Fostering Attention Development as a Professional

Fostering Attention Development as a Professional

How Attention Develops and why it is essential to child development

Attention gives people the power to concentrate on a single thing despite the present distraction. In children, paying Attention is exceptionally vital to learning and succeeding socially and academically in school. During development, newborns have an early attention type called stimulus orienting. Typically, this attention type is pretty involuntary, and the parietal region, a brain region, controls it. With age, infants voluntarily gain the capacity to concentrate on things for a prolonged period, known as sustained Attention. Typically, children demonstrate increases in the magnitude of the attention-linked reaction, and with cumulating age, they spend a lot of time on Attention. When infants are around six months, their anterior structure reaches a functional commencement. They start the drawn-out procedure of developing higher-order attentional control and inhibitory control (Reynolds & Romano, 2016). Growth and constant sustained attention enhancement proceed through childhood, and executive functioning tends to be the most voluntary attention fragment.

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Attention functions constitute attaining and sustaining an alertness state, adjusting towards and choosing sensory occasions and picked processing, and not forgetting to control thoughts and reactions in a goal-focused, effortful way (Pozuelos et al., 2014). Attention is vital to child development because it helps children concentrate on tasks, plan, regulate impulses, and opt to do something less entertaining. Reynolds & Romano (2016) state that Attention has a noteworthy effect on a child’s performance on various tasks through infancy, thus tapping on working memory.

Executive Function

Executive function tends to be the skills that assist people in concentrating, prioritizing, planning, working towards goal attainment, having self-control, adjusting to unanticipated circumstances, and eventually becoming involved in planning and abstract thinking. In other words, it is the capacity to implement suitable actions and to impede unsuitable actions for precise goal accomplishment. Typically, this is comparable to what a leading conductor could do for an orchestra because executive functions have a role in coordinating and supervising an assortment of emotional, behavioural, and cognitive responsibilities. In children, executive function assists in developing teamwork, decision-making skills, leadership skills, critical thinking, working towards their goals, adaptability, and recognizing their emotions and other people’s feelings. Jacobson et al. (2011) state that executive function abilities are noteworthy in children’s social and cognitive functioning. Subsequently, these abilities develop through childhood alongside developmental changes and difficulties. A notable challenge tends to be the shift from elementary to middle grade, which is likely to interrupt kids’ social and academic trajectories highly. According to Cartwright (2012), executive function plays a significant role in intellectual abilities and development, for instance, reading.

Activity 1

The goal of the activity and its intended age group.

The first activity is book reading, and the goal will be to improve the learners’ Attention and enable them to concentrate voluntarily. The teacher will read an exciting story to the kids and then ask questions from the narration. The intended age group for this activity tends to be four years.

Directions are needed to complete the activity, and a list of any materials is required.

The primary required material is a storybook suitable for kids at this level, preferably a picture book. The learners will each have the book, and the story must be short. The children sit around, and the teacher reads to them, pointing out fascinating things in the story. After reading the story, the teacher will ask questions and have the kids answer. After this, the teacher will be able to determine their concentration level.

The rationale for the activity

Through this activity, the children can build the capacity to concentrate willingly on each page and ignore disruptions, thus creating and controlling their Attention. The short story helps the children not lose concentration. Typically, a four-year-old could focus for about 8-20 minutes on average, and the story should be between this period. However, this could vary amongst children.

Activity 2

The goal of the activity and its intended age group.

The other activity is playing a game; in this case, the game will be green light /red light. The goal will be to have the kids concentrate on the said words during the game and do as required. The game’s intended age is four years.

Directions are needed to complete the activity, and a list of any materials is required.

In the game, a leader will be chosen among the kids, and they will turn their heads

and shout ‘green light.’ This will be a sign for the kids to walk. Typically, they will keep following the leader till they turn around and shout the term ‘red light.’ This will be the order to stop. All the children who do not stop once the leader calls the ‘red light’ will be removed from the game. When a child gets to the leader first, they will be the novel leader.

The rationale for the activity

Subsequently, various games are effective in enabling children to build Attention. In this game, the learners must concentrate on hearing when the red and green lights are mentioned and know when to follow the leader and stop. The game helps build concentration and Attention.

References

Cartwright, K. B. (2012). Insights from cognitive neuroscience: The importance of executive function for early reading development and education. Early Education & Development, 23(1), 24-36.

Jacobson, L. A., Williford, A. P., & Pianta, R. C. (2011). The role of executive function in children’s competent adjustment to middle school. Child Neuropsychology, 17(3), 255-280.

Pozuelos, J. P., Paz-Alonso, P. M., Castillo, A., Fuentes, L. J., & Rueda, M. R. (2014). Development of attention networks and their interactions in childhood. Developmental psychology, 50(10), 2405.

Reynolds, G. D., & Romano, A. C. (2016). The development of attention systems and working memory in infancy. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 10, 15.

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Consider your learning about Piaget’s concepts of schema, assimilation, and accommodation. For example, you are enrolled in this course that covers concepts in cognitive development that you may not be familiar with. Piaget would say that the new information in this course would put you in a state of disequilibrium. You must accommodate this further information in this course by creating new schemas to make sense of new course material. According to Piaget, once your new cognitive structures have assimilated the data, you can see the world differently and experience the thrill of mastery.

Fostering Attention Development as a Professional

Prepare:
Read Chapter 2: Sensation and Early Cognition, Executive Function, and Memory.
Read Attention (Links to an external site.).
Watch the 4-minute video What Is Executive Function? (Links to an external site.)
Watch the 5-minute video InBrief: Executive Function: Skills for Life and Learning (Links to an external site.).
Please use the provided Week 2 Fostering Attention Development as a Professional—Download Week 2 Fostering Attention Development as a Professional template.
Review the Writing Center’s APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.).

Write:

In your paper,

Use the Week 2 Fostering Attention Development as a Professional—Download the Week 2 Fostering Attention Development as a Professional template.
Explain how Attention develops and why it is essential to child development.
Summarize the role of executive function in child development.
Identify two activities to support the development of attentional control in children. For each activity,
Describe the activity’s goal (or learning outcome) and intended age group.
Explain all directions needed to complete the activity and list any materials required.
Describe your rationale for the activities, using the text or a credible outside source to support your thinking. The explanation must explain why you chose the activities, which should be based on the child development theories and content you are learning in this course.