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Attention span is the amount of time a person can concentrate on a single activity. The ability to focus one's mental or other efforts on an object is generally considered to be of prime importance to the achievement of goals. People usually have a longer attention span when they are doing something that they enjoy.

Attention span while working on a computer is in the range of one second or less. If it takes any longer than a fraction of a second for the computer to respond to an instruction, (such as performing a search or hitting the back-arrow key), the human brain starts to wander off task.^{[citation needed]}.

Contents 1 In education 2 Relation with television 3 The Internet 4 References 5 External links

The average attention span of a person is 2-5 minutes times their age^{[citation needed]}, so a 5-year-old would have an average attention span of 15-25 minutes. Elementary education often seeks to extend or develop attention span in children. A common myth, quoted by many teachers, that a person's attention span is 10 + person's age minutes^{[citation needed]}, and that anything taught after that is not taken in, but by taking a 5-10 minute break after this time will help the class recover and replenish their attention span, but there is no evidence that this is actually successful^{[citation needed]}. In children it is said that their attention span is about a minute for every year of their lives.

Some critics of television broadcasting complain that the medium tends to attenuate or shorten attention span.

In a study of 2,600 children ages 1 to 3 published in 2004, a team of researchers from University of Washington found that early exposure to television may have a negative impact on attention span.^[1]

Attention span for web pages is 5 to 10 seconds, whereas people have 30 seconds or more for a TV commercial.^{[citation needed]}

1. ^ [1] Abstract of the study published in the journal Pediatrics

• