Sustained Attention in Real Classroom Settings: An EEG Study

Abstract

Sustained attention is a process that enables the maintenance of response persistence and continuous effort over extended periods of time. Performing attention-related tasks in real life involves the need to ignore a variety of distractions and inhibit attention shifts to irrelevant activities. This study investigates electroencephalography (EEG) spectral changes during a sustained attention task within a real classroom environment. Eighteen healthy students were instructed to recognize as fast as possible special visual targets that were displayed during regular university lectures. Sorting their EEG spectra with respect to response times, which indicated the level of visual alertness to randomly introduced visual stimuli, revealed significant changes in the brain oscillation patterns. The results of power-frequency analysis demonstrated a relationship between variations in the EEG spectral dynamics and impaired performance in the sustained attention task. Across subjects and sessions, prolongation of the response time was preceded by an increase in the delta and theta EEG powers over the occipital region, and decrease in the beta power over the occipital and temporal regions. Meanwhile, implementation of the complex attention task paradigm into a real-world classroom setting makes it possible to investigate specific mutual links between brain activities and factors that cause impaired behavioral performance, such as development and manifestation of classroom mental fatigue. The findings of the study set a basis for developing a system capable of estimating the level of visual attention during real classroom activities by monitoring changes in the EEG spectra.

Neurophysiological Vigilance Characterisation and Assessment: Laboratory and Realistic Validations Involving Professional Air Traffic Controllers

“…Nowadays, many occupations require high levels of vigilance, for example, security personnel [10], employees tasked with monitoring surveillance cameras or baggage screening experts [11], driving vehicles [12], diagnostic medical screening [13], real classroom settings [14], and industrial and air traffic control [15][16][17]. The need to remain alert and situation-aware, and to detect infrequent but critical signals is crucial in a lot of job occupations: A vigilance failure in any of these domains could have dramatic impacts.…”

Brain-to-brain synchrony between students and teachers predicts learning outcomes

“…The aim of the current study was to explore whether brain synchrony across students and teachers can predict long-term memory retention. While brain-to-brain synchrony has been associated with several classroom-related variables (for example, students' engagement and social closeness; (10,11,(27)(28)(29)), there are conflicting results about its relationship with learning outcomes. Bevilacqua et al (10) collected EEG data from a group of 12 high school students and their teacher during regular biology lessons.…”

Brain and Cognitive Mechanisms of Top–Down Attentional Control in a Multisensory World: Benefits of Electrical Neuroimaging

“…The utility of this approach extends well beyond research on attentional control or laboratory walls. In extant real-world neuroscientific research, the 22 advantages of EEG have been harnessed by extracting processes reflecting inter-personal brain activity synchronisation, and this has shed new light on the highly dynamic processes that scaffold social interactions and cognitive functions therein, like sustained attention, and learning and memory (Bevilacqua et al, 2018;Dikker et al, 2017;Ko et al, 2017;Müller et al, 2018;Tseng et al, 2018). Focusing EEG analyses on wellunderstood ERP components would offer the researchers valuable correlates of cognitive processes that do not require overt behavioural responses that may be hard to obtain in natural social interactions.…”

“…EEG -its low-cost, portability, non-invasiveness -is likely behind this popularity. Therein, measures relying on the exquisite temporal resolution of EEG have been shedding light on the mechanisms governing joint action and attention and learning in everyday situations (Bevilacqua et al, 2018;Cohen & Parra, 2016;Dikker et al, 2017;Ko et al , 2017;Müller et al, 2018;Tseng et al 2018). The way to fully capitalise on the hardware-and information-level benefits of EEG likely lies in employing signal processing techniques that extract both temporal and reasonably resolved spatial information from EEG data that are also neurobiologically interpretable (Tivadar & Murray, 2018).…”