Primacy of Attention
Pay attention. We hear the words all the time. We know it's essential to learning. But how does it work?
Monkeys were wired to a device that made them tap their fingers one hundred minutes a day while listening to sounds on headphones. Some were rewarded with a sip of juice for responding to a change in the tapping rhythm. Others received the same reward for responding to a change in the sound. Every monkey had the same experience. The only difference was the impetus for the reward: attention to the sound versus attention to the physical tapping.
Results were compelling. Monkeys conditioned to pay attention to the physical tapping experienced an increase in the somatosensory (body movement) part of their cortex, but their auditory cortex stayed the same. The inverse was true for monkeys conditioned to pay attention to the sounds.[i] So attention is vital not only for learning but also for neuroplasticity.
From a learning perspective this is nothing new. We've all experienced the boring teacher or the topic incapable of capturing our attention. But remember learning is primarily considered the strengthening of connections or making new connections.
This experiment showed that expansion of physical cortex also depended on attention.
Attention is a big deal for our brain. It's both for learning and expanding cortical real estate. So how do we deal with attention or lack thereof?
“Only in recent years has Western psychiatry recognized attention-deficit disorder, but the meditative-contemplative traditions have maintained for thousands of years that we all suffer a kind of ADD and just don’t recognize it,” says Roger Walsh, a professor of psychiatry, philosophy, and anthropology at the University of California at Irvine.[ii] Two thousand five hundred years ago the Buddha taught his followers to think of their mind as filled with dozens of monkeys all clamoring for attention. Meditation was meant to silence the monkeys. Can meditation in the vein of the Buddhist teachings help people diagnosed with ADD?
William Stixrud, PhD and clinical neuropsychologist, thinks it can.[iii] Stixrud believes Ritalin, the typical drug used to treat ADHD, though helpful, is an imperfect treatment. Very few kids function optimally on it. Stixrud and Sarina Grosswald, an educator, studied Transcendental Meditation for ADHD children in a school setting. The kids meditated for ten minutes twice a day.
For these kids with ADHD an obvious question should be asked: "If kids have a problem focusing, how can they meditate?" Well, Transcendental Meditation, with roots in ancient Hindu practices, claims to be the exact opposite of focusing, using the natural tendency of the mind. See the appendix on meditation for more info. For now, let's just accept that they meditated.
Stixrud and Grosswald found the kids who meditated had 45 to 50 percent reductions in stress, anxiety, and depression. They also had significant improvements in organizational skills, memory, strategizing, mental flexibility, attention, and impulsivity.[iv] Another two-year study showed children practicing Transcendental Meditation made significant gains on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, a nationally administered test to measure student progress in reading, science, math, language arts, and social studies
Some schools are considering including meditation in daily routines, notably Roxbury Charter high and several other schools in Massachusetts.[v][vi]
As noted earlier, “meditating increases the thickness of the cortex in the areas of the brain dealing with attention and sensory processing.”[vii] It can’t hurt to have more brain real estate devoted to attention. In fact, meditation could be one drug-free tool for kids with ADHD and even boost the performance of other children. Studies have shown:
· Three thousand children in San Francisco Unified School District practiced Transcendental Mediation and made dramatic improvement in math test scores and overall academic performance.[viii] The same study also found a decrease in student suspensions, expulsions, and dropout rates.
· A study at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte suggested meditation didn’t have to be intensive to have an effect. Tests showed students could improve cognitive skills after just four days of meditation for twenty minutes per day. On one test, which measured sustained attention, meditating students did ten times better than a control group.[ix]
· Another study found as little as two weeks of mindfulness practice produced a significant boost in GRE scores.[x]
Similar results are conceivable for adults who need their concentration at work.
Sixty adults participated in a study allowing them to attend a ninety-day meditation retreat, a long time for a retreat. Half could attend the ninety-day retreat right away, while the rest had to wait ninety days. The delay ensured results weren’t related to just wanting to learn to meditate.
