Children Notice/learn Everything, Adults Have Selective/focused Attention

haidut

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I think the most important finding of the study is that adults are actually capable of noticing and remembering a lot more, but they have to be told to pay attention to everything, otherwise they stay focused on one thing. This focused-by-default is likely the result of years of damaging conditioning in an environment that does not tolerate much curiosity unless it is officially approved by the powers that be - educational, employing, societal, etc. Also, a few studies have also found that being able to pay stay unfocused is dependent on sufficient energy reserves. So, metabolism once again comes into play and given its decline in adults compared to children, the single-focusness (or should I say single-mindedness) in adults is not so surprising.
The finding about children is not really surprising - Ray has written many times about the metabolic flexibility of children and their learning process - i.e they notice everything and constantly incorporate newly learned/acquired information to modify their existing model of the world.

Children notice what adults miss, study finds

"...In two studies, researchers found that adults were very good at remembering information they were told to focus on, and ignoring the rest. In contrast, 4- to 5-year-olds tended to pay attention to all the information that was presented to them – even when they were told to focus on one particular item. That helped children to notice things that adults didn’t catch because of the grownups’ selective attention. “We often think of children as deficient in many skills when compared to adults. But sometimes what seems like a deficiency can actually be an advantage,” said Vladimir Sloutsky, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at The Ohio State University."

"...“The point is that children don’t focus their attention as well as adults, even if you ask them to,” Sloutsky said. “They end up noticing and remembering more.” Sloutsky said that adults would do well at noticing and remembering the ignored information in the studies, if they were told to pay attention to everything. But their ability to focus attention has a cost – they miss what they are not focused on."
 

lampofred

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LOL so my ADD is a sign of good metabolism? :lol:

Edit: nvm i misread the study
 

lvysaur

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I notice this all the time in myself. I feel better when I'm not hyperfocused.

Also worth mentioning that people from Asian nations (China/Jap/SK) show this tendency more than Anglos (US/UK/Can). When told to watch a video of a tiger, Anglos hyperfocused in on the subject, while Asians watched the background in addition to the subject.

Asians also have better carbohydrate metabolism and thymal persistence than Caucasians.

However, mainland Europeans scored closer to Asians than to Anglos.

It's another point of evidence for my suspicion of a brachycephalic/dolichocephalic split in thinking.
 
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Constatine

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Culture and language have this super focusing effect. I find that if I try brainstorming without using language (very difficult to get used to though) I temporarily find myself in a child like mind state and notice many things I am normally oblivious too.
 

Regina

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Culture and language have this super focusing effect. I find that if I try brainstorming without using language (very difficult to get used to though) I temporarily find myself in a child like mind state and notice many things I am normally oblivious too.
Yes. But I suffer the down-side of this. When I go to parse it into words, I sound like a child. Duh-oh! :facepalm:
 

Lilac

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This is what worries me about children and toddlers with smartphones in their hands. If they are in a grocery store, say, they should be looking at the people and the food and what's going on to learn about the world, not watching low-quality videos or playing repetitive games. My little cat is more alert and curious about the outside world than many children seem to be.
 
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haidut

haidut

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This is what worries me about children and toddlers with smartphones in their hands. If they are in a grocery store, say, they should be looking at the people and the food and what's going on to learn about the world, not watching low-quality videos or playing repetitive games. My little cat is more alert and curious about the outside world than many children seem to be.

Exactly, and even if the videos were stimulating (which they are usually not) it is still a very poor substitute for real life experience. I suspect the generation of under 10 year olds will probably grow up as adults that need daily massive doses of Adderall just to be functional and not tremble and drool by the street corner from raging Parkinsonism.
 

Ideonaut

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I notice this all the time in myself. I feel better when I'm not hyperfocused.

Also worth mentioning that people from Asian nations (China/Jap/SK) show this tendency more than Anglos (US/UK/Can). When told to watch a video of a tiger, Anglos hyperfocused in on the subject, while Asians watched the background in addition to the subject.

Asians also have better carbohydrate metabolism and thymal persistence than Caucasians.

However, mainland Europeans scored closer to Asians than to Anglos.

