Attention is a cognitive function that we use in almost every activity of daily life. We pay attention to objects and people around us, to sounds, to images, and to every stimulus that may be in the environment.

So it’s important to stimulate attention to keep the brain active.

“Attentional and executive functions are so-called “high-level” brain functions that infiltrate and control all cognitive functions, enabling access to knowledge and learning. Without attention, there can be no learning. The links between attention and memory are therefore direct.
Sandrine Censabella, neuropsychologist and professor at the Catholic University of Louvain

What is attention?

Attention is the cognitive function that enables us to differentiate between important and distracting stimuli. There are many stimuli in our environment, and our brain needs to be able to filter them to know where to focus our attention (attentional focus). Depending on our objective, a stimulus may or may not be important. For example, if I’m looking for a friend in a crowd, and I know he’s dressed in red, my attention will be focused on people in red shirts, and my brain won’t process stimuli from people dressed in other colors.

Attentional skills also enable us to stay focused on an activity, and use all our skills to achieve the result. If we’re distracted, it takes longer to get organized or finish an activity, and once we’ve done it, we don’t necessarily remember what we’ve done.

Attention disorders

Attention can be more fragile in certain situations. The main attention-related disorder is ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder). ADHD is often associated with children, because it’s a difficulty that emerges in childhood, but there are also many adults who suffer from ADHD.

There are also other pathologies that can cause attention problems, such as Alzheimer’s disease, stroke or head trauma.

In all these situations, the difficulties can be varied: in general, the person may have difficulty filtering stimuli. On the one hand, the person perceives all stimuli as important, and so their attentional focus moves rapidly from one object to another (ADHD); on the other, the brain is unable to maintain attention on one stimulus, and so is easily distracted.

Exercises to train and improve attention

Training your attention is very important, and you can do it in the comfort of your own home. Of course, if you have a specific pathology or disorder, you should seek advice from your doctor or a health professional.

To train attention, one of the most effective exercises is the double task, i.e. doing two activities at the same time. The activities should be different in nature, for example, singing a song while you cook a meal, or drawing the “infinity” symbol (continuing to draw it several times on the same shape) while you watch a film.

This activity has a double effect: your brain remains active because it has to do two things, so it’s harder for your attention to be drawn to a third stimulus. What’s more, of these two activities, one is less important than the other, so your brain learns to focus on the more important activity. For example, if you’re cooking and singing, your brain focuses on preparing the meal, and you’ll sing the song without thinking about the words.

In general, to train attention, try to increase the time you spend on an activity. For example, if you read the newspaper for 10 minutes a day, try increasing to 13 minutes and then 15. You need to build up gradually and keep pace with yourself.

• Le poème perdu
• Crazy Chessboard
• Silly Sequence
• ColorMind
• Un texte un jour / A poem for a day
• Brainstorming
• Mole invasion
• Flying fools
• Balloon piercing
• ShapeBox

1. Recognition of important stimuli

The environment is full of stimuli. A stimulus is not important in itself, but its importance changes according to the situation or your objective.

For example, if you’re crossing the road and you hear a horn, this is an important stimulus because it could be a dangerous situation, whereas if you’re at home and you hear a horn outside, you don’t necessarily have to pay attention to it.

This filtering of stimuli is an automatic task performed by our brain through attention. If we have attention-related disorders, this functionality can become more fragile and, in certain situations, this could be dangerous. That’s why it’s so important to improve this function.

You can also play with two players, each on their own side of the screen. In this game mode, you also work on your response speed to be the first to press the button.

2. Recognition of distracting stimuli

Just as there are important stimuli, there are also distracting stimuli. These are stimuli that are strong or interesting, but not important to our task. Our attentional capacity must be able to filter out these stimuli, and erase them.

For example, if you’re in the middle of cleaning, and you hear on the TV that your favorite program is starting, you can give up cleaning, concentrate on the TV, and forget what you were doing. Of course, you can change what you’re doing, but you have to finish the activity first, or at least tidy up a bit.

Here too, a stimulus is not necessarily distracting; it depends on the situation. It’s thanks to our attentional capacity that we can identify when a stimulus is distracting.

3. Attentional focus

Once we’ve selected the important and distracting stimuli, we need to keep our attentional focus on the activity to complete it. This ability enables us to stay focused, and not get distracted.

This skill is very important when watching a film, reading a book or even talking to someone to follow the conversation.

When there’s a difficulty, it’s normally this function that is the first to weaken. Daily training can help improve cognitive function, and thus delay the onset of symptoms.

In addition to paying attention to the appearance of the stimulus, the person must also recognize the stimulus typology and act accordingly.

In this game, there are several actions to be carried out, and attention is used in different ways. So we have to stay focused throughout the game.

4. Selective, divided and sustained attention

So there are different forms of attention: selective attention, divided attention and sustained attention.

Selective attention is the ability to respond selectively to a single source of information (visual or auditory) among others, without being distracted by other stimuli. It’s a kind of attentional zoom, enabling us to focus our attention on a particular target.

In everyday life, we are almost constantly required to do several things at once. To do this, we need to allocate our attentional resources optimally, so that we can do all these different things properly (rather than favouring one at the expense of the others). This sharing of attentional resources is called divided attention.

Sustained attention is the ability to maintain attention over a long period of time. It is particularly in demand at school, when we have to stay focused for several hours at a time. This type of attention enables us to accomplish long, complicated tasks.

SCARLETT

An easy and adapted version for seniors

COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES

COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES is an application with over 30 educational and sports games for children aged 5 to 10.

Games stimulate all cognitive functions: attention, memory, language, logic and much more. Children learn and improve while having fun!

You don’t need wifi to use Coco, so children can play wherever they like.

The sports break

After 15 minutes of screen use, the application stops to propose physical activities. This break allows the child to ventilate his brain, process the information received and be more motivated for the following activities.

For children, taking regular breaks is important because, without them, they’ll be overloaded and less motivated, more frustrated and more tired. Children’s attention spans are limited, from 15 minutes at age 5 to 30 minutes at age 10.

What’s more, sports activities can stimulate attention in a less rigid, more fun way.

LANGUAGE PROGRAM

For 4 weeks, follow our program to work on language by playing our specially selected games for 15 minutes a day.

Limiting distractions

• • Manage notifications: Turn off unnecessary notifications on your phone or computer to avoid constant interruptions. This will help you stay focused on the task in hand.

  • Create dedicated spaces: When working, dedicate a specific space to this activity and avoid bringing in other distractions such as books or electronic devices unrelated to the task. This helps reinforce attention by minimizing sources of distraction.

Informal brain training

• • Play board games or puzzles: Games such as crosswords, Sudoku or jigsaw puzzles demand sustained attention and stimulate the brain by engaging different parts of the brain.

  • Memorizing lists: Try to memorize lists of items, such as a shopping list or an itinerary. The more you memorize, the better your attention span.

Engage in stimulating discussions

• • • Deep conversations: Take part in conversations that challenge you to think and focus your attention on complex subjects. This could be with a colleague, a friend or even a focus group. Intellectual exchanges help strengthen the ability to maintain sustained attention for long periods and navigate between different ideas fluidly.

    • Question-and-answer games: Organize question-and-answer sessions on a variety of subjects (general knowledge, history, etc.), either on your own, testing yourself, or with other people. This trains attention and helps keep the brain active by challenging both memory and concentration.