Sustained attention
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The ability to keep paying attention to a situation or task in spite of distractions, fatigue or boredom.
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Research suggests that ADHD involves a significant difficulty with sustained attention, also called attention span or persistence of effort. They have trouble sticking with things for as long as others. Though they do have shorter attention spans, keeping their attention on something for a long span of time is the most difficult part of paying attention for children with ADHD. In fact, difficulty with sustained attention is one of the three hallmarks of ADHD (which was covered on the page called "A Better Understanding." Do you remember the other two hallmarks? Let's do a quick check!
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Johns Hopkins has been doing some research on sustained attention and have studied a learning strategy called FOCUS. Students are explicitly taught the steps of sustaining attention. If you want to read the article (and you do!), click the button!
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When an activity is something the child considers uninteresting, sustaining attention can be a challenge for any student but especially so for those with ADHD. While children whose executive function skills are more intact are able to "force" themselves to focus, children with ADHD struggle. This struggle is not completely related to difficulty with sustained attention, of course. If we just consider those EF skills already covered, you'd see quickly how interactive the EF skills are. Their difficulty with response inhibition makes it hard for them to stop shifting attention to more interesting activities. Their working memory deficits can interfere with them remembering what happened the last time they didn't get a school assignment completed. Their emotional control issues can overwhelm them. When all of these processes interfere, sustaining attention can be difficult or impossible. |
So what can be done?
Click the document below to see some ideas.
Go back to the main EF page so that you can choose which EF skill to look at next.
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Check your understanding. Then come back here.
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Onward to Task Initiation!
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