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Kids have a secret power that can help them avoid the "learning traps" that adults sometimes fall into: kids just can't concentrate
.
A new study using eye-tracking technology suggests that when children try to complete a task, their attention wanders around the computer screen — even though adults are quick to discover that they can complete the task
more efficiently by focusing on a particular object.
"The ability of adults to concentrate is often very helpful in everyday life," said
Vladimir Sloutsky, a co-author of the study and a professor of psychology at Ohio State University.
"But sometimes, it's helpful to look at the world more like a child and notice things that might not have been as important or relevant at the
time.
Slotsky conducted the study
with Nathaniel Blanco, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State University, and Brandon Turner, a professor of psychology.
The study, which involved 30 children between the ages of 4 and 5 and 38 adults, had eyeball trackers installed in the lab to know where
they looked at the computer screen.
One trait of the two creatures is always different — for example, Jalet may have a blue tail and Flurps may have an orange tail
.
In the first part of the experiment, adults quickly learned which trait always determined whether the creature was Flurp or Jalet, and the eyeball tracker showed that they focused almost all their attention on
that feature.
Children learn more slowly which traits are most important when judging which creature is which creature, while eye trackers show that they continue to look at all the traits of the two creatures, even unrelated features
.
Sloutsky said: "Children are not as efficient as adults
when it comes to learning quickly.
But halfway through the experiment, the researchers suddenly made a change: a body part that had previously been unrelated to the biological type became a feature
that determined whether it was Flurp or Jalet.
"These adults suffer from learned inattention," Sloutsky said
.
Slotsky said the brains of 4- and 5-year-olds are not mature enough to concentrate
like adults.
The lesson for adults, Sloutsky says, is to realize that selective attention, while improving learning efficiency and performance, can also lead to learning pitfalls
in some cases.
"When you know something very well, or when the solution to a problem seems obvious, it may help broaden your attention to look for clues that may initially seem unrelevant — to think
like a child again.
The study was funded
by the National Institutes of Health.
The benefits of immature cognitive control: How distributed attention guards against learning traps