Sustained Selective Attention in Adolescence: Cognitive Development and Predictors of Distractibility at School

Abstract

Despite much research into the development of attention in adolescence, mixed results and between-task differences have precluded clear conclusions regarding the relative early- or late-maturation of attention abilities. Moreover, although adolescents constantly face the need to pay attention to their lessons at school, it remains unclear whether laboratory measures of attention can predict their ability to sustain attention focus during school lessons. Here we therefore devised a task that was sensitive to measure both sustained and selective attention and tested whether any of our task measures can predict adolescents levels of inattention during their school lessons. 166 adolescents (aged 12-17) and 50 adults performed in our sustained-selective attention task, searching for letter targets, while ignoring salient yet-entirely-irrelevant distractor faces, under different levels of perceptual load-an established determinant of attention in adults. Inattention levels during a just-preceding classroom lesson were measured using our novel self-report classroom-distractibility checklist. The results established that sustained attention (measured with response variability) continued to develop throughout adolescence, across perceptual load levels. In contrast there was an earlier maturation of the effect of perceptual load on selective attention: load modulation of distractor interference was larger in the early adolescence compared to later periods. Both distractor interference and response variability were significant unique predictors of distractibility in the classroom, including when interest in the lesson and cognitive aptitude were controlled for. Overall, the results demonstrate divergence of development of sustained and selective attention in adolescence, and establish both as significant predictors of attention in the important educational setting of school lessons.