Does the Optimal Attentional Spotlight Exist?

最佳注意力聚光灯存在吗？研究积极和消极分心之间的平衡，它对学习的影响，以及它与婴幼儿ADHD症状的关系在发育过程中，我们学会了利用与行为相关或有助于当前目标的嘈杂和分散注意力的刺激(Corbetta，Patel&Shulman，2008)。例如，当我们坐在街边的咖啡馆里时，我们学会了忽略交通噪音，但当我们开车时，我们却没有。这是怎么发生的？早期个体间在这种能力上的差异是否会影响未来的发展和学习？这个项目挑战了通常认为分心是消极因素，将分心概念化为注意力特征的观点。换句话说，我们的目标是研究分心是否可以被定义为一种连续体，在这种连续体中，极端情况--要么是对感官刺激反应过度，要么是无法发现并将注意力集中到突出的和信息性的刺激上--对适应和学习同样有害，而中等水平的刺激是有益的。由于大脑和认知发展中心的幼儿实验室即将开放，该实验室的设计初衷是为了支持最新的科学方法，我们现在可以向年轻人提出这个研究问题，并研究早期个体之间在注意力分散和随着时间的推移保持注意力能力方面的差异是否与幼儿的学习技能和随后的儿童后期学业成绩有关。此外，我们将探索注意成分与注意力缺陷/多动障碍(ADHD)症状之间的关系，以深入了解ADHD的早期行为和神经科学标记物。

Does the Optimal Attentional Spotlight Exist? Investigating the Balance Between Positive and Negative Distraction, its Effects on Learning, and its Relationship with ADHD symptoms in Infants and ToddlersDuring the course of development, we learn to take advantage of noisy and distracting stimuli when they are behaviourally relevant or contribute to the current goal (Corbetta, Patel, & Shulman, 2008). For instance, we learn to ignore traffic noise while we are sitting in cafe' near the street but not when we are driving. How does it happen? Do early interindividual differences in this ability impact further development and learning? This project challenges the common idea of distraction as a negative factor and conceptualised distraction as an attentional trait. In other words, we aim to study whether distractibility can be defined as a continuum in which extremes -either an over response to sensory stimulation or an inability to detect and orient attention towards salient and informative stimuli- are equally detrimental for adaptation and learning, while medium levels are beneficial. Thanks to the forthcoming opening of the Toddler Lab at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, which has been designed from the ground up to support the latest in scientific methodologies, we can now address this research question to young populations and study whether early interindividual differences in distractibility and in the ability to sustain attention over time are related to learning skills in toddlers and subsequent school achievement in later childhood. Furthermore, we will explore the relationship between attentional components and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms to gain insight into early behavioural and neuroscientific markers of ADHD.