Classroom displays—Attraction or distraction? Evidence of impact on attention and learning from children with and without autism.

Abstract

(2017) 'Classroom displays -attraction or distraction? Evidence of impact on attention and learning from children with and without autism.', Developmental psychology., 53 (7). pp. 1265-1275. Further information on publisher's website:Publisher's copyright statement:c 2016 APA, all rights reserved. This article may not exactly replicate the nal version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Running Head: Impact of classroom visual distraction on attention and learning in autism and typical development 2 AbstractPaying attention is a critical first step towards learning. For children in primary school classrooms there can be many things to attend to other than the focus of a lesson, such as visual displays on classroom walls. The aim of this study was to use eye-tracking techniques to explore the impact of visual displays on attention and learning for children. Critically, we explored these issues for children developing typically and for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Both groups of children watched videos of a teacher delivering classroom activities -two of 'story-time' and 2 mini-lessons.

Towards a Theory of Minimalism and Wellbeing

“…The findings are reflected in research regarding the negative impact of cluttered homes on subjective wellbeing (Roster et al 2016), decreased performance and increased stress as a result of the attentional effects of clutter (McMains and Kastner 2011), and a link between clutter and high levels of the stress hormone, cortisol (Arnold et al 2012). These findings also align with research indicating that cluttered homes and classrooms may be detrimental to attention, cognition, and learning (Fisher et al 2014;Hanley et al 2017;Tomalski et al 2017).…”

A synthesis of the quantitative literature on autistic pupils' experience of barriers to inclusion in mainstream schools

“…Executive function has been identified as a significant factor in school participation for autistic pupils (Zingerevich and LaVesser, 2009); 85% of autistic pupils experienced difficulties in the classroom with planning (Fernández‐Andrés et al, 2015) and 37% of autistic pupils were found to have difficulty maintaining attention on classroom tasks (Ashburner et al, 2010). Autistic pupils were found to give less attention to teachers giving instruction (Higuchi, Ishizaki, Noritake et al, 2017), and were more affected by distraction (Hanley, Khairat, Taylor et al, 2017).…”

“…The participants are overwhelmingly male with a total of 1455 boys and only 192 girls included in the selected studies; in the studies with both male and female autistic pupils, the average ratio was 7.5 males to every female participant. A further two studies contained only male participants (Hannah and Topping, 2012; Rodríguez‐Medina, Rodríguez‐Navarro, Arias, Arias and Anguera, 2018) and six studies did not report the gender of the participants (Hanley et al, 2017; McKenney, Stachniak, Albright, Jewell and Dorencz, 2016; Reed, Osborne and Waddington, 2012; Symes and Humphrey, 2010, 2012; Wainscot et al, 2008). Some smaller studies had more balanced ratios, for example Locke et al (2010) with four boys and three girls, but the small overall numbers do little to balance the overall gender ratio.…”

“…Despite a relatively large number of studies relating to cognition, the range of processes within this focal domain means that there are still important gaps in the evidence. A well‐established finding seems to be that up to 85% of autistic pupils reported difficulties in aspects of executive function that are relevant to their ability to engage effectively with learning activities (Ashburner et al, 2010; Fernández‐Andrés et al, 2015; Hanley et al, 2017; Higuchi et al, 2017). However, other cognitive differences associated with autism, reported in laboratory settings, such as sensitivity to uncertainty (Glod et al, 2019) and reasoning style (Brosnan et al, 2016), were not represented in the literature on autistic pupils' experiences in school.…”

Harnessing Learners' Perceptual Load, the Attentional States, and Interactions in Digital Learning Environments

“…Attention is the key to successful learning (Hanley et al, 2017). In line with the advancements in technologies and the proliferation of digital devices, learning has undergone a lot of changes.…”