Concentration is closely linked to attention and the two are often mistakenly confused with one another.
This is installment number two in a seven part series on learning:
- Attention.
- Concentration.
- Connections.
- Understanding.
- Remembering.
- Recalling.
- Expression.
Today's continuation tells you what needs to be achieved, if we have managed that first important step in the learning process - attention.
2. Concentration
Concentration is closely linked to attention and the two are often mistakenly confused with one another. Attention, however, is the important first step of, you guessed it, paying attention to what is important. This attention may only last for a few seconds, but without those crucial short timespan, concentration on that subject is impossible.
If you want to experience the difference between Attention and Concentration, watch this Selective Attention Test on YouTube - it takes just over one minute, but may surprise you.
Concentration is the ability to continue to pay attention for a longer period of time on a single subject. An essential ingredient is to ignore outside influences that may distract us. We receive information of outside influences through our senses - we hear distracting sounds, see movements from the corner of our eye, feel a label in our shirt itching in our neck, or smell dinner that is being cooked in the kitchen, for instance.
To continue to pay attention we therefore need the ability to ignore certain sensory input. Our brain will receive all these signals from the outside world, but we will rely on the sensory processing in our brain to divert all non-important information away from our conscious awareness in order to continue to pay attention to what is important.
Subconscious sensory processing lies at the heart of our ability to concentrate. An important element of this sensory processing is directional information. We use our two ears and our two eyes to determine where a signal comes from. If we can separate the sound and gestures coming from the teacher in front of us, from the distracting sounds and movements coming from the left or right from us, for instance, then our brain is in a position to pay attention to the teacher and ignore all other input.
Concentration is our ability to ignore sensory inputthat is unrelated to what we are paying attention to.
The brain has to learn how to do this. A newborn baby reacts to anything that happens around it, as it can not yet separate all that sensory input into separate streams of information. But after a few years the infant will normally have fine-tuned it's sensory processing and be better able to concentrate for longer periods of time. For a two year old that may only be a few minutes, while later on in life, we probably can stretch that to, say, half-an-hour.
It is rare to be able to fully concentrate for much longer, though, and most people will need a short period of rest, before returning to full concentration. A physical stretch, a yawn, a gentle rub of the eyes, a drink or a snack, can all provide this short rest to the (sensory processing) system.It is possible to train the brain to be less distracted and have longer spells of concentration. SAS specializes in this area as witnessed by many clients that reported an average improvement of 52.0 % in attention after taking a SAS programme. You can find more client feedback on the SAS Centre website under SAS Statistics - Client Profile and Feedback.
