Working in Movement

Pay attention! It's a simple request, but for those with various disorders of attention, it's not so simple to do. And that's regrettable, since directing your field of attention is useful for all sorts of things, from handling risky situations to academic learning to succeeding in relationships, ect. But how, exactly, do you sharpen your ability to attend to your environment, or even learn to pay attention in the first place?

In Mind Wide Open, Steven Johnson reports on one way, neurofeedback. In researching the attention question, Johnson came across a company devoted to teaching the skill, aptly named Attention Builders. The company has developed The Attention Trainer, a computer-based game that it markets to the Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) market--kids, parents, teachers, mental health professionals, etc. The premise behind the game is based on the amount of theta waves a person produces, a measure of the frequency of electrical activity produced by the brain. It seems that the higher the amount of theta waves, relative to some baseline for a person, the more diffuse the attention. To sharpen or focus attention, to pay attention, lower the measure of these theta waves. The person playing the game wears a bicycle helmet-like device that tracks the theta waves. When fed into a PC, this signal controls the speed of an animated bicycle on the screen. The lower the amount of theta (relative to the person's baseline), the faster the bicycle goes. According to Attention Builders, it takes 40 or more sessions to get good at moving the bicycle.

This sounds like a clever idea; experiential learning in a normally ineffable area. Other than just doing it, how do you pay attention? If you have a problem focusing, all that you probably know is that you're not paying attention. But how does it feel to pay attention? Evidently, when the game works, it can reveal the feeling of the experience. One kid after mastering the game said, "Now I know how it needs to feel when I read."