Preschoolers’ motivation, temperament relate to attention skills, study finds

The following press release was issued by researchers at the FPG Child Development Institute of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

CHAPEL HILL, NC — For decades, researchers have wondered why some children from poor, at-risk families manage to perform better in school than other children raised in similar environments.

Now, researchers from the FPG Child Development Institute (FPG) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) and the University of Louisville in Kentucky find that children who have trouble paying attention exhibit different motivation patterns and temperament characteristics than children who don’t have problems paying attention.

This suggests that attention is more complicated than previously thought, according to lead researcher Dr. Florence Chang of FPG. “These findings provide evidence that helping children at risk for academic problems involves understanding more than a child’s attention and learning skills,” she said. “It also involves understanding their social and emotional make-up.”

The results of the study were published in the January/February 2005 issue of the journal Child Development.The researchers recruited 73 mothers and their preschool children, ranging in age from 3 to 5, all of whom attended a Head Start program and came from low-income backgrounds.

The children played a series of computerized games designed to measure their attention skills. The mothers completed a questionnaire that measured the temperament traits their children were born with, such as activity level and frustration.

To measure motivation, children were asked to complete a series of puzzles of varying difficulty levels. Children who preferred completing a challenging puzzle (deemed “mastery-oriented”) exhibited better attention skills than children who preferred completing an easier puzzle (deemed “performance-oriented”).

Previous research found that children who prefer more challenging tasks have more positive outcomes in school than children who avoid challenge and prefer easier tasks.

Overall, researchers found that temperament, motivation and attention are interrelated. This may indicate, said Chang, that screening tests that measure preschoolers’ school readiness, which today focus primarily on cognitive ability or developmental maturity, should be reexamined. Instead, it may also be important to consider other factors, such as how a child reacts to challenging tasks and his or her ability to adapt to new situations, she said.

“The findings from this study suggest problems that arise from attention difficulties are not limited to difficulty with concentration and sitting still, but are related to how children approach challenging or new situations,” said Chang. “Clearly, it is the case that much more needs to be understood about the nature and implications of having an attention problem.”

Perhaps the most significant statement the researchers claim is their final statement relating to a child’s response to challenging or new situations. When a child or an adult has diffused attention – attention spread over a wide area for short periods of time – their ability to command their environment is greatly reduced. Things happen out of their control. Accidents happen more frequently including traffic accidents. Indeed, there is some truth that some things are out of their control as they cannot control or manage things they do not perceive. Subsequently, the child or adult may develop a short temper as frustration easily sets in during new or challenging situations. Obviously, becoming quickly frustrated and shutting down during challenging situations may cause delays in emotional maturation and cognitive development. Adults experience organizational problems as they frequently do not manage things that are out of their immediate focus.

Generally, this research lends itself to a holistic perspective of diffused attention pointing not only at diffused attention, but at the subsequent problems it causes affecting daily function. It is not likely that medication can repair this as medication does not instruct the child how to manage challenging situations. It can place a child in a mental place where he might be able to learn to manage better, but who’s teaching management 101? This is where teaching tools like Play Attention play a major role in skill development both behaviorally and cognitively.

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