How to ruin a child's concentration?
A 3-year-old baby is sitting on the ground, playing with a bucket of brick toys.
Ta piled higher and higher, eyes did not blink, quiet and serious, as if entering the realm of selflessness.
At this time, the relatives and friends sitting on the side sent condolences one after another:
Baby, what are you piling up? It's really fantastic!
My darling, thirsty? Come, sip!
Baby, you're not piling it right, learn mom to do this!
......
Are these scenes familiar to everyone? A sentence full of love, but I don't know that these loves may be ruining the baby's concentration.
Your baby's concentration
It is being destroyed by the "love" of adults
Chen Yu, a professor of psychology and brain science at Indiana University, did an interesting study and found that the length of attention span of infants has a lot to do with the concentration performance of adults accompanying infants.
The experiment uses eye tracking technology, which is to put on wearable eye trackers for infants and parents to analyze attention.
图片来源：Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2016). The social origins of sustained attention in one-year-old human infants.
In the experiment, the researchers invited 40 groups of 12~16 months babies and parents, in order to explore the influence of parents' interaction patterns with babies around one year old on the baby's concentration.
The results are eye-popping:
In the experiment, the baby originally played well by himself, and some parents tried too hard and desperately expressed themselves to the child, either holding the toy in front of the baby and shaking it non-stop, or instructing the child how to play with toys better, and eagerly looking forward to the baby's feedback on the side.
Unfortunately, these "kind helps" of parents are not appreciated by children.
What the researchers saw from the camera was that the child's eyes either drifted to the ceiling or looked at the parents' shoulders, and did not focus on the parents' movements.
Moreover, after being disturbed by his parents, he no longer had the heart to focus on toys.
Image source: giphy.com
Professor Ye Zhuang, a member of the American Psychological Association and a master of developmental and educational psychology from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out that attention is a continuous cognitive activity.
When the baby is focusing on playing with toys, parents suddenly ask the baby to drink saliva, or instruct the baby how to play, this additional behavior will make the baby's concentration on playing with the toy forced to be interrupted.
At the same time, the distribution of attention is "limited", the baby is paying attention to one thing, it is likely to be difficult to pay attention to another thing.
When the baby is in a state of concentration, adults suddenly interrupt, which is harmful to the maintenance and cultivation of concentration, and even directly affects a child's ability to maintain concentration.
When playing with your baby
What is the best way to do it?
Seeing this, parents must be very anxious, so what should children do when they are playing? Isn't it better to walk away and not participate?
Of course not.
Another finding in the study is that parents and children play together in two ways:
● One is the "parent-led" interaction mentioned above;
● One is "child-led" interaction.
图片来源：Suarez-Rivera C, Smith LB, Yu C. Multimodal parent behaviors within joint attention support sustained attention in infants.
What does "child-led" mean?
It is very simple, that is, when playing with toys, let children explore independently, and parents mainly observe and guide.
Parents observe the baby and wait patiently, not giving any prompts while the baby is looking around. Wait until your baby becomes interested in the toy before slowly participating and exploring it with your baby.
This behavior not only maintains the baby's concentration, but also interestingly, even if the baby shifts his attention halfway and loses interest in the toy in front of him, as long as the parent is still focused on watching and playing with the toy, the child can follow the adult and refocus on the toy.
Image source: giphy.com
The researchers also conducted four sets of behavioral experiments on parents' behavior:
The parents of the first group only watched silently from the side while the baby was playing;
The parents in the second group looked at and touched toys while their babies played;
The parents in the third group looked at and talked to the baby while he was playing;
The parents of the fourth group watched, touched and talked while their babies played.
The study found that in the fourth case, that is, under the premise of the child's leading play, the participation of parents is the most engaged, and the child's continuous attention time is the longest.
图片来源：Suarez-Rivera C, Smith LB, Yu C. Multimodal parent behaviors within joint attention support sustained attention in infants.
Concentration is not cultivated
It's protected
Seeing this, it is estimated that parents have the answer, concentration is not cultivated, but protected.
Image source: giphy.com