ATTENTION AND CONCENTRATION
There is no greater heritage which you can give your child to aid in his mental development, character building, and success winning than a trained ability to control his attention and concentration. In fact, to the degree in which he is able to do this, will he be able to control himself and later to control others. The ability to do these two things is a part of the capacity of every successful man. Every effort that you will put forth to aid the child in the development of these faculties will repay you in many ways.
Attention is the application of the senses to the subject in mind. Attention controlled and prolonged is Concentration.
The opposite, absent-mindedness, is simply involuntary or uncontrolled attention.
The principal aid you can give the child is to teach him how to induce and control attention and to know its enemies and how to avoid them. Attention may be discussed under several different heads, but we shall confine ourselves to aids in inducing it. It mustbe led, not compelled or driven by will force. You may exert all the force you possess to center your attention upon one object for a prolonged period, but in spite of all you can do it will soon wander.
It is said that the longest period of time in which a mind will attend, without rest, to one subject, is a few seconds. At the end of that time there must come consciously or unconsciously, a period of relaxation.
William James, the psychologist, says that "doing work which requires concentration is like driving a hungry horse along a road lined on both sides with green grass. If left to himself the horse will stop to nibble. It is only by continual jerking and urging that he can be kept moving forward."
"In the same way the mind is inclined to wander. There must be conscious ability upon the part of the individual to urge it along and keep it busy at the task in hand."
The first stimulus to the attention is change. Prof. James says: "No one can possibly attend consciously to an object that does not change." A continual and unvarying sound soon makes no impression, you become used to it so that your mind no longer pays any attention to it. A picture may be very interesting but if you gaze at one object in it steadily you will soon go to sleep.
Take a sheet of paper and draw a heavy square upon it. Pin this upon the wall in front of you.Gaze steadily upon the square and see how long you can keep your mind upon it. Do this several times and you can become acquainted with the period of time during which you can hold your attention without change. The knowledge of the length of this cycle can be a guide of how rapidly to introduce change as a stimulus.
Now gaze at the square again, introducing a change before your attention has wandered. Look at the square, then at the different sides, the corners and the space inside. See it in different colors, see the square frame of one color and the center of another, change the combinations. Let the center be formed of irregular shaped discs of different colors and see them change places, forming new figures. See the frame as a picture frame and with imaginary pictures in it. See the pictures change and the objects moving. Let it be a moving picture screen and imagine the pictures moving there.
Let the square be the fence of a farm, set it all laid out in fields with the buildings, the stock and all the work that is going on there. While doing this make a continual change and attend to the different details of the picture at different times.
Keep up this exercise as long as you can hold your attention without wandering. Then start again and try to prolong the period in which you can control the attention. Let the movement of the conscious attention be more rapid if necessary to hold it fixed upon the picture.
Practice with the pictures on the wall and direct your attention from one detail to another, always changing before the attention wanders, keeping it absolutely under your control.
Attention to be perfect must be directed to one thing at a time. It must be centered and not scattered. Perfect attention is a rifle, not a shotgun. You can best stimulate attention by use of one sense at a time. At the same time see to it that the other senses are relaxed and at rest.
It is possible to divide the attention but then it can not be of the highest quality. Try the experiment of doing a simple problem in arithmetic and at the same time say a familiar verse, as "Humpty-Dumpty." Again try to write the lines of "Mary had a little lamb," while you say aloud the lines of "Humpty-Dumpty." While you did succeed in doing the first you do not succeed in doing the second. This experiment should be tried by all children to show them the effect of dividing the attention and of how it may be done when necessary, but only to a certain degree. The difficulty of the verse and problem can be accommodated to the age of the child.
The attention may be divided between two objects or acts if they call for the use of two different senses or are different in their order. You can not divide your attention between two acts of the sameorder, as two arithmetic problems, one mental and the other written, or between two operations of the same sense. You can not listen to two quartets singing at the same time, but you can attend to one and smell some flowers at the same time and do both fairly well. While using one of the senses for fixed attention train the others to relax.
This will depend upon the strength of the stimulus or force which excites it. The sense of sight is the strongest of all the senses and therefore can exert the strongest stimulus, and should be used in all possible cases. In the exercises with the square the changes are all visual and they continue the strongest stimulus.
