Attentional capacity in children: Intervention programs for its development

Abstract

Attention plays a key role in children’s school performances, as it participates in the selection, integration, and comprehension of a broad amount of information. It is understood as an active and constructive mechanism, whose capacity may be modified through continued practice. Indeed, each subject may generate his or her own attentional potential, which depends on the interaction of cognitive, conative, and affective factors. From this follows the relevance of research showing the effectiveness of different intervention strategies with the goal of boosting the functioning of different socio-cognitive-affective processes that have not yet achieved, for various reasons, an adequate level of development for a certain maturation stage. The goal of this chapter is to present a psychoeducational intervention program intended to contribute to the development of attentional and cognitive functioning. It is hypothesized that the implementation of intervention programs directed toward strengthening school children’s attentional resources will allow for an improvement in attentional efficacy in participating children, as compared with children not involved in the program. The results obtained by our team show that intervention programs have greater effectiveness if applied to small groups of school children, and greater improvement of attention is achieved if stimulation starts at earlier ages. In addition, greater effectiveness is attained if such programs are implemented systematically and sustained over time, with greater probabilities for them to help all children to develop cognitive and socio-affective skills that may enhance their educational opportunities.