Study skills for kids: how to hone focus and concentration

Hey kids, in this ‘Study Skills’ series of videos, we’re going to learn, step-by-step, the best approaches to become a studying powerhouse.

The fifth step towards this goal is honing your focus and concentration – i.e. your capacity for maintaining attention – in an age of maximum distraction.

Here, Crash Course YouTube channel host Thomas Frank distinguishes between task-driven ‘top-down’ or voluntary attention, and ‘bottom-up’ or stimulus-driven attention.

Long periods of the first kind of attention can lead to ‘directed attention fatigue’, he explains, as the brain’s inhibitory mechanisms, deployed to tune out less-important stimuli, begin to wane over time.

Among the strategies he covers to boost voluntary attention are:

• Avoiding ‘multi-tasking’
• Tailoring the study environment for better focus
• Building up a resistance to cravings for novelty
• Cultivating brain-supporting health habits

View the previous study skill – how to plan and organise your learning – here.

View the original video here.

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