The Power of Mindful Learning (7 page)

Labeling behavior as distracted may be presumptuous.
What we call distraction may be a deliberate attending to
something other than what we think is important. As we will
see later, this distinction may be significant when trying to
understand the pervasive problem of so-called attention-deficit
disorders.

Before deciding that we, or our children, have difficulty paying
attention, it is interesting to think about the situations in which
paying attention presents no problem. When we get dressed in
the morning, look up a phone number, or play computer
games, we are generally quite able to find the requisite attention. We check out our closets and think about the weather and
the occasion. We are able to find our address books and stay
cued in to the letters of the alphabet as we search for the
desired phone number. Some of us can patiently, even excitedly,
sit for hours and follow the on-screen instructions for computer
games. Indeed, to accomplish virtually anything, we need a
modicum of attention. Since we are so successful most of the
day at paying attention, perhaps we should look more closely at
those situations in which we find it difficult, rather than blame
the problem on lack of character or a mental deficit.

Students who do poorly are told to pay attention, focus, or
concentrate with the understanding that if only they did, they
would learn the intended lesson. What "paying attention"
actually means is not examined. We just assume that if we
could fix our minds on the matter at hand and not let them
wander, all would be well. Perhaps we see ourselves as photographers trying to bring an object into focus and hold both the
camera and the target still. Is this what we mean when we try
to pay attention? Do we try to immobilize our minds and
focus on a single subject?

We asked several high school teachers what they meant
when they asked their students to pay attention, focus, or concentrate on something. We asked whether they meant that the
students should "hold the picture still" in their mind or did they
mean that the students should "vary the picture" in their minds?
Teachers overwhelmingly chose the first alternative. When we
asked the students what their teachers meant when they said to
pay attention, focus, or concentrate, the students gave the same
answer. There does not seem to be a problem with communication. The problem appears to be elsewhere.

As early as 1898, William James noted that something
attended to appears to change even as one attends to it. The
example he used was the difficulty we face when trying to stare
at a finger. Just look at your finger without shifting your eyes. It
is hard to do this for very long. Try to focus on a painting. Don't
let your eyes wander across it, just keep the image still. Focusing
on an object in this way is difficult at best. Researchers of perception tell us that the image actually fades from

I think the same problem occurs when trying rigidly to
hold an idea in mind. The difficulty may be more apparent to
those who meditate. When meditators repeat a mantra or
attend to their breathing, for example, their minds may wander
to other thoughts. Once they notice that they are thinking
about something, rather than think more about the thought,
they return to the mantra, until their minds pull to another
thought, and the sequence continues. Although this routine
serves the very useful function of teaching meditators how to
let go of mundane thoughts that entrap them, it also illustrates
how natural it is for the mind to seek variety.

For us to pay attention to something for any amount of
time, the image must be varied. Thus, for students who have
trouble paying attention the problem may be that they are following the wrong instructions. To pay constant, fixed attention
to a thought or an image may be a kind of oxymoron. Yet this is
the very way people try to attend to the external world of
things or the internal world of ideas. I polled twenty-five Harvard undergraduates, asking what it was that they did when
they tried to pay attention. Twenty-one of them gave mindless
strategies such as "Look at the professor"; "Write whatever is
said." The others had slightly more mindful strategies but still
with some residual attempt to fix attention.

People naturally seek novelty in play and have no difficulty
paying attention in those situations. When something is novel
we notice different things about it. If we see a stimulus as novel,
for example, if we see a rosebush along a railroad track, we sit up
and take notice. If we were to stare at the rosebush long enough, eventually we would become habituated to it. This pattern
begins when we are infants and continues throughout our lifetimes. Changes in context or perspective lead us to notice novelty. If I am dating someone new who happens to be an
architect, for example, I might attend to buildings that I pass
every day but never really noticed. Noticing interesting things
about the buildings would not be a strain. Successful concentration occurs naturally when the target of our attention varies.

The idea that to pay attention means to act like a motionless camera is so ingrained in us that when we do pay attention
successfully we are usually unintentionally changing the context
or finding novel features in our subject. The research described
next, which Todd Bodner and I recently completed, supports
this conclusion.'

