Inhibitory Control and Attention

In order to learn and engage in a classroom environment, children must be able to direct their attention effectively. Specifically, children need to be able to extract the important messages from the surrounding noise or distractions. Adults are much more adept at blocking out distracting information in their environment compared to children. Therefore, the distractions that might impact a child's ability to focus his or her attention may be difficult for an adult to appreciate. Distractions can present themselves in the form of auditory sounds, such as other children talking in the classroom, noise from a television, cars driving by outside, etc. However, visual information can also be distracting to children, hindering them from properly focusing their attention. For instance, if a child is attempting to concentrate on a given task in a room where there are many interesting things around her, the abundance of visual information will make it harder for her to concentrate on the task at hand. The more distractions that are present in the child's environment, the more effortful it will be for the child to effectively focus her attention.

Another important aspect of learning involves the ability to discern what is relevant from what is not. In everyday conversation we are continuously picking out the important parts of what is being said in order to commit the relevant information to memory. This skill is particularly important for children to be able to learn and follow instructions in a classroom environment. When young children listen to someone speaking, such as instructions from a teacher,  it is important for them to be able to pick out the important information so that they are able to do what has been asked.

Another area in which children often show difficulty is engaging in a new task. This is a necessary skill in kindergarten given the continuous switching of activities that happens throughout the day. Many children have little trouble focusing on a particular activity, but when asked to switch, have difficulty on the next. This can decrease their performance on the new task, or hinder their ability to learn from it.

The cognitive ability that is implicated in these situations is known as inhibitory control (IC). Inhibitory control is known as the ability to inhibit a prepotent (or initial) response, and instead respond with a more appropriate action.  This term is used somewhat interchangeably with related terms such as, self-regulation, effortful control, attentional control, etc. However, the divide between the terms is not substantive (Allan et al. 2014).

 The preschool age marks a time of rapid development of inhibitory control, and not surprisingly, plays an important role in children's adjustment to kindergarten. Although there is marked development, the relationship between IC and other developmental outcomes (e.g., academic, social, etc.) remains intact. Inhibitory control is important in many aspects of kindergarten readiness but is particularly relevant to children's academic outcomes. Although IC is implicated in both literacy and math skills, is it particularly important for math.

IC has been measured using a variety of methods. Namely, researchers typically use behavioural methods, in which children are asked to complete short tasks that require the use of IC. Researchers also use reports in the forms of surveys from parents and teachers. Typically, behavioural methods and teacher reports have the closest relationship to children's academic outcomes. Both of these methods can reveal important information when investigating the relationship between IC and academic performance as they lend information from different contexts, with behavioural methods providing information about the child's objective abilities, and teacher reports providing information about the subjective classroom experience. Together these methods provide a more complete understanding of the relationship.

 An important consideration is that difficulties that children may have in regards to focusing their attention becomes amplified when they are experiencing strong emotions. It is also important to rule out physical problems (hearing and vision) as they may present themselves as an attention problem but can be easily remedied with heading or visual aid