10 EXERCISES TO IMPROVE ATTENTION (CHILDREN AND ADULTS) - GEOGRAFÍA - 2025

The exercises to improve care are effective in improving the mental capacity in children, adolescents, adults and seniors. Do you have attention problems? Do you have a tendency to get distracted or do you often notice that you are not attentive enough?

Attention is a cognitive process that has the function of choosing which stimuli we are going to capture, so performing this task properly is of vital importance. The good thing about attention is that you can train it and work it to improve.

You may also be interested in these exercises to train the brain or these to improve memory.

Why is care so important?

For a very simple reason:

If we do not pay attention in an adequate way, the information that comes to our mind can be distorted or incomplete, making it very difficult for us to carry out the rest of the cognitive activities.

For example: if you have to perform a task at work but do not pay much attention to the instructions to do it, it will surely cost you much more than if you attend correctly, since you will lack information to know how you should do it.

10 Exercises to work attention in children and adults

1. Pay attention to the right stimulus

To work on attention, one of the most important tasks to do is to learn to focus on those correct stimuli. That is to say: you must be able to select that information that is relevant or of your interest (the target stimuli).

Otherwise, you could have a great capacity for concentration or a great facility to maintain your attention for long periods of time to a stimulus, but that does not ensure that you are paying attention to the correct stimuli, so your attention could continue to be dysfunctional.

To work on this selective attention you can perform an exercise in which you must select a stimulus against many other different stimuli.

For example, through a figure like the one shown below, where we see a set of different stimuli: vowel letters, consonant letters, even numbers, odd numbers.

The exercise would consist of finding as quickly as possible:

-All the letters T contained in the figure.

-All numbers 4 that the figure contains.

-All the letters K contained in the image.

This activity can be done with any type of stimulus, it does not necessarily have to be numbers and letters, it can be drawings, colors, geometric figures, etc.

Furthermore, the amount of stimuli can also vary. The more different stimuli there are, the more difficult the task will be, and therefore you will do more attentional work.

2. Distinguish very similar stimuli

Another very useful activity for working on selective attention is learning to distinguish stimuli that may be very similar or practically identical, but that contain some difference.

In this way, you would not only be learning to properly select those stimuli to which you want to pay attention and to separate all those that are different, but you would also be learning to focus your attention on the details of the target stimuli.

To do this, an effective activity is the typical exercises of finding the differences between two practically identical pictures.

3. Differentiate stimuli from stimuli

Sometimes we think that paying attention to something consists of fixing or concentrating on a specific stimulus.

However, most of the time, focusing on a single stimulus is not enough, since human beings tend to focus on generally large aspects, and sometimes we ignore that each of these stimuli has many details that we cannot ignore.

Let's take an example:

You are working and you have to pay attention to what your partner tells you about the task to be finished for this afternoon.

In principle, we might think that just sitting close to him and listening carefully to what he says will be enough to pay good attention to what he says. But although it may seem strange, many times it is not like that, especially if our attentional processes are not entirely good.

Perhaps staying with the global meaning of what you have explained is not enough, perhaps the word or phrase that you said at the beginning of the conversation is more relevant than what we have understood.

That is why learning to pay attention to smaller stimuli that we often overlook can be very important.

Exercise

An exercise to practice it is the following:

Before this table, you must find in each row, the number that is equal to the one that appears to the left of everything.

If we look at the first line, the number 82325 is repeated only once (in the third column), but the others have similar numbers: 8 and 2 are in all columns, 3 in the second third and fourth…

If we performed this task in the same way that we can listen to our co-worker without paying too much attention to his words, we could make a mistake and dial another number. On the other hand, if we make a greater effort of concentration, we will do it correctly.

4. Get used to working with two stimuli

In the same way that it is important to be able to focus your attention on a single relevant stimulus, it is important to be able to focus on two. And it is that when you learn to focus your attention, you should not do it only before one stimulus, but on two or more.

With this task in which you focus your attention on two stimuli, on the one hand you learn to select a small amount of stimuli to pay attention to while avoiding the others, and on the other hand you learn to divide your attention into two different stimuli.

So, before this table where there are only two letters:

• Write 1 under P and write 2 under B.
• Do it as fast as you can and without making mistakes.

5. Divide your attention

Having the ability to be able to pay attention to more than one stimulus at a time is probably one of the best skills we have.

If we look closely, our environment is surrounded by stimuli, and the most common is that we have to attend to more than one thing at the same time.

-You are making food and talking with your sister-

In this simple situation, you are paying attention to a large number of stimuli: what your sister tells you, what you say, the water that is boiling, the steaks that are in the pan, the amount of salt. what have you put…

That is why, when we train our attention, we also have to train our ability to pay attention to several things at the same time.

