Why your child’s distraction might actually help them learn

Kids are known for getting distracted. They bounce between ideas, wander off task, and jump into new things before finishing the last. It’s not just short attention spans. They actually explore the world more than adults do.

For a long time, scientists weren’t sure why this happens. Are children just curious by nature, or is something going on in their brains that makes them lose focus?

In a new study, researchers turned the tables and asked adults to act like kids during a task.

Something surprising happened: the adults got just as distracted and scattered with their attention as the kids did. Turns out, the issue isn’t just curiosity – it’s memory.

The role of working memory

Working memory is the system in your brain that helps you hold on to information just long enough to use it.

The working memory system is what keeps your focus locked when you’re trying to remember the steps to a recipe or follow a teacher’s instructions.

In kids, this part of the brain isn’t fully developed yet. That’s what makes it harder for them to stay on track.

Researchers found that when adults were forced to multitask and overload their working memory, they started acting like children – switching tasks, missing obvious rewards, and failing to stick with the most helpful strategy.

“We made it difficult for adults to focus by filling their working memory with things that weren’t relevant to what they were trying to accomplish,” said Vladimir Sloutsky, a professor of psychology at Ohio State.

“And when we did that, adults began to over explore and scatter their attention much like children do.”

Testing the theory

To test their theory, the researchers set up a simple game. They asked 40 children, all 5 years old, and 71 adults to play a computer game where they collected virtual candy from four alien creatures.

Each alien gave out a specific amount of candy – 1, 2, 3, or 10 pieces – but the players didn’t know that at first.

The goal was clear: get as much candy as possible. But since the aliens moved around, the players had to figure out which alien gave the best rewards without relying on their position.

Scattered attention in adults

Some of the adults had a twist added to their game. They were given an extra task: to watch a stream of numbers and say out loud the second number every time two odd numbers appeared in a row. This extra job was designed to overload their working memory.

Even with this challenge, most participants were able to figure out which alien gave the most candy.

“Importantly, like in children, this scattered attention was observed, despite high levels of task accuracy,” said Qianqian Wan, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher.

Kids stll learn when they’re distracted

After playing the game, participants were asked to identify which alien gave the highest reward.

Nearly all of them got it right – including the kids. So, even though they got distracted and explored more, they were still learning. The difference showed up in how often they switched creatures during the game.

“As we expected from previous research, the children were generally slower to start selecting the most rewarding creature and switched creatures much more often than the adults who weren’t asked to do an additional task,” Wan said.

“But the adults who were under the working memory load behaved much like the children, not settling on the most rewarding creature. It is compelling evidence that an undeveloped working memory is behind children’s tendency to distribute their attention.”

Attention depends on memory

So why does memory affect where we place our attention? Working memory doesn’t just hold information – it helps guide what we pay attention to.

Scientists call this an “attentional map,” which is like a mental plan that helps us decide what to look at and focus on. Adults usually have strong attentional maps, so they stick to helpful patterns. But kids don’t have this skill yet.

“These maps may guide attention to what is deemed important, allow selective information sampling and more efficient task performance,” Wan said.

“But if you don’t have sufficient working memory resources, these maps become harder to form and maintain. The result is that you have to broaden your attention to compensate for uncertainty.”

That’s exactly what happened in the study. Adults under mental pressure lost focus in the same way children do. Their brains couldn’t hold on to the plan, so they explored more randomly.

Kids’ brains just work differently

The research shows that what looks like “distracted” behavior in kids isn’t necessarily a problem. It’s just part of how their brains are built at that age.

Children’s tendency to overly explore might even give them an edge in some situations. They may catch details that adults overlook. They may also learn in more flexible ways because they aren’t locked into one approach.

“These findings could inform teaching strategies that work with, rather than against, young children’s natural learning tendencies,” Wan said.

The full study was published in the journal Journal of Experimental Psychology General.

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