (2019). Mind-wandering as creative thinking: neural, psychological, and theoretical considerations. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 27(February 2019), 123–130. 

Hanania, R., & Smith, L. B. (2010). Selective attention and attention switching: Towards a unified developmental approach. Developmental Science, 13(4), 622–635.

Hanley, M., Khairat, M., Taylor, K., Wilson, R., Cole-Fletcher, R., & Riby, D. M. (2017). Classroom displays—Attraction or distraction? Evidence of impact on attention and learning from children with and without autism. Developmental Psychology, 53(7), 1265–1275.

Killingswroth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind. Science, 330 (November), 932.

Li-Wei, K., Komarov, O., Hairston, D.W., Jung, T.P. & Lin, Chin-Teng. (2017). Sustained Attention in Real Classroom Settings: an EEG Study. Front. Hum. Neurosci., Vol. 11(388), 1 – 10.

Oberaeur, K. (2019). Working Memory and Attention – A Conceptual Analysis and Review. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, Vol. 2(1), 36.

Shapiro, S. L., Lyons, K. E., Miller, R. C., Butler, B., Vieten, C., & Zelazo, P. D. (2014). Contemplation in the Classroom: a New Direction for Improving Childhood Education. Educational Psychology Review, 27(1).