Positive feedback boosts attention

摘要

Positive feedback could help children at risk of attention problems excel at learning exercises, maybe even enabling them to overtake their peers. Previous research has shown that children with a longer variant of the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) are more likely to do poorly in school due to shorter attention spans. So Adriana Bus at Leiden University in the Netherlands compared how well 182 4-year-olds, 40 per cent with the variant, performed in electronic reading games when supportive feedback was switched on or off.