Heim Sabine, Keil Andreas
Infancy Studies Laboratory, Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey Newark, NJ, USA.
Front Psychol. 2012 Aug 13;3:277. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00277. eCollection 2012.
Adaptive behavior in learning environments requires both the maintenance of an attentional focus on a task-set and suppression of distracting stimuli. This may be especially difficult when the competing information is more appealing than the target event. The aptitude to "pay attention" and resist distraction has often been noted as an important prerequisite of successful acquisition of intellectual abilities in children. This focused review draws on research that highlights interindividual differences in the temporal dynamics of attentional engagement and disengagement under competition, and their relation with age and cognitive/academic skills. Although basic strategies of attention control are present in very young children, the more refined ability to manage attentional resources over time in an economic and adaptive fashion appears during early school years, dramatically improves until the early teen years, and continues to develop into late adolescence. Across studies, parameters of attention control over time predict specific aspects of academic performance, rather than general intellectual ability. We conclude that the ability to strategically regulate the dynamic allocation of attention at rapid rates may represent an important element of cognitive and academic development.
在学习环境中的适应性行为既需要对任务集保持注意力集中，又需要抑制干扰性刺激。当竞争信息比目标事件更具吸引力时，这可能会特别困难。“集中注意力”和抵制干扰的能力通常被认为是儿童成功获得智力能力的重要前提。这篇重点综述借鉴了一些研究，这些研究突出了在竞争情况下注意力参与和脱离的时间动态中的个体差异，以及它们与年龄和认知/学业技能的关系。尽管注意力控制的基本策略在非常年幼的儿童中就已存在，但以经济和适应性方式随着时间管理注意力资源的更精细能力在小学早期出现，在青少年早期之前显著提高，并持续发展到青春期后期。在各项研究中，随着时间推移的注意力控制参数预测的是学业成绩的特定方面，而非一般智力能力。我们得出结论，以快速速率战略性地调节注意力动态分配的能力可能是认知和学业发展的一个重要因素。
