Measuring brainwaves to understand how children pay attention

Researchers use electrodes to measure brain activity while children carry out tasks. Understanding this brain activity can provide clues as to how teachers might optimise the learning environment for children of different ages and abilities. In the second of a three-part series, cognitive neuroscientist Paul Matusz reveals what EEG shows about the development of attention and how multisensory environments may affect children’s learning.

Paying attention in multisensory environments like schools

Think of a group of children learning the Pythagorean theorem. The teacher is standing at the front of the classroom, explaining the theorem and providing visual information. Now imagine noisy roadworks just outside: This would make it very difficult to learn. Multiple senses interact during learning, that’s clear. But research into how children pay attention and learn often focuses on purely visual processes.

When adults carry out a task requiring focused attention, they are more distracted if something stimulates both their vision and hearing rather than just one sense – for example, if someone in their field of vision moves while talking loudly. Multisensory information is processed differently in the brain than things that we can only see or hear. Accordingly, EEG studies that investigate attention by looking only at visual (or auditory) information cannot explain how the brain pays attention in everyday, multisensory environments such as schools.

“As children grow older, and especially after they enter formal schooling, they generally become better at paying attention to relevant visual information.”

Visual and multisensory attention skills develop differently

My colleagues and I are studying how cognitive processes and their underlying brain mechanisms change as people age. This is vital for understanding how students of different ages learn in real classrooms. As children grow older, and especially after they enter formal schooling, they generally become better at paying attention to relevant visual information.

Paradoxically, younger children tend to be less distracted than older children and adults by multisensory information, especially when the task is hard. For example, when children aged six or seven search for familiar objects, like coloured shapes on a screen, the speed of their search is not affected by audiovisual distractors when there are many objects to search through. However, these audiovisual distractors do affect the search speed of older children and adults. These fascinating findings contradict conventional theories of children as ‘more distracted adults’. But we still know very little about the role of attention in learning, especially in the context of multisensory information and classroom-relevant study materials.

“Paradoxically, younger children tend to be less distracted than older children and adults by multisensory information, especially when the task is hard.”

How can advanced EEG methods help?

EEG researchers link specific brain responses to certain mental processes, such as the pattern that is detected when attention is focused on an object, which neuroscientists refer to as the N2pc component. I hope that new, advanced methods will allow us to use the N2pc component as a starting point for quantifying a child’s attention and capacity to learn in natural settings – even in the case of young children.

“We still know very little about the role of attention in learning.”

One approach called ‘electrical neuroimaging’ is proving to be a significant improvement on the traditional way of analysing EEG signals. The traditional approach analyses signals in a specific location on the scalp. Electrical neuroimaging analyses patterns in activity across time and space, over the whole of the scalp.

These newer methods, which take into account brain activity across the entire scalp, provide new insights into what happens in the brain when a person is paying attention. We can look at how the patterns in this activity change in response to different kinds of information, tasks, or contexts. These methods also enable us to compare these patterns in children and adults to see how the brain mechanisms that govern fast-paced mental skills like attention develop.

Electrical neuroimaging has revealed a great deal about the brain mechanisms involved in cognitive functions, but so far, studies have focused almost exclusively on adults. Moving forward, researchers like me are combining decades of accumulated EEG knowledge with these advanced EEG methods to study attention in contexts where traditional studies fall short. We are looking at children’s processing of visual information and more natural, multisensory information throughout their development. We are closer than ever before to understanding how attention develops in real-world settings.