Testing was done before, during, and after the intensive retreat. All were asked to watch a series of lines flashed on a screen and click on a button when one line was shorter than the other—in other words, a really boring test. Detecting differences required intense focus. Those who meditated were more likely to see increasingly small differences in line length, and their abilities increased as their meditative training progressed. When they saw the differences, they didn’t react faster than the control group, but they were more accurate. This would suggest that meditation helped with automatic processing of the visual signal, but not with reaction time.[xi]
Another measure associated with attention is called "attentional blink."
A sample experiment will explain. Two pictures of dogs, a Scottish Terrier and a St. Bernard were embedded in a twenty-picture series of cats, each photo flashing in front of participants for a brief half second. Most people didn't see the second dog. Their attention "blinked." Scientists characterize this phenomenon as a misallocation of attention, thought to be a fixed property of the nervous system. Photos were flashing too fast for the brain to detect the second stimulus.
But another study showed that subjects who had meditated could improve the recognition rate for the second stimulus. Experienced and novice meditators were given attentional blink tests with two numbers embedded in a series of letters. The novice meditators tended to grasp the first number and hang onto it, thereby missing the second. The more experienced meditators didn't invest as much attention in the first number, as if letting go. This "release" resulted in better recognition of the second number. So, apparently, the ability to pay attention is not fixed, but a trainable skill.[xii]
Video games present an interesting alternative as well. Richard Davidson's group developed a video game called Tenacity to train focused attention. They found, "increased connectivity between the brain's executive center in the prefrontal cortex and the circuitry for focused attention. In other tests, the players were also better able to focus on someone's facial expression and ignore distractions—signs of increased empathy."[xiii]
However, the verdict is still out on video games in general. Few have undergone stringent testing. Some have been found to improve performance in the game itself but not necessarily to generalize to other tasks. But the potential seems to be there for games written for specific attention tasks.
So how else can we invoke attention benefits?
Learn something new.
Activities we've practiced for a long time have minimal impact. But when we learn something new, we have to pay attention. Learning a foreign language or taking up ballroom dancing are much more likely to improve brain processing speed, strengthen synapses, and create functional networks.[xiv]
"Learning something new" could also apply to activities in which we are already engaged. But instead of doing the same old thing, we could get coaching, and learn to do it better. For instance, those of us who play bridge could take lessons to play differently and/or more effectively. Golfers, instead of hacking at the ball the same way (and yielding similar results), could hire a pro to learn a better swing. It would force us to pay attention, benefiting our circuitry.
In summary, the concept of attention is rich and complex. Science has found new possibilities beyond reward, high interest, and medication to help trigger attention benefits. Research will undoubtedly continue for this important dimension of our mind.
[i] Ibid., 158–159.
[ii] Joel Stein, “Just Say Ohm,” 54.
[iii] “Research Summary: ADHD Meditation,” ABC7 KGO-TV/DT, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, accessed June 18, 2006, http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=edell&id=4198564
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] “Eastern Philosophy Gains Acceptance In Bay State,” The Boston Channel.com, accessed June 18, 2006, http://www.thebostonchannel.com/print/9322474/detail.html
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Liz Neporent, “Meditation Helps Kids Chill Out, Reduce Impulsivity,” May 21, 2013, accessed February 6, 2017, gma.yahoo.com/meditation-helos-kids-chill-reduce-impulsiveness-021108463-abc-news-topstories.html
[ix] John Cloud, “Losing Focus? Studies Say Meditation May Help,” Time.com, August 6, 2010, accessed February 6, 2017, http://www.sott.net/article/213363-Losing-Focus-Studies-Say-Meditation-May-Help
[x] Daniel Goleman & Richard Davidson, Altered Traits, 2017, Avery: New York, 251.
[xi] John Cloud, “Losing Focus? Studies Say Meditation May Help,” Time.com, August 6, 2010, accessed February 6, 2017, http://www.sott.net/article/213363-Losing-Focus-Studies-Say-Meditation-May-Help
[xii] Sandra Blakeslee, "Study Suggests Meditation Can Help Train Attention," New York Times, May 8, 2007, accessed 10-17-2017, http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/News/NYT_Med_0507.html
[xiii] Daniel Goleman & Richard Davidson, Altered Traits, 2017, 282.
[xiv] Ibid.