Nightmare for daydreamers as study says it affects learning

Researchers say mind wandering impedes how much children can retain information at school

CHILDREN who daydream fall behind at school, a study has found.

Researchers have discovered students whose minds wander in class do not retain as much information as their more focused peers.

The study, conducted by Queen’s University Belfast, is the first to address the impact of so-called “mind wandering” on learning in young children.

The researchers played a story about a fictional pharaoh in Ancient Egypt to 97 children aged 6-11 and asked them a question every two minutes to check if they were paying attention.

The study found that “mind wandering” had a significant impact on learning, as children who day-dreamed the most remembered less about the story.

The researchers discovered the children’s minds wandered a quarter of the time, and they couldn’t help it.

The authors said: “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to show the robust link between mind wandering and learning in a child sample.”

The study said daydreaming “during a classroom-style listening activity is not only pervasive but also detrimental for memory recall in children”.

The researchers said because the impact of daydreaming was so clear, teachers should consider how they teach young children to mitigate against “mind wandering”.

Previous studies have suggested children who spend their days gazing out of the window instead of paying attention may be among the cleverest pupils.

In 2012, researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison in the US found students who appeared to be constantly distracted were often better at performing two tasks at once.

Participants in the study had to either press a button in response to the appearance of a certain letter on a screen, or tap in time with their breath.

The researchers checked in with them periodically to ask if their minds were wandering.

Those with better working capacity reported “more mind wandering during these simple tasks” even though their performance was not compromised.

The latest study, however, suggests in the long run constantly daydreaming will leave children struggling to keep up with their peers.

Dr Agnieszka Graham, a lecturer in applied developmental psychology at Queen’s, said: “In school, often children can get in trouble for mind wandering, it is sometimes viewed as a sign of disrespect or misbehaviour if they are not paying attention.

“However, our research has found children, like adults, are unable to fully concentrate all the time; it’s likely that their minds will wander for a substantial proportion of a typical school day.

“Our findings indicate that further exploring the causes and consequences of mind wandering in these early years at school could provide a solid foundation for developing interventions to help children detect when their minds strayed from the task at hand and refocus their attention.”