A new study has found that children are able to avoid falling into a “learning trap” that is often felt in adults. Children are always learning. They spend almost every moment of their day learning, even if they don’t realize it. They are learning through interactive play, creative play, and sensory play. They are even learning while sitting and looking through a book.
Studies are always being done to look at child development, and how children learn. They want to understand how their mind works, and how they absorb information. They also want to know how their brain works differently than adults.
According to Medical Xpress, there is a “learning trap” that a lot of adults fall into, but this does not seem to impact children. This was found based on a study that was done by Ohio State University, and it can be read in full here.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but the mere fact that children cannot focus their attention means they are less likely to fall into a learning trap. Adults, with their developed brains, are able to focus on a task to completion, but this may not be to their benefit.
To complete this study, researchers used eye-tracking technology on children as they watched a computer screen. They found that their attention wandered all over the screen when they were trying to complete a task. Adults found they could complete the task quickly by focusing on particular objects, but that did not help children.
Children who were 4 and 5 years old found that their “wandering eye” helped them complete the task. This was true when the task unexpectedly changed, and they were also able to notice things that adults had missed. Since adults were focusing so much on one thing, they missed other things on the screen. They also had a harder time adapting to the changing tasks as they stayed too focused on the one thing they were doing. The wandering eye allowed children to be able to quickly divert their attention.
Researchers stated that the ability to focus is obviously a good thing for everyday tasks, but this study shows that there may be some benefits to thinking like a child sometimes. If we use our brains like children, we may be able to notice things in the world that we haven’t before, mainly because they don’t appear to be relative to our lives at that moment.
Sources: Medical Xpress, Science Direct