I would like to know more about the differences between attention and concentration, so I can understand better the concepts presented especially in chapter 4.
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Information Processing
This week, chapters 4 and 5 covered cognitive and socioemotional development, which I find to be detailed and thus overwhelming to absorb. Piaget's theory about cognitive development is comprehensive but can be divided in the following stages:
Many things stood up about Piaget's theory, but I will explore more the preoperational stage which includes Concentration, focused type of thought, which is characteristic of this stage. Piaget's argue that children in this stage tend to focus more in one aspect of the object or situation and ignore other relevant aspects. His theory seems to be consistent with the stage of synaptic cognitive pruning, which starts at around the age of 2. It means that children go from a vast world to be observed to focusing and concentrating in specific aspects of situations/objects. I understand that having a "narrowly focused thought" is the key for specialization and increase in brain's efficiency. However, it seems during this stage children are not attentive; they are easily distracted. It sounds contradictory because attention and concentration, in my mind, are intrinsically related. In other references, attention is defined as the physical capacity of perceiving stimulus and concentration is the ability to focus attention. If youngsters are naturally capable of concentrating why they are so easily distracted? Is that because the information presented is not interesting enough? Maybe is it because their ability to perceive what is happening around is stronger? What if being able to pay attention to everything around was an advantage for survival against predators for our antecessors?
I would like to know more about the differences between attention and concentration, so I can understand better the concepts presented especially in chapter 4.
I would like to know more about the differences between attention and concentration, so I can understand better the concepts presented especially in chapter 4.
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I think the word "concentrating" is where it got confusing. According to Piaget, it is 'centration' that is the narrowly focused type of thought. I think the puzzles (conversion problems) in figure 4.2 (5th ed.) illustrate really well how young children aren't able to see beyond the details they focus on and see the big picture. Children are able to focus in on certain details of something but I personally don't think that means they have long attention spans. Anything loud, bright or shiny could easily distract them. I really like your idea, however, that this relates to a survival instinct. Constantly being aware of what's going on around you really makes sense if it were a skill we needed in the past to stay alive.
ReplyDeleteI agree. it says "they often concentrate on one aspect of a problem...". That got me confused because it means they often focused or center their attention into one aspect. In the end, to me, concentrate and centration are the same thing. Reading your comment made me think that, maybe, this stage is when they start to develop focus, but still have the sensorimotor stimulation that calls their attention, thus the lack of focus for long period of time.
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