Exercise

For this, the exercise that I propose is the following:

In this image there are 4 different figures. Put a number under each of them as fast as you can.

In this way, while you perform this exercise, you will not be able to pay attention to a single stimulus, but you will have to attend to 4 simultaneously.

6. Group stimuli into a category

When we have a large number of stimuli that we want to focus on, first of all, we must group them.

The moment we are able to group stimuli, our attentional task is simplified, since we organize our mind to pay attention in a directed and productive way.

For example: you have a file cabinet full of papers and you have to count how many there are in total.

It will be much easier if you count them 10 at a time and separate them than if you try to count them all at once.

Well, the same thing happens with attention, it is much easier if we group the stimuli than if we try to attend to them separately.

To practice grouping you can do the following exercise:

Group the stars in the following image three by three as fast as you can.

• Count how many group of stars there are in total
• Count how many stars there are in total
• Count how many stars are left ungrouped

7. Group stimuli into various categories

More important than the previous task is knowing how to group stimuli into different categories.

For example: imagine that you are going to buy and you have to make a list of the things you need.

When you are shopping, it will be much easier if you group the food you need according to the stop where you have to buy it than if you write one at each point on the list without any order.

To work on this aspect, you can perform an exercise identical to the previous one, but instead of having a single stimulus (stars), there are 4 or 5 stimuli (stars, triangles, rhombuses, clovers and squares).

8. Invest your attention

Having good attention span is especially important when doing expensive activities. Being able to maintain our attention when we work or perform difficult operations usually requires a greater effort.

To work our attention more deeply, a good exercise is to do it with numbers. Specifically with this exercise you must pay attention to the numbers that are presented, and write it in reverse order.

For example, before the first number 625, the inverse would be 526.

In this way, you work on your attentional process while doing another reasoning task:

First you pay attention to the number, then to the operation necessary to write its inverse and finally to the resulting inverse number.

It is recommended that in all those series in which you can cover the original number with a sheet when you write its inverse number.

9. Keep your eye attention

Maintaining attention on an activity for long periods of time is a difficult task, highly subject to possible distractions or lack of concentration.

Therefore, it is good to exercise it.

To do this, the following exercise can be performed:

• Each table contains all the numbers from 1 to 36 except one.
• You must find which one is missing and write it in the box marked in blue
• Do it as fast as you can.

10. Maintain your listening attention

In the same way as with visual attention, it happens with auditory attention. It is often difficult to listen to something for long periods of time without diminishing your attention or being distracted by other stimuli.

So, to work on this type of attention, I propose the following exercise:

• Put on your favorite radio show and listen to it carefully
• Your task will not be to listen to the program in a general way or to stay with the concepts that are being talked about.
• You will have to identify a single word, for example: the name of the station
• Every time you hear that word, you must write it down on a sheet of paper.
• You can perform this task with the maximum possible concentration for about 30 to 40 minutes.

What do we understand by attention?

Attention is that mechanism that is directly involved in processes such as the selection, distribution and maintenance of our psychological activity.

In other words: through attention we choose which stimuli we want to capture (target stimuli) and which stimuli we want to avoid.

So attention is a process that we can direct and allows us to discern between relevant and irrelevant information.

That is to say: you can choose that information that you pay attention to and that that you do not pay attention to.

And this is precisely where the dilemma of this process comes in: do we really pay attention to important things? And when we do, are we able to keep it so as not to lose information?

Well, the reality is that many times we do not do it like that, so we can lose our ability to pay attention in a productive way, and this can become a problem.

What functions does care perform?

When we speak of attention we can distinguish three different processes.

Each of them will allow you to carry out a different activity.

1. Selective attention: it allows you to capture only certain elements, being able to distinguish those that are relevant from those that are not.

2. Sustained attention: allows you to remain conscious or attentive for long periods of time.

3. Divided attention: allows you to attend to two or more stimuli simultaneously.

References

1. Arnold, A., Scheines, R., Beck, E, B., Jerome, B. (2004). Time and Attention: Students, Sessions, and Tasks. Center for Automated Learning and Discovery and Open Learning Initiative Carnegie Mellon Universit.
2. Gilbert, P. (2010). Training Our Minds in, with and for Compassion An Introduction to Concepts and Compassion-Focused Exercises.
3. Reinoso García, AI et al. (2008). Cognitive stimulation exercise book 1. Institute of Public Health. Madrid Health. City of Madrid.
4. Reinoso García, AI et al. (2008). Cognitive stimulation exercise book 2. Institute of Public Health. Madrid Health. City of Madrid.