Introduction
We all know what it feels like to pay attention to something, to have difficulty paying attention to things that are uninteresting to us, and to gain and lose attention. Think about those times when you are most attentive and what that feels like. When you are more attentive, it feels like you can take in information more easily, for example.
But what attracts or sustains one person’s attention may not attract another’s, and with young children, attracting and sustaining attention is our gateway to engaging them and thereby providing learning opportunities. So, understanding how attention develops in young children is very helpful to our goals in the classroom and so is understanding these types of differences in how children may respond to our attempts to attract and sustain their attention.
To begin our discussion about attention in the thinking and learning of young children, I’d like you to engage in a reflective exercise on your own, integrating what you have observed in young children, too.
Reflection Journal
First, consider the following scenario.
Reflection 3.1a: You are taking a course in literacy curriculum and learning about theories of written language processing. These theories are unfamiliar to you, but you do enjoy the overall topic of reading, particularly among young children, and you own a small collection of picture books that you bring to placements to share with young children. Why are you not able to focus on this theoretical chapter?
Next, think about your literacy interactions with young children.
Reflection 3.1b: Have you ever read a book to a group of young children and had some become disengaged and lose their attention to the story, perhaps talking or moving around and becoming restless? Why do you think this was the case?
Finally, compare these two reflections.
Reflection 3.1c: Are there any similarities between your experiences reading theory and the children’s experiences? What do you think is happening to your attention and theirs, and why?
Human beings do not engage in psychological development of any kind without a social and cultural context.
Typically, attention has been studied in the West through the lens of experimental psychology, both in infants and young children. Because such methodologies are highly controlled and carried out in situations that do not involve day-to-day interactions or real social context, they are to be interpreted in limited ways.
For students taking developmental psychology, these Western perspectives may be all that is learned. But, for students working with young children in a diverse society, it is important to remember what experimental psychology teaches us and then move to other theories, paradigms, perspectives, and approaches to understand attention in young children.
Human beings do not actually ever engage in psychological development of any kind without a social and cultural context. This textbook’s strong position is that we don’t first consider attention and then see what “happens to it” once we are in a social context. Nonetheless, it is helpful to understand what Western theory offers and consider it alongside a range of other perspectives.
