Neuroscience
Psychologists have developed a form of training, involving biofeedback, that can boost people's ability to concentrate. The system shows potential as a way to help people with ADHD (i.e an attention deficit). The work was inspired by research showing that brain areas involved in arousal overlap with those involved in sustained attention.
Participants were first tested on a boring concentration task, during which single numbers between 1 and 9 appeared on a computer screen hundreds of times. The task was to press the left mouse key in response to any number that appeared, except for 3.
Half the participants then undertook the biofeedback training, during which they were shown how their arousal levels - as indicated by a computer reading of the sweatiness of their skin - increased when the researcher clapped his hands and called "wake up". With practice, the participants used the computer feedback to learn to create that burst of arousal entirely by themselves, in time with their own utterance of the word "now".
The remaining participants, instead of completing this training, played a computer game, and acted as a control group.
All the participants then repeated the boring concentration task. For the participants who'd completed the training, the prompt to boost their own arousal was indicated by a number appearing in grey rather than the usual black (controls also saw this, but for them it did not act as an arousal prompt).
The participants who'd undertaken the biofeedback training, including several with ADHD, showed substantial improvements in their ability to concentrate relative to the controls. This was indicated by a reduction in the number of errors they made (i.e. how many times they pressed the mouse button in response to the number 3), and the fact that their reaction times didn't become more variable with time, whereas the reactions of the control group did.
Redmond O'Connell and colleagues, who conducted the research, said: "This experiment has demonstrated that a relatively simple cognitive intervention can lead to substantial neuropsychological improvements."
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OCONNELL, R., BELLGROVE, M., DOCKREE, P., LAU, A., FITZGERALD, M., ROBERTSON, I. (2008). Self-Alert Training: Volitional modulation of autonomic arousal improves sustained attention. Neuropsychologia, 46(5), 1379-1390. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.12.018
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Biofeedback training can boost concentration power
Psychologists have developed a form of training, involving biofeedback, that can boost people's ability to concentrate. The system shows potential as a way to help people with ADHD (i.e an attention deficit). The work was inspired by research showing that brain areas involved in arousal overlap with those involved in sustained attention.Participants were first tested on a boring concentration task, during which single numbers between 1 and 9 appeared on a computer screen hundreds of times. The task was to press the left mouse key in response to any number that appeared, except for 3.
Half the participants then undertook the biofeedback training, during which they were shown how their arousal levels - as indicated by a computer reading of the sweatiness of their skin - increased when the researcher clapped his hands and called "wake up". With practice, the participants used the computer feedback to learn to create that burst of arousal entirely by themselves, in time with their own utterance of the word "now".
The remaining participants, instead of completing this training, played a computer game, and acted as a control group.
All the participants then repeated the boring concentration task. For the participants who'd completed the training, the prompt to boost their own arousal was indicated by a number appearing in grey rather than the usual black (controls also saw this, but for them it did not act as an arousal prompt).
The participants who'd undertaken the biofeedback training, including several with ADHD, showed substantial improvements in their ability to concentrate relative to the controls. This was indicated by a reduction in the number of errors they made (i.e. how many times they pressed the mouse button in response to the number 3), and the fact that their reaction times didn't become more variable with time, whereas the reactions of the control group did.
Redmond O'Connell and colleagues, who conducted the research, said: "This experiment has demonstrated that a relatively simple cognitive intervention can lead to substantial neuropsychological improvements."
_________________________________
OCONNELL, R., BELLGROVE, M., DOCKREE, P., LAU, A., FITZGERALD, M., ROBERTSON, I. (2008). Self-Alert Training: Volitional modulation of autonomic arousal improves sustained attention. Neuropsychologia, 46(5), 1379-1390. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.12.018
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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After the training, participants were less distracted by scary picturesA simple computer training task, which involves ignoring irrelevant information, can change the brain's wiring to make it less responsive to threatening pictures. That's according...
- Brain Training For Babies Actually Works (short Term, At Least)
Products designed to give babies and young children an educational headstart are hugely popular but they're mostly backed up by weak science. In some cases, for example with educational DVDs, there's even evidence of potential harm to...
- Brain Training Games Don't Work
Six weeks of computer brain training has little benefit beyond boosting performance on the specific tasks included in the training. That's according to an online study involving more than 11,000 participants conducted as part of the BBC's Bang...
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Rotating objects in our mind's eye is a bit like doing it in the real world. For example, when asked to judge if one shape is a rotated version of another, the time it takes us to answer correlates with the angular discrepancy between the two shapes....
- Attention Training For Young Children Has Noticeable Benefit
Just five days of computer-based training over a few weeks can boost the attentional abilities of four-year-old children by an amount equivalent to half the increase in ability typically seen between the ages of four and six years of age. The finding...