It's another point of evidence for my suspicion of a brachycephalic/dolichocephalic split in thinking.
I'm doubtful of that. When I was in Japan children were admonished with the phrase "kyorokyoro suru na!"--don't look around! And cultivating single-minded focus while ignoring the world seemed to be a strong cultural meme.
 
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This is exactly what my mentor Dr. Fehmi has explained so well in his book open focus and in his conversations with me. I really recommend open focus. It is very easy to practice any time in all the time, and Dr. Fehmi explains that we have for attention states but one of those is hyper developed. In a child, they are often open focus. When an adult is too often in directed focus as we been trained that way.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AITRK24/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
 

Tarmander

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Exactly, and even if the videos were stimulating (which they are usually not) it is still a very poor substitute for real life experience. I suspect the generation of under 10 year olds will probably grow up as adults that need daily massive doses of Adderall just to be functional and not tremble and drool by the street corner from raging Parkinsonism.

Sooo #methnation

Adderall is 3/4th dextroamphetamine...maybe #paranoidnation is a better label
 
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haidut

haidut

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Sooo #methnation

Adderall is 3/4th dextroamphetamine...maybe #paranoidnation is a better label

Either tag would apply except that it won't be just one nation but every country in the world that continues to to follow the reductionist path in medicine and medicine as a substitute for life paradigm.
 

Constatine

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Exactly, and even if the videos were stimulating (which they are usually not) it is still a very poor substitute for real life experience. I suspect the generation of under 10 year olds will probably grow up as adults that need daily massive doses of Adderall just to be functional and not tremble and drool by the street corner from raging Parkinsonism.
What a lovely future for our children.
 

Beefcake

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Culture and language have this super focusing effect. I find that if I try brainstorming without using language (very difficult to get used to though) I temporarily find myself in a child like mind state and notice many things I am normally oblivious too.

The language part made me think about this video

With a schimpanze beating hunans every time in a memory test. My reason to why they are so much better is because they dont think they just do. Thinking specifically in a language like we humans have developed takes up a lot of brain capacity and also interferes with a lot of other abilities. It’s like sports. When are you performing at your best. When you get in the so called ”flow” when you’re in a flow you just act and don’t think and usually within sports thats when you do your best decisions and score points etc. Might be a reason why so called ”intellectual people” sometimes arent the best at sports. They think too much. But the thing is you don’t have to think to think. You can be completely blank in your head but still think about quite complex tasks and still understand something just by percieving it emotionally. No need to verify it with your thoughts.
 

Dave Clark

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I remember the jazz fusion guitarist John McLaughlin saying regarding learning and playing guitar, "learn everything, then forget it....". Meaning, once you learned scales, chords, etc., etc., let your inner mind take over, the stuff is in there, you don't have to think or over think what you are playing. It is similar to the sports analogy, martial arts are the same, once you have the skill set you have to turn your mind off and let it flow.
 

Beefcake

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I remember the jazz fusion guitarist John McLaughlin saying regarding learning and playing guitar, "learn everything, then forget it....". Meaning, once you learned scales, chords, etc., etc., let your inner mind take over, the stuff is in there, you don't have to think or over think what you are playing. It is similar to the sports analogy, martial arts are the same, once you have the skill set you have to turn your mind off and let it flow.

Exactly I’m a guitarist so I can totally relate to this. The more you let go of your mind the fingers will just automatically start leading you to where it sounds the best. Same as u said martial arts. You have to make decisions in the matter of split seconds. You don’t have time to actually think about it.
 

Ainaga

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i find this to be true when traveling, specifically, when you travel in a place where you want to settle, rather than traveling on vacation; and even more so in a place where you don't speak the language, and are intent on learning it. your mind becomes hyperaware of everything around you. you remember names and faces of people who conversely do not remember you or your name, despite the fact that you, as a newcomer, have to remember more names and faces than anyone else. this is why, for example, learning a new language is so much easier in immersion. the language-learning capacity of an immersed adult is at par with that of a child. when traveling, then, the mind is quite the opposite of focused, it is expanded to include all sensory input. again, this might be mere hearsay, but they say, contrary to what one might expect -because traveling is physically taxing- that perpetual travelers keep a younger appearance.
 

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