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OSU researchers study factors contributing to distracted kids
KEITH ARNOLD
Special to the Legal News
Published: September 16, 2024
Ohio State University researchers said they have found that the manner by which kids allocate their attention is the root cause of their difficulty in maintaining focus on a task.
Published recently in the journal Psychological Science, the study revealed that children 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,” a news release detailed.
“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,” said the study’s co-author Vladimir Sloutsky, a psychology professor at Ohio State.
Researchers confirmed that children over explore and fail to concentrate on what is needed to complete an assignment, despite having learned how to focus their attention on a given task.
One study involved children, ages 4 to 6, and adults, the release provided.
Participants were told they were
going to identify two types of bird-like creatures called Hibi or Gora. Each creature had a unique combination of colors and shapes for their horn, head, beak, body, wing, feet and tail.
The combination of color and shape of six of seven body features predicted with 66 percent accuracy whether it was a Hibi or Gora.
One feature, however, was a 100 percent predictor of the correct creature–– an idea grasped by both children and adults. Researchers covered up each body part and asked study participants to uncover them one-by-one by tapping a button on each body part to properly identify the creature.
Participants were rewarded for identifying the creature as quickly as possible, according to the release.
The study recorded that the task was easy for adults, who would uncover the tail first to properly identify the creature––the tail being the body part that was always matched perfectly with one of the two types of creatures.
Children, however, would uncover the tail first, but continue to reveal other features of the animals before identifying the creature.
“There was nothing to distract the children––everything was covered up. They could do like the adults and only click on the body part that identified the creature, but they did not,” Sloutsky said. “They just kept uncovering more body parts before they made their choice.”
He reasoned that another possibility was that the children participants liked tapping on the buttons.
Another study in which kids were given the option to tap one button to reveal the entire creature or to individually tap multiple buttons to reveal individual body parts revealed that the children predominantly selected the single-button option.
So, the kids weren’t just clicking for the fun of it, Sloutsky said.
He said he believes the most likely explanation is that a child’s working memory is not fully developed, resulting in children not retaining the information they need to complete a task in their memory as long as adults.
“The children learned that one body part will tell them what the creature is, but they may be concerned that they don’t remember correctly. Their working memory is still under development,” Sloutsky said. “They want to resolve this uncertainty by continuing to sample, by looking at other body parts to see if they line up with what they think.”
He added that as children’s working memory matures, they feel more confident in their ability to retain information for a longer time.
Sloutsky said he expected that more research would resolve the question of whether the issue is curiosity or working memory.
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