Another strong stimulus can be induced by the feelings of either pleasure or displeasure. Happy, joyful anticipation or fear, horror, or disgust will arouse the attention.
Familiarity also aids the attention because of the feelings which it incites. Visual pictures which contain familiar scenes are better and all changes introduced should be of familiar ideas in order to take advantage of this fact.
The more you embrace in the attention the less penetrating it will be. Do not try to take in the whole picture or object all the time, but change from one detail to another, centering the attention on one at a time and thus building the perfect whole.
Always become interested in the thing to which you are striving to direct your attention. Boys have no difficulty in paying close attention and remembering the ball score and the batting average of the players but to ask them to pay as strict attention to a lecture on an uninteresting subject is asking the impossible. The compelling element of interest has been taken away.
This is a great lesson for all parents and teachers; if the results of fixed attention are to be expected, the interest must be supplied and maintained, by natural or imaginary means.
Prolonged expectancy is a great aid to holding the attention. The element of curiosity is a great impelling force in the child and even in adult life. This can be taken advantage of in prolonging the attention.
The element of expectancy also affects the results of attention. The thing you expect is the thing most easily found. If you wish to aid a friend who is searching for a lost article you first learn as nearly as possible just what it looks like, so that you may know what you are expected to find.
Exercise.—In the following lines count all the 5s.
5 0 3 4 2 6 5 7 4 6 7 8 9 8 0 7 6 8 7 5 4 3 5 7 6 5 4 3 7
9 3 7 5 8 4 3 2 6 5 7 3 7 4 5 9 6 8 7 0 2 3 4 2 6 5 8 3 4 9 8 5 6 7 2 2 3 0 9 8 6 5 7 4
Notice how readily the other digits pass before youreyes in more or less indistinct rows, but the 5s stand out more clearly. This is caused by your expectancy, your attention is fixed upon this one digit and cares nothing for others. Count the 9s and note the change of expectancy. Use any selected letter in this paragraph for additional practice.
It is not the easiest thing to learn to control and to prolong the attention, but it is one of the most important. Great results are never easily accomplished. Easily diverted attention is a contributing cause of failure in every undertaking and if allowed to continue, will become habitual absent-mindedness. See to it that your child does not acquire this unfortunate handicap.
The cure for diverted attention is to enter whole-heartedly and wholly into everything that you do, no matter how trivial it may be, do not change or lose your enthusiasm over it until fully completed. If you discover something more desirable, put it aside for the time being and attend to the thing started, until you have finished.
Learn to use better judgment about what you start, and when started, never change. It is the tendency to change which you are striving to overcome.
When one thing is finished go directly and enthusiastically to the next, without hesitation or indecision. If uncertain, learn to make a decision and go through with it to the end, and then do the betterthings which may have suggested themselves after starting.
These are immensely valuable lessons for children. Younger children, whose habits are more easily formed can not realize the importance of it so that the responsibility must rest upon you, the parents. See to it that right habits are formed and wrong ones avoided or corrected if they now exist. They will thank you for it many times in later years. Repeat any of the exercises given for sense training and prolong them for development of attention and concentration.
An unusually successful physician tells how his mother developed his conscious attention. Each time she told him to do something or sent him upon an errand she would require him to repeat to her just what she had told him to do. If he could not he had to stand and think it over, and if he had not paid good attention he was punished.
Sometimes he was given instructions and when he had left the house was called back and required to repeat in detail where he was going and what he was to do and say. By this method he learned to pay attention and thereby to remember well. In the practice of his profession he used this idea, requiring the parent or nurse to repeat his instructions for the care of the patient and the use of the medicine, in this way avoiding omissions and improving the result.
Follow this plan and help your children to learn to pay attention and to remember when told once.
An uninterrupted continuation of the flow of thought and undivided attention is concentration. It is the result of a well-regulated and controlled thought process. It is accomplished by patient and persistent effort. It is a reward of the highest value. There is no real effort connected with it, but you become so engrossed and interested in your thought that you are conscious of nothing else. Everything else is excluded and your whole consciousness is concentered upon one thought.
One moment's complete concentration will go farther toward the mastery of a lesson or solution of your problem than much time spent in idle, disconnected thought.
This is a faculty not easily mastered, but when once harnessed and under your control has the greatest constructive power.
