Does the Optimal Attentional Spotlight Exist?

Does the Optimal Attentional Spotlight Exist? Investigating the Balance Between Positive and Negative Distraction, its Effects on Learning, and its Relationship with ADHD symptoms in Infants and Toddlers

During the course of development, we learn to take advantage of noisy and distracting stimuli when they are behaviourally relevant or contribute to the current goal (Corbetta, Patel, & Shulman, 2008). For instance, we learn to ignore traffic noise while we are sitting in cafe' near the street but not when we are driving. How does it happen? Do early interindividual differences in this ability impact further development and learning? This project challenges the common idea of distraction as a negative factor and conceptualised distraction as an attentional trait. In other words, we aim to study whether distractibility can be defined as a continuum in which extremes -either an over response to sensory stimulation or an inability to detect and orient attention towards salient and informative stimuli- are equally detrimental for adaptation and learning, while medium levels are beneficial. Thanks to the forthcoming opening of the Toddler Lab at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, which has been designed from the ground up to support the latest in scientific methodologies, we can now address this research question to young populations and study whether early interindividual differences in distractibility and in the ability to sustain attention over time are related to learning skills in toddlers and subsequent school achievement in later childhood. Furthermore, we will explore the relationship between attentional components and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms to gain insight into early behavioural and neuroscientific markers of ADHD.