Cargando…

Contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children

Sustained attention is a critical cognitive ability that improves over the course of development and predicts important real-world outcomes, such as academic achievement. However, the majority of work demonstrating links between sustained attention and academic skills has been conducted in lab-based...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gallen, Courtney L., Schaerlaeken, Simon, Younger, Jessica W., Anguera, Joaquin A., Gazzaley, Adam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9932079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36792755
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-29427-w
_version_ 1784889370726105088
author Gallen, Courtney L.
Schaerlaeken, Simon
Younger, Jessica W.
Anguera, Joaquin A.
Gazzaley, Adam
author_facet Gallen, Courtney L.
Schaerlaeken, Simon
Younger, Jessica W.
Anguera, Joaquin A.
Gazzaley, Adam
author_sort Gallen, Courtney L.
collection PubMed
description Sustained attention is a critical cognitive ability that improves over the course of development and predicts important real-world outcomes, such as academic achievement. However, the majority of work demonstrating links between sustained attention and academic skills has been conducted in lab-based settings that lack the ecological validity of a more naturalistic environment, like school. Further, most studies focus on targeted academic measures of specific sub-skills and have not fully examined whether this relationship generalizes to broad measures of academic achievement that are used for important, real-world, academic advancement decisions, such as standardized test scores. To address this gap, we examined the role of sustained attention in predicting targeted and broad assessments of academic abilities, where all skills were assessed in group-based environments in schools. In a sample of over 700 students aged 9–14, we showed that attention was positively related to performance on targeted assessments (math fluency and reading comprehension), as well as broad academic measures (statewide standardized test scores). Moreover, we found that attention was more predictive of targeted math sub-skills compared to assessments of broad math abilities, but was equally predictive of reading for both types of measures. Our findings add to our understanding of how sustained attention is linked to academic skills assessed in more ‘real-world’, naturalistic school environments and have important implications for designing tools to support student’s academic success.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-9932079
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2023
publisher Nature Publishing Group UK
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-99320792023-02-17 Contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children Gallen, Courtney L. Schaerlaeken, Simon Younger, Jessica W. Anguera, Joaquin A. Gazzaley, Adam Sci Rep Article Sustained attention is a critical cognitive ability that improves over the course of development and predicts important real-world outcomes, such as academic achievement. However, the majority of work demonstrating links between sustained attention and academic skills has been conducted in lab-based settings that lack the ecological validity of a more naturalistic environment, like school. Further, most studies focus on targeted academic measures of specific sub-skills and have not fully examined whether this relationship generalizes to broad measures of academic achievement that are used for important, real-world, academic advancement decisions, such as standardized test scores. To address this gap, we examined the role of sustained attention in predicting targeted and broad assessments of academic abilities, where all skills were assessed in group-based environments in schools. In a sample of over 700 students aged 9–14, we showed that attention was positively related to performance on targeted assessments (math fluency and reading comprehension), as well as broad academic measures (statewide standardized test scores). Moreover, we found that attention was more predictive of targeted math sub-skills compared to assessments of broad math abilities, but was equally predictive of reading for both types of measures. Our findings add to our understanding of how sustained attention is linked to academic skills assessed in more ‘real-world’, naturalistic school environments and have important implications for designing tools to support student’s academic success. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9932079/ /pubmed/36792755 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-29427-w Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Gallen, Courtney L.
Schaerlaeken, Simon
Younger, Jessica W.
Anguera, Joaquin A.
Gazzaley, Adam
Contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children
title Contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children
title_full Contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children
title_fullStr Contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children
title_full_unstemmed Contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children
title_short Contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children
title_sort contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9932079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36792755
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-29427-w
work_keys_str_mv AT gallencourtneyl contributionofsustainedattentionabilitiestorealworldacademicskillsinchildren
AT schaerlaekensimon contributionofsustainedattentionabilitiestorealworldacademicskillsinchildren
AT youngerjessicaw contributionofsustainedattentionabilitiestorealworldacademicskillsinchildren
AT contributionofsustainedattentionabilitiestorealworldacademicskillsinchildren
AT anguerajoaquina contributionofsustainedattentionabilitiestorealworldacademicskillsinchildren
AT gazzaleyadam contributionofsustainedattentionabilitiestorealworldacademicskillsinchildren