Focused Attention Activities

What is Focused Attention?

Focused attention is the brain’s ability to concentrate on a stimulus. Focused attention refers to the ability to respond to visual, auditory, or tactile stimuli. We use focused attention to notice both internal signals (such as hunger) and external stimuli (such as a traffic sign). It is an essential skill that we use every day. Without the ability to use our focused attention skills, we would not be able to carry out tasks efficiently in our daily lives.

What motivates someone to use focused attention?

Focused attention is often influenced by these different motivators:

Personal: If the stimulus evokes a dopamine or oxytocin release in our brain, we are more likely to pay attention to it. Additionally, We’re more likely to pay attention to a stimulus correctly when we are awake and cheerful rather than tired or sad.
Environmental: When an individual is not in an overstimulated environment, the desire to concentrate on a stimulus increases. The greater the intensity of stimuli, the less likely an individual will focus.
Stimulus: If the stimulus has any of the following characteristics: novelty, complexity, duration, or salience, it is less likely to be paid attention to. If it is a singular stimulus, it will be easier for an individual to focus on.

Additionally, individuals who want to practice working on focused attention skills should work on all of the sub-sets of attention: sustained, selective, and divided. By exercising each one of these subsets, an individual may be able to increase their overall focusing ability.

Focused Attention Exercise Example

Find Your Way! is one of our platform’s more popular focused attention and memory tasks. In this exercise, you must follow a path of stones. The stones will light up in a specific order. The user must stay focused while memorizing the path. They will then have to repeat the path in order. This activity is comparable to reading instructions for building a piece of furniture or cooking a recipe.

Find Your Way!

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Entangled Figures

Effective Treatment Assistance

In the hands of a clinician, attention exercises on the Happyneuron platform can be a very effective part of focused attention training. Attention skills are one of the foundational skills of cognitive functions.

By actively working on attention skills, your patient may be able to handle more stimuli without being overstimulated. All of our attention exercises are fully adaptable and customizable. This means you can gradually increase the stimuli’s speed, rate, and number, which may help your patient develop strong selective attention skills!

To try Happyneuron Pro with your patients, you can sign up for a free trial! If you are not a trained therapist, we offer attention-based worksheets for download.

Interested in trying our digital tools?

Since 2000, our science-based, adaptable exercises have been crafted to help clients reach their full cognitive potential.

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