Early childhood attention problems are a growing global issue.
Attention issues are increasingly becoming common in early childhood. By the age of 4, as many as 40% of children have concerning attention issues. This is a growing concern to parents because many of these children with attention problems may never lead to a clinical diagnosis or early intervention.1
1. Mahone, E. M., & Schneider, H. E. (2012).
When we talk about attention what do we actually mean?
Based on Posnerian Trinity of Attention (proposed by Michael I. Posner (Posner and Petersen, 1990; Posner and Raichle, 1996; Fan et al., 2003b; Posner and Fan, 2004)), there are three constructs in attentional networks. One involves obtaining and retaining an alert state (alerting network), another for orienting our limited cognitive resources to relevant sensory information (orienting network) and the other for resolving the conflicts raised between different parts of our brain that are simultaneously activated (executive attention network).2
2. Raz, A., Anatomy of attentional networks (2004)
Selective Attention
Orienting network helps us to selectively filter out distractors and narrow down what we attend to at a time.
Sustained Attention
The alerting network helps us to sustain our attention on relevant and prioritised tasks for a prolonged amount of time.
Executive Attention
Executive attention network allows us to monitor and resolve conflict between computations in different brain areas, regulate thoughts and feelings, and overcome habitual actions.
Digital therapeutics
TALi’s digital therapies work by assessing and strengthening major domains of attention and executive function, areas shown to be fundamental to overall cognitive development, social relationships and supportive of improved educational performance (numeracy).3
If any one of these core attention networks are affected during development, inattention, poor focus, hyperactivity, distractibility, forgetfulness and impulsivity may occur. These problems are usually the first seen in the classroom when a teacher may see the child is being more distractible than their peers.
All children are different and whether they have a formal diagnosis or not, difficulties with attention can impact on their ability to learn, play, and socialise. TALi's digital therapeutic programs are designed to support all children achieve positive outcomes by strengthening their executive, selective and sustained attention skills.
3. Kirk, H., Gray, K., Ellis, K., Taffe, J., & Cornish, K. (2017) ¹
TALi's digital therapeutic programs provide faster attention screening tests and access to early interventions for children at the peak of their neuroplasticity.
TALi DETECT
TALi DETECT is a 20-30 minute evidence-based digital screening program comprised of cognitive performance tasks to determine how a child’s attention skills are developing against their peers.
TALi TRAIN is a digital cognitive training program that has been clinically tested and indicated to improve selective attention and numeracy skills, as well as improvements in inattentive and hyperactive behaviour in some children.
TALi DETECT was developed under the Cooperative Research Centres Program (CRC-P) from the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science.*
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Registered NDIS Provider: 4050030967
*Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) Grants provide funding for short-term research collaborations. It supports industry-led collaborations between industry, researchers and the community with the aim of fostering high quality research to solve industry-identified problems.
