ATTENTION WITH
GREATER IMMERSION IN CHILDREN
Olga Sokolova
Zheleznovdsk, Russia
Abstract
Attention
in children is closely connected with attention styles and arousal. For most
children, alternating styles of attention (between narrow and diffuse and
between objective and immersed) reflect the brain wave activity. Alternating
styles of attention is a key factor for attaining the flexibility for moving
freely by degrees among and within attention styles. But how is it possible to stimulate
narrowly objective forms of attention in children? The paper supports the
possibility to achieve attention flexibility through open focus attention. The
possible way to use mentioned above focus attention in foreign language
teaching practice was proposed.
Key
words : arousal, attention styles, attention flexibility, focus attention,
language, education
1.
Introduction
Human attention can be theoretically
divided in four types. Attention is the means by which we relate to experience.
Attention styles are defined as those processes that control the proximity,
scope, speed, stability and direction of awareness (Fehmi, 1980). Attention
style and physiology have reciprocal impact. Emphasis of attentional style can
be used as both an unconscious and conscious
vehicle or strategy for managing foreign language acquisition in children. For
example, we may broaden the scope of our attention in order to diffuse the power of some subset
of experience or we may narrow focus on experience in order to enhance the intensity
of its impact or we may narrow focus away and so avoid or deny the existence of
experience (Fehmi, 1989). All of these and other differing attention strategies
affect children foreign language perception and acquisition.
As a result of habitual overuse,
children fall prey to some single attention style, or a limited range of
attention styles, as representing children dominant habitual identity. An
example of identity may be reflected by a narrow objective type of awareness.
This paper presents a view how children pay attention to what they pay
attention to. Awareness of attention and attentional balance, stability and
flexibility are fundamental. Children in the times of the explosive growth of
the information age, which emphasize narrowly focused visualization and
intellect and objectification which cuts
them off from their other senses may stop loosing their natural ability to
realize attentional flexibility. They may wide narrow focused objectivity that
has become a habitual fixation of modern everyday life.
Attentional flexibility limitnations
associated with identifying with one or a limited subset of attentional styles.
It is only with attention training that children identity can be liberated from
rigidly held attention biases. The implementation of attention skills, and the
integration and balancing of attention styles can significantly enhance the
quality of life. A specific example of such a transformed attention is
presented in this paper. Its initial formation is dependent upon middle levels
of arousal or arousal portal. This portal represents the window to the
experience of more subtle realities associated with more subtle and balanced
ways of paying attention. Learning to pay attention to how a child pays
attention is synonymous with learning to learn. Learning to pay attention in an
effortless interested style and learning to attend to and apply such effortless
interested attention in every appropriate situation is an example of the
process of learning to learn efficiently.
2.
ATTENTION STYLES
Narrow or pointed type of attention, the
immersed narrow focus type of attention, diffuse focus-objective attention were
proposed for attention type analyses by (Fehmi, 1989). Each of these types of
attention represent individual characteristics of attention. The diffuse or
broad attention is associated with dimensional, simultaneous and equal
attention to all available external and internal stimuli and the space in which
they occur. Narrow or pointed attention refers to an awareness of a limited
subset of available stimuli to the exclusion of the other stimuli. The extreme
of narrow focused attention is one-pointed attention. The extreme of immersed
or absorbed attention refers to a way of relating to available experience such
that the person paying attention enters into union with or becomes totally
absorbed in the experience. The extreme of objective or separate attention are
associated with coldness where as extreme immersed or absorbed attention may be
associated with warmth or closeness, full immersion in ongoing single or
multisensory experience.
A narrow focus-objective type of
attentional style which is most dominant in our society, a civilization
disposed to the overuse of linear-objective information processing skills.
While rapid and complete attentional narrowing and objective focus is at times
necessary for optimal behavior, there is, in our day, an unfortunate tendency
toward overuse and consequent rigidity of narrow-objective attentional
processing. The extreme case of temporary attention fixation occurs in
conditions of panic where the act of narrow focusing upon and objectifying the
feared object may bring rigidity of focus and directional orientation. A less
extreme, narrow-objective focus is obsessive worry and preoccupation with
recurrent thought. The discussion presented previously describes children
predilection to narrow focused-objective attention and their consequent
obsession with and fixation upon its use.
The attentional opposite of narrow-objective
attention is a diffuse focus-immersed attention. This type of attention
represents the release from a narrow and objective attentional focus, arelease
which is important for attentional effectiveness and flexibility. Normalization
of function, healing, and diffusion of accumulated stress are the result of
diffuse-immersed attention. Increased unity or immersion leads to the lapse of
self-consciously directed attention, and is exemplified in the effortless
performance of well-learned or instinctive behavior. Fehmi (1989) demonstrated
the effortless, creative performance of an art form or athletic feat in his
clinic-laboratory where accomplished artists, athletes demonstrate flexible
control over the dimensions of attention. They are uniquely adept at merging
with a wide array of sensory experiences simultaneously.