We recruited a group of undergraduate students to work at a
computer. The program displayed a color object on the screen
for about twenty-two seconds. The task was to press a button
as soon as the object disappeared from the screen. The computer recorded the reaction times, and displayed another object
two seconds after the button was pressed. The objects were
either familiar shapes, unfamiliar shapes of several different
colors, or objects of a single color.

We varied the instructions we gave to the students concerning how to attend to the stimulus on the screen. One group, the
pay attention group, was simply told to focus on and to pay attention to each stimulus on the screen and to hit the button
as soon as it disappeared. Another group was instructed to trace
the outline of the target on the screen and to press the button
the moment it disappeared. The last group was told to think of
the shapes in different ways and to notice different things
about each shape. These students were also told to hit the key
the moment the shape disappeared from the screen.

First, we measured the students' memories for the figures
seen on the screen. Clearly, we are more likely to remember
something if we attend to it than if we do not attend to it. One
could argue that memory is the most meaningful measure of
attention. We also measured the students' views of the difficulty of the task. The group asked to think of the shapes in different ways, the mindful group, outperformed the other two
groups in remembering color and shape. The shape and color
scores for each subject were combined to create an index of
overall stimulus memory. The mindful attention group significantly outperformed both the pay attention group and the tracing group. In comparison with the other groups, the mindful
attention group also reported that the task required less effort
and attention and was less frustrating. The tracing group and
the pay attention group did not differ appreciably in their
assessments.

In a further investigation, Martha Bayliss and I asked
adults traveling by train to read short stories.' The mindful
groups were instructed to vary either three or six aspects of
each story: to read the text from different perspectives, to consider different endings, and the like. The focus groups were asked to focus on either three or six specific aspects of each
story; that is, they were not encouraged to do anything more
than take the information in as it was given in the story. A control group read the stories without any specific instructions. All
the participants were told that they would be asked questions
about each story after they finished reading it.

Participants were then asked to list all they could remember
from the story they had just read. The people who had been
asked to vary what they read, those in the mindfulness groups,
remembered significantly more details than did members of the
other groups. Those asked to consider six aspects of the story
remembered more of it than did those asked to consider three.
An interesting additional result was that the more novel the
story, the less difference there was among the different groups.

Although the mindful groups had more to think about,
they remembered more. Varying the target of our attention,
whether a visual object or an idea, apparently improves our
memory of it.

There are several ways to increase variability. As educators, we can present novel stimuli to our students. We can
introduce material through games, because in games players
vary their responses to fool their opponents or look more
closely at all aspects of the situation to figure out how to win.
Another approach is not to vary the stimulus, but to vary our
perspective in relation to the stimulus. This situation happens
often in physical play; in tennis or table tennis or any sport,
we move around so that the stimulus is never quite the same.
Perhaps bringing about a change in perspective through movement is how so-called hyperactive children increase novelty for themselves.

The most effective way to increase our ability to pay attention is to look for the novelty within the stimulus situation,
whether it is a story, a map, or a painting. This is the most useful lesson to teach our children, because it enables them to be
relatively independent of other people and of their physical
environment. If novelty (and interest) is in the mind of the
attender, it doesn't matter that a teacher presents the same old
thing or tells us to sit still and concentrate in a fixed manner.

Not only is it nearly impossible to maintain attention by holding an image still, but it is also extremely fatiguing. (When
people don't like doing something, it is often worth looking to
see if they have a good reason.)

In psychological circles or when danger is involved, attention is often called vigilance. Staying vigilant is a big issue for
pilots. Vigilance is considered effortful and seen to decline over
time. In contrast, attention to the things we enjoy may be energizing and possible to sustain for long periods of time.

When horseback riding through the woods I used to be
vigilant with regard to branches of trees extending beyond
where they were supposed to be. My body would be tense as I
tried to stay aware of the potential danger. It was tiring for both
me and my horse. As I learned to become a more confident
rider I was able to enjoy the surroundings, including the trees, and in so doing was also aware of any branches out of place.
The advantage of this more varied attention was more than
increased greater enjoyment; now I was open to noticing other
potential hazards. Focusing hypervigilantly on tree branches
made me vulnerable to other dangers on the trail. A kind of
soft vigilance, or mindful attention, helped me "avert the dangers not yet arisen."