Scientists have learned that children find it hard to focus on a task, and often take in information that won't help them complete their assignment. But the question is, why? In a new study, researchers found that this "distributed attention" wasn't because children's brains weren't mature enough to understand the task or pay attention, and it wasn't because they were easily distracted and lacked the control to focus. It now appears that kids distribute their attention broadly either out of simple curiosity or because their working memory isn't developed enough to complete a task without "over exploring.
" Children can't seem to stop themselves from gathering more information than they need to complete a task, even when they know exactly what they need." Vladimir Sloutsky, Professor, Psychology, The Ohio State University Sloutsky conducted the study, published recently in the journal Psychological Science , with lead author Qianqian Wan, a doctoral student in psychology at Ohio State. Sloutsky and his colleagues have done several studies in the past documenting how children distribute their attention broadly, and don't seem to have the ability of adults to efficiently complete tasks by ignoring anything that is not relevant to their mission.
In this new research, Sloutsky and Wan confirmed that even when children successfully learn how to focus their attention on a task to earn small rewards such as stickers, they still "over explore" and don't concentrate just on what is need.