Games to stimulate the attention of children
The baby and toddler care is not voluntary or selective, but depends on the more or less rich and varied environment and of the amount of stimuli that occur in the environment and depends in general on the state of your body. The attention of the children should be worked in the moments in which they are awake and calm. If a stimulus is applied at a time when the child is not receptive, the stimulus simply has no effect.
Determinants of care
Usually, the adult's attention is a voluntary act that relates his perception of reality with his action and with his personal motives and needs. It is usually a selective attention, so that the subject selects only the information that interests him. It is also active and not passive: it is the subject who goes in search of information. Although according to the aforementioned studies, it has been proven that we process more information than at first it seems that we attend.
On the other hand, the care of the baby and the young child is not voluntary or selective, but depends on the more or less rich and varied environment and the amount of stimuli that occur in the environment. The attention in the baby is expectant, and It depends in general of the state of your organism and, more specifically, of the degree of activation or alertness of your cerebral cortex. Attention in the baby consists rather of "waiting" attention, open to stimuli capable of arousing his interest.
Games and activities to stimulate child care
There are games and varied activities that we can do with our children to arouse their attention and interest. Attentive:
Games to stimulate your visual attention:
- Prints, stories, images and rhymes
- Educational games of equal image association, discovery of similarities and differences between apparently identical drawings
- Identification of an object hidden among many (for example, books of "Where is Wally?")
- I see-see game
- Spatial memorization of objects in a room
- English chick game, domino, tangram, puzzles, computer games.
Games to develop auditory attention:
- Rhymes, poetry, songs, discrimination of sounds ...
- Tracking orders appropriate to each age
- Phone game
How to stimulate the attention of babies and children
When children are awake and quiet they are more receptive to work attention, because if they try catch their atention At a time when you are hungry or sleepy, those stimuli will be useless.
If we insist and force its application, even if the child is not interested, the stimuli will be counterproductive since they will generate rejection on the part of the child. It is likely, in this situation, that the child will resist paying attention to stimuli that were initially characterized by their untimeliness and insistence. On the other hand, if we try to capture and focus their attention on an environment in which there are many things that get their attention, the child will probably get confused and the set of stimuli will be useless.
Studies carried out by experts in care show that the complexity and discrepancy of the stimuli are the main determinants of child care. Thus, when we present a figure or a toy to the baby, it will have greater complexity for him the greater the number of elements that make it up (the more pieces a puzzle has and the more varied each one is, the more difficult the composition of the figure). The preference for stimuli with certain complexity already manifests itself in children since they have only a few days.
With age increases the ability to process more information and at each age there corresponds an optimal level of quantity of information that can be attended and processed. According to experts, the increasing maturation of the nervous system and the progressive increase of the infantile sensitivity to capture a greater number of stimulating differences also influence. As the child grows, he needs the stimuli to present a greater variety, richness and complexity to get him to fix his attention on them.
Ideas to awaken children's attention
Another feature capable of awaken children's attention it is the discrepancy or novel and unknown part of the stimulus. For a stimulus to present a balanced degree of discrepancy that fully captures the child's attention, it must meet two essential conditions in the right proportions:
1. Must be well-known and familiar for the child so that he can assimilate it (connect it with existing knowledge).
two.Must present a sufficient number of novel features and strangers who bring new information to the child, thus awakening their interest and motivation.
If we present the child with slightly complex stimuli, he will become accustomed to them and his attention will tend to be directed to stimuli that bring something new and different. In conclusion: the chronological age of a child is not the reason why he prefers to attend well to the familiar or to the novel, but everything depends on the number of times the subject has been faced with the same stimulus, and the duration or exposure of each of the times.
Marisol Nuevo Espín
