Attention span

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Attention span is the amount of time a person can concentrate on a single activity. The ability to focus one's mental or other efforts on an object is generally considered to be of prime importance to the achievement of goals.

Contents 1 Attention span in education 2 Attention span and television 3 See also 4 External links

[edit] Attention span in education

Elementary education often seeks to extend or develop attention span in children. Many teachers quote the myth that a person's attention span is 10 + Your Age minutes, and that anything taught after that is not taken in. Supposedly taking a five minute break after this time will help the class recover and replenish their attention span, but there is no evidence that this is actually successful or that this number of minutes has any basis in fact.

[edit] Attention span and television

Some critics of television broadcasting complain that the medium tends to attenuate or shorten attention span.

In a study of 2,600 children ages 1 to 3 published in 2004, a team of researchers from University of Washington found that early exposure to television may have a negative impact on attention span.

[edit] See also

• Attention
• Attention deficit disorder
• Conceptual tempo
• Distraction
• Vigilance

[edit] External links

• An abstract of the study published in the journal Pediatrics
• An editorial piece on the study by Suzanne Fields in The Washington Times

Attention
Aspects of attention
Absent-mindedness | Attention span | Attentional shift | Directed attention fatigue | Attention management | Attentional blink | Attentional bias | Attention economy | Attention and emotion | Attention optimization | Change blindness | Concentration |Dichotic listening | Distraction | Distractibility | Divided attention | Hyperfocus | Inattentional blindness | Mindfulness |Mind-wandering | Meditation | Salience | Selective attention | Selective inattention | Signal detection theory | Sustained attention | Vigilance | Visual search |
Developmental aspects of attention
centration | [[]] |
Neuroanatomy of attention
Attention versus memory in prefrontal cortex |Dorsal attention network | | Neural mechanisms | Ventral attention network | Intraparietal sulcus |
Neurochemistry of attention
Glutamatergic system  | [[]] |
Attention in clinical settings
Attention training | ADHD | ADHD contoversy | ADD | AADD | Centering | Distractability |Attention and aging | Hypervigilance | Hyperprosexia | Cognitive-shifting | Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy |
Attention in educational settings
Concentration |
Assessing attention
Benton | Continuous Performance Task | TOMM | Wechsler Memory Scale |
Treating attention problems
CBT | Psychotherapy |
Prominant workers in attention
Baddeley | Broadbent | [[]] | Treisman | Cave |
edit

This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Attention span. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.