The diffuse focus-objective mode of
attention is one in which multisensory experience is simultaneously and
objectively present, a potentially vast multidimensional objective awareness.
An array of objective sensations hang suspended in the midst of a more general
diffuse awareness of space. Playing in a band, appreciating a panoramic sunset,
going for a walk or driving a car – these are among the activities for which an
appropriate relational strategy may emphasize diffuse focus-objective
attention.
The immersed narrow focus type of
attention includes absorptive modes such as intellectually interesting or
emotionally and physically pleasant and stimulating activities. These are
activities which child wishes to amplify with narrow focus and to which one
wishes to move experientially closer to, in order to intensify and savor the
event. Child may observe the narrow focus absorbed look on the face of an
enraptured thinker, fantasizer, concertgoer, game player or someone
experiencing deep muscle massage or other sensuous physical activities. Part of
the attraction of certain cultural, artistic and athletic of physical events
may be to provide an occasion for becoming absorbed and immersed with minimum
self-consciousness. This also makes understandable the common example of the
inertia and irritation experienced when distracted or interrupted from a task
in which you are narrowly and deeply involved. Child is forced to become
self-conscious again and to experience the self-other split again. Preconscious
performance of a well learned task is a most common example of when child is
narrowly immersed in functioning. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) appears to describe
this attention as responsible for sustaining og the experience.
3.
MIDDLE LEVELS OF AROUSAL
The potential for an important
rearrangement of combinations of attention styles exists in the arousal portal
of children attention. The balance of narrow-objective versus diffuse-immersed
attention styles shifts back and forth, usually determined by momentary
attention biases, external and internal sensory factors impacting arousal. In
the arousal portal region, where the narrow and objective attention dimensions
are present in approximate equal balance with the diffuse and immersed
attention dimensions, there is the potential for a restructured form, one may
become aware of a narrow-immersed attention in the center of awareness which is
simultaneously surrounded and permeated by a diffuse-objective attention.
This transformed attention is effortless
and allows the diffusion of stress as it occurs, and, therefore, is
self-balancing and stabilizing in physiologic arousal by its nature. This transformed
attention structure is not driven out of balance because any stress does not
and cannot accumulate since narrow-objective attention is not emphasized at the
expense of diffuse-immersed attention. Each restructured pair of attention
styles, narrow-immersed or diffuse-objective attention, appears to represent
the simultaneous functioning of combined processes along with equal activation
of left and right brain hemisphere processes. Thus, the transformed version of
attention result in more stable mid-range arousal and is associated with more
stable and optimum function and performance. It represents greater integration
of the activity of both hemisphere in simultaneously reflecting sequential and
parallel processing. The transformed combinations of attentions of attention
supports a wide range of positive effects, from remediation of function to the
optimization of function. It also supports an on-going sense of well being,
energy and acceptance of experience. The arousal portal represents the window
to more sublte and integrated realities which are mediated by the above described
transformed attention style combinations.
The four major styles of attention, and
their various influences upon the nervous system and arousal level. The center
moderate range of the arousal continuum supports attentional balance and open
focus attention. A most significant distinction between transformed attention
and more ordinary forms is the presence in the former of a conscious over
witness of limitless sensory experience existing in space. This broadly
grounding and balancing experience supports its own continuance and general
metal and autonomic balance. According to given above arousal findings it may
be quite natural to realize a personal experience of each of the described
attentional styles.
4.
FOCUS ATTENTION
Full or open focus attention, includes
diffuse, narrow, objective, and immersed forms of attention occure more or less
equally and simultaneously, with an awareness of their presence. The ultimate
goal of open focus training is to attain the attentional flexibility adequate
for moving freely by degrees among and within attentional styles, including
all, at times, simultaneously and equally. From what is known about each of the
independent parameters of attention, one is tempted to ascribe narrow and
objective attention to left hemisphere organized processes and diffuse and
immersed attention to right hemisphere organized processes. In any case,
because of the physical and functional independence of each of the mechanisms
which give rise to each of the parameters of attention, it is possible for all
of them to be present simultaneously (Fehmi, 1982). Thus, children possess the
potential to attend to any given content of attention in a variety of styles,
individually, in combination, and by degress. However, with socialization
training and by habit, children usually attend to familiar and similar
situations in essentially the same way, that is, habitually.
It is quite evident that fixation,
rigidity, obsession, repression, depression, resistance, attachment, detachment,
loneliness, addiction, inhibition, neurosis, anxiety and other reactions to the
contents of attention, which are triggered and supported by biopsychosocial
spiritual factors, are not supported in an environment of flexible attention.
