Develop Attention Span of Your Child With Music. Part 8.
Attention and Motor Skills.
Attention sees muscular system as a reliable ally. Sending energy towards the development of certain motor skills, it gradually puts a new skill on autopilot mode and relies on it. The skills on autopilot mode first get stored in short-term memory. If they are continuously used, they gradually get transferred to long-term memory.”
Many motor tasks are performed automatically. This allows a person to direct the energy of his attention to other channels. The more complex the motor skill the harder it is to remember and the shorter it is kept in memory. Thus, a crammed piano piece eventually ”erodes,” either partially or completely, while properly learned exercises remain in memory for a lifetime.
Stages of Visual Concentration in Babies.
Since mother is the main guarantor of baby’s safety, he develops his initial ability to focus through learning to recognize her facial features.
These are the stages that a baby's visual attention goes through in the study of mother's face:
- Focus. A baby learns to focus attention on mother's face;
- Duration of Focus. The baby learns to maintain visual focus in order to see details and try to memorize mother's facial features;
- Redirection of Focus. The baby learns to redirect his visual focus together with movement of mother's face in order not to lose sight of her.
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Identification. A baby memorizes mother's facial features and starts to recognize them from general visual space.
Reliance of Visual Perception on Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Touch
As we previously mentioned, attention is conservative. In the process of development of visual perception of mother's face, a baby has already formed and mastered certain skills. These skills help create motivation and direct the energy of attention towards the channels where this energy has already been effectively invested.
Thus, the baby often finds his mother’s face by her voice. The smell and taste of mother's milk, the feeling her touch also help create a desire and a need to visually examine her face.