Correction appended.

Parents can take an active role in preparing their little ones for school by interacting with them in ways that boost their selective attention, Oregon researchers concluded in a study released earlier this year.

The study – "Family-based Training Program Improves Brain Function, Cognition, and Behavior in Lower Socioeconomic Status Preschoolers" -- was done by a team of researchers from the University of Oregon's Brain Development Lab, College of Education and Department of Psychology, as well as a psychologist from Willamette University. Study results were published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Courtney Stevens

The researchers' goal was to develop and assess a family-based program that would "improve brain systems for selective attention in preschool children." Researcher Courtney Stevens, assistant professor of psychology at Willamette, said selective attention can be boiled down, in this context, to children's ability to stay focused in a potentially crowded and loud classroom.

"You could have the most amazing kindergarten teacher up there, but if a child can't control their attention...it doesn't matter what the teacher's doing," Stevens said. "The ability to control their attention is helping the kid to benefit from everything that's going on."

Helen Neville

Though the UO-Willamette team focused on lower-income households, the strategies taught to families participating in the study could be used by any parent, said researcher Helen Neville, director of the UO Brain Development Lab. Some strategies focused specifically on developing selective attention, while others were aimed at reducing household stress in order to increase higher cognitive functions such as selective attention, Neville said.

"If we could reduce stress, our hypothesis was that it would increase cognition and brain function," Neville said. "Selective attention is one of those higher cognitive functions," like literacy, she said.

One activity that focused on selective attention was called Walk the Line, Stevens said.

"We would take a big piece of yarn and wind it all around the room. The kids would have to take a deep breath and they would just have to walk and follow this winding path – for a kid, that's actually hard to do." Meanwhile, an adult gave what the researchers called "specific praise," making supportive comments whenever children kept their bodies under control and their eyes on the yarn – "giving children that positive feedback about what they're doing right," Stevens said.

Once the children could complete that exercise successfully, the researchers would add another degree of difficulty: walk the line while holding a cup of water, then walk the line while holding a cup of water and while other children do distracting things nearby, Stevens said.

Similarly, researchers helped children learn vigilance, or the ability to stay focused. With young children, Stevens noted, "part of paying attention (in school) might be being able to stay quiet for a long time." So researchers engaged the children in different activities that helped increase the amount of time a child could stay still.

In the area of stress reduction, researchers taught parents these strategies:

Visualize emotions: Parents in the study learned how to recognize when children were "emotionally saturated" and to back off at those times. "The kid needs a little time there to get back in control of their own body and hear whatever is being said," Stevens said.

Zayra Longoria, a postdoctoral fellow in the Brain Development Lab who teaches parenting classes, said she advises parents to visualize their children's energy in terms of a stop light flashing green, yellow and red.

"Parents are actually really good experts at knowing their kids and knowing their levels of energy. They can tell when the kid is getting to the point where they're out of control. Sometimes they react ahead of time," Longoria said. "We talk to parents about reacting to their kids' level of emotion based on the level the kid's actually at."

Be consistent: Stevens said that maintaining consistency and routine, especially around bedtime, helped reduce stress for children and parents. That includes putting kids to bed at a consistent time every night.

Give acceptable choices: Stevens said parents can fall into the trap of asking children what the researchers call "the empty question," such as, "Do you want to go to bed?" With a 4-year-old, she noted, that's not the best approach. Instead, parents in the study were taught to re-frame such questions as acceptable choices: "It's bedtime: Do you want to brush your teeth first or put on your pajamas first?"

Put it in pictures: Neville said picture schedules increase predictability and thus lessen stress for parents and young children. For example, parents of a child who goes back and forth between two or more households could create a picture-based calendar, with a different color for each home, that helps a child track his or her schedule. "As adults, we know what a child's schedule is, but it's not always transparent to a 4-year-old," Stevens said.

Similarly, researchers found that picture-based "success charts" helped with laying out and enforcing house rules consistently. "In some families we found that kids might not have been totally clear what the rules were," Stevens said. A parent could make a chart with pictures of desirable behaviors and whatever rewards the parent feels are appropriate, such as an extra story time.

Neville said the effect of the selective attention and stress reduction activities was apparent after eight weeks, for a relatively low cost of $800 per family.

The Brain Development Lab has created a video, available at changingbrains.org, that discusses brain development, including a segment on attention. The video can be watched online for free or ordered as a DVD.

"It's a good introduction to brain development: how it works, how experience can shape brains, the different methods that we used," Neville said. "At the end of each segment, we give you lots of web addresses and ... other resources to explore."

Neville added that the researchers are now adapting their intervention strategies for Latino families and are doing long-term followup with families: "They're hanging onto their games for at least two years," she said. The researchers are also training local Head Start teachers to use the strategies.

Just for fun: Here's a classic selective attention test.

-- Amy Wang

An earlier version of this post misquoted Courtney Stevens on the topic of questions that parents ask children. She said "empty," not "empathy."

