My dissertation examined both cognitive and motivational elements in looking at sustained attention in preschool children. The abstract and entire text of the dissertation is available below.
Title: Sustained Attention, Self-regulation, and Motivation During a Maze Task for Preschool Children:A Motivational, Cognitive Analysis of the Process of Sustained Interest
Abstract
Sustained attention in children has long been conceptualized as a capacity that increases with age (Levy, 1979), a view that has done little to promote investigation and implementation of methods to promote sustained attention in children. However, recent research (Ruff, Capozzoli, & Weissberg, 1998) presents evidence that contextual factors may exert an important influence on sustained attention, supporting the need for research into what and how contextual factors may influence this process. In order to pursue this need, the research presented here examined the roles of age, skill level, and self-regulation in influencing sustained attention in young children completing maze puzzles.
Participants were 35 preschool children. Children were given maze puzzles of various difficulty levels and with varying amounts of choice. The first portion of the study assessed the ability level of each child for the maze puzzles. Sustained attention times for working on easier, ability level, and harder mazes was then assessed (No Choice Phase). Next children were provided with all three levels simultaneously (Choice Phase) and allowed to vary their choice of difficulty level in order to investigate the influence of choice on sustained attention. During the Choice Phase, children’s self-regulation of their choices was investigated to determine what influence the types of choices they made would have on sustained attention. Lastly, children were given a session of choice where all three piles contained the same level of difficulty in order to investigate the influence of an apparent, but meaningless choice. In addition, children’s awareness of task difficulty was assessed.
Results found sustained attention to be considerably longer during the Choice Phase of the study, supporting the importance of choice in promoting attention and calling into question the conception of sustained attention as a maturational skill. Results also suggest that children self-regulated their choices during the Choice Phase in different ways which influenced the overall difficulty of the mazes they completed. This research supports the usefulness of this methodology for examining the relations between sustained attention, motivation, and metacognitive self-regulation of choice. Results also have implications for promoting sustained attention in preschool children and promoting future academic achievement.