It should be quite natural to escape fixation, rigidity, obsession, repression,
depression, resistance, attachment, detachment, loneliness, addiction,
inhibition, neurosis, anxiety to the content of attention during foreign
language classes and stimulate children react positively when teachers let them
guide teachers to attend to what they value and in the mode of attention they
feel is appropriate.
There is little doubt that all
successful learning and optimal performance involves directing appropriate
styles of attention toward relevant stimuli in an effectively choreographed
sequence (Fehmi, 1982). Styles of attention, fluid and relevant figure and
ground processing, and the timing of their occurrence are obviously critical
factors for all learning.
5.
CONTENT
In general, content of attention,
whether it is a pleasant or unpleasant image or thought or a feeling or an
emotion, or a sound or a taste or a smell, or a limited combination of sense
experiences, does not inherently produce, or require a change in attention. With
appropriate training, it may be possible to bring any of the available
attentional styles to relate to or process any content of attention, pleasant,
or unpleasant. While specific past conditioning or training may have brought
into child’s perception specific habitual forms of attention in response to
familiar content, child may learn to bring other forms of attention into being.
This is an important point. The fact is that even when certain feelings,
emotions or other sensory experience tend to be present with the adoption of
specific attentional styles, this connection need not be permanent and may be
unlearned. A feeling, emotion or other specific content need not necessarily
bring about or signify the presence of a specific attentional style, although it
may presently do so.
6.
THE FLEXIBILITY OF ATTENTION
The flexibility of attention to
individual and combinations of changing content is associated with the
alternate stabilization and subsequent destabilization of various degrees of in
and out of phase coherence. This mechanism is proposed as the foundation for
timely ever changing objective knowledge, creativity, performance, and, in
general, life as we know it, along the subject and object interface. In fact,
it is inconsistent with common sense to expect flexibility of attention or
flexibility of the contents of attention from a system of activity which is
permanently wired or phase locked. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine the
development of effective attention or appropriate continuity of objects of
attention without some ability to briefly fix and maintain coherence for a
time.
Learning how to bring these experiences
into ever larger fields of present experience is valuable in order to diffuse
any associated emotion, tension or other change. Attention training can be used
to enhance forms of attention to enhance forms of attention that support the
integration and diffusion of any given information.
7.
NARROWLY OBJECTIVE FORMS OF ATTENTION STIMULATION
Recent evidence suggests that forty
percent of the daily time our planet animals are resting or not engaging in the
type of goal-oriented behavior which is associated with narrowly objective
forms of attention. However, most children spend almost no time, on a daily
basis, in diffuse and immersed forms of attention, just not doing. It is
hypothesized that this other process appears to be largely related to the
limited ways children pay attention, which support goal related activity.
Any stress accumulation appears to be
the result of children overuse of their effortful, objective and narrowly
focused concentration. Their habit of exclusive narrow focused objective
attention prevents the natural process of normalization of physiological
function and release of stress. It is quite important that a balanced attention
associated with an ongoing release or diffusion of stress-tension. Attentional
rigidity is related to the prevention of physiological and metal homeostasis.
Thus attentional rigidity should be taken into account for foreign language
teaching and acquisition.
8.
CONCLUSION
By giving attention to this ungrippable
space children eventually become aware of the previously unnoticed act of
gripping or physical tension, which is associated with children habitual bias
toward narrow and objective forms of attention. Awareness of gripping is a
precondition for the motivation to intentionally release this same gripping
tension. When this habitual attention related tension is released, attentional
scope broadens and supports an awareness of also being immersed in a perceived
vast and pervasive surround. Bu how can children release? Of course with the
help of a diffuse focus-immersed attention. This type of attention represents
the release from a narrow and objective attentional focus, a release which is
important for attentional effectiveness and flexibility.
After opening attention, while including
children already present narrow objective attention to sensation in the center
of children’s new open awareness, they experience a surround of immersed
attention. The perceived surround, the scope of children attention is not only
expended, but is experienced with greater immersion. Thus, the ground of
children experience is realized as a more pronounced sense of presence, a
centered and unified awareness, an identity with a vast quality less awareness
in which all objects of sensation float, as children themselves.
A teachers continue to experience space
more intimately, more simultaneously and equally, they deepen the absorption of
children attention in the totally of present experience. All that is necessary
to change the balance of these integrated forms of attention is to effort fully
apprehend an object, to over-focus upon space as an object or concept. However,
teacher can learn to quickly reestablish balanced forms of attention.
Alternating styles of attention is a key factor for attaining the attentional
flexibility for moving freely by degrees among and within attentional styles.
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Journal of International Scientific Publications :
Educational Alternatives, Volume 10 Part 1
ISSN 1313-2571, Published at :http://www.scientific-publications.net
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