The following exercises are valuable for prolonged periods of concentration, for developing the visual faculty, and exercising the productive imagination. They will prove of great worth to adults in helping with the construction and definite visualization of their life ideals and business problems. By this process you can easily learn to direct concentrated thought power to the bringing about of your plans and ideals.
Visualize a forest, into which some lumbermen are coming. See them cutting the trees, sawing them into mill lengths, and donkey engines drawing them to the railroad. They are loaded and hauled to the mill, where they are converted into lumber. See as much detail as you know of the mill processes.
The lumber is loaded on cars, shipped to the city, unloaded in a lumber yard, sold and hauled to the spot in the city where a house is to be erected. Follow the erection of the house, watch all the details of its construction until fully completed and the occupants have moved in and established their home. Furnish the house, each room separately, and arrange and cultivate the grounds.
This exercise can be continued as far as you desire to prolong the period of concentration. Add all possible detail which will depend upon the amount of knowledge which you possess along these lines. Some parts of the work you will be able to follow in detail, others you may know little about. If there is some other kind of construction that you are more familiar with you can use it in order to make the visualization definite.
See to it that your concentration is complete, do not allow your mind to wander. Keep this picture moving so as to hold the complete attention, becomeinterested in the development of each process. Prolong the period of concentration as far as possible.
This and the following exercises may be too complicated for your children, according to their age, but some of the simpler ones should be begun as early as eight years. The length and detail increasing with the ability and knowledge.
Remember that the children should be gathering knowledge by sensations. Those parts of the former picture, of the Construction of a Home, with which they are unfamiliar, should be brought to their attention. Describing the processes to them is good, but far better for them to get the original sensations for themselves. Take them to the forest, to the mill and lumber yard. Let them go where a house is being built and spend as much time there as possible. Parents should be purposefully adding to their children's stock of knowledge.
See a settler going into an unsettled country and beginning the construction of a farm. Watch him build his cabin, clear the land, break the virgin soil and put in the crops. See the development of the home, the well, the fences, barn, sheds, enlargement of fields, bringing on of stock, the harvesting of crops, building of greater barns, the new home, settling of the community. Continue the development of the farm as much in detail and as far as you can.
Visualize the first breaking of the field in the spring, the preparation of the soil for sowing, bringing of the seed corn from winter storage, the planting, cultivating, and growth of the crop. Watch the ripening, the cutting, shocking, husking, hauling and storing into barns.
Now follow the corn to the mill and through the processes of manufacture until it arrives on the table as corn flakes, syrup or corn bread.
Do this with the other crops. Follow the wheat until it is bread. The buckwheat to the steaming hot cakes. The same can be done with the stock on stock farms. The different kinds of farming can be used for variety. The great wheat farms present different pictures from the usual diversified ones.
The fruit orchard presents an interesting picture to work with. The spraying, the cultivating, irrigating, and all the process from the blossoming to the picking, sorting, packing, transportation and sale.
This same plan can be followed with all industries and manufacture of any article. Take the ore from the mine to the steel in the building or battleship. The oil from the well to gasoline in the auto tank. The automobile from metal, wood, leather and rubber to the picnic in the woods.
To visualize the growth of a seed or plant is interesting and helpful. Prepare the soil, plant theseed, see the little hair roots start out from the seed, the first green sprout, the breaking of the soil, the gradual growth, the leafing, branching, budding, and flowering. Hold your mind upon all pictures which you are visualizing. Direct it consciously, do not let it wander. Use motion, color, vividness of detail, everything that will aid concentration.
For this exercise younger children can use the making of a kite, building of a sand castle or doll house; a Hallowe'en party; a trip to the woods. Let him start with the well-known and familiar and lead him up to the unknown, which will develop a desire upon his part for more definite knowledge of the subject.
The chief factor in observation and in acquiring knowledge is Attention and Concentration. These can be produced by curiosity and the desire to excel, which is found in the love of competition and the game spirit. A good example of concentration is found in the juggler or acrobat on the vaudeville stage or in the circus. The ability to concentrate will grow with the doing of the exercises and playing games such as are mentioned here.
Any exercises or games which will result in improved ability to concentrate and pay attention are valuable. Play the games with the child, use any method or idea which suggests itself if it gets results. Give the child a conscious realization of the possession and value of this power. See to it that he continues to develop it.