attention
Attention is a cognitive function that we use in almost every activity of daily life. We pay attention to the 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 TDAH (attention-deficit/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 semantic memory
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 will focus on preparing the meal, and you’ll sing the song without thinking about the words.
In general, to train attention, try to increase the amount of time you spend on an activity. For example, if you read the newspaper for 10 minutes a day, try increasing it to 13 minutes and then to 15. You need to increase little by little, at your own pace.
And follow a specific training program
Our games for working on attention
- The musical ear
- Colormind
- The musical ear
- Colormind
- The musical ear
- Colormind
1. Recognition of important stimuli
The environment is full of stimuli. A stimulus is not important in itself, but its importance changes depending on the situation or your objective.
For example, if you’re crossing the road and hear a horn honking, this is an important stimulus because it could be a dangerous situation, whereas if you’re at home and hear a horn honking outside, you don’t necessarily need to pay attention to it.
This work of filtering stimuli is an automatic task performed by our brain thanks to attention. If you 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.
Shape box
In this game, the player must look at the model, and click on the red button when the shape or color represented on the model appears in the central area of the screen.
Several shapes appear, so the player has to filter the information and focus on just one color or shape.
With this game you can improve your attention span, stimulus recognition and information filtering.
You can also play with two players, each on their own side of the screen. In this mode of play, you also work on your response speed to be the first to press the button.
2. Recognizing 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 cleaning the house and you hear on 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.
In this case 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.
Flying Fools
In this game, the player must count the balloons passing by on the screen, following the instructions given.
There will be several balloons of different colors, and the player will have to count the balloons of a single color.
He’ll have to sort out the important stimuli (the balloons of the right color) from the distracting stimuli (the balloons of the wrong color).
3. Attentional focus
Once we’ve selected the important and distracting stimuli, we need to keep our attentional focus on the activity in order to complete it. This ability enables us to stay focused, and not get distracted.
This skill is very important when we’re watching a film, reading a book or talking to someone to follow the conversation.
When there’s a difficulty, it’s normally this function that’s the first to weaken. Daily training can help improve cognitive function, and thus delay the onset of symptoms.
Mole Invasion
In this game, the player has to touch the moles that appear on the screen.
Attention is activated because the player knows that moles will appear, but doesn’t know when or where.
In the game, there are different types of mole: the normal mole, to be tapped once, the mole with the helmet, to be tapped twice, and the mole with the glasses, not to be touched.
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 take, and attention is used in different ways. So we need to stay focused throughout the game.
4. Selective, divided and sustained attention
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 (and not favor one over the others). Divided attention is the sharing of attentional resources.
Sustained attention is the ability to maintain attention over a long period of time. It is particularly in demand at school, when we need to stay focused for several hours at a time. This type of attention enables us to accomplish long, complicated tasks.
Balloon Drill
In this game, balloons of different colors appear on the screen, and the player must use selective attention to select only the balloons of the right color to aim at.
Divided attention, to organize the movement of the arch according to the position of the balloons, and finally sustained attention, as he must keep his attentional focus throughout the game to avoid missing any balloons.
Do you want to improve your attention span?
Discover our attention training programs with our coaches!
COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES
A version for children aged 5 to 10
CLINT
A preventive version for seniors
SCARLETT
An easy-to-use 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.
The 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 want.
The sports break
After 15 minutes of screen use, the application stops to propose physical activities. This break allows the child to air his brain, process the information received and be more motivated for the following activities.
For children, regular breaks are important because, without them, they will be overloaded, less motivated, more frustrated and more tired. Indeed, 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 and more fun way.
1,2,3 Statue
In this game, the child must move to the music and stop when the music stops.
He must therefore pay attention to the auditory stimulus and adapt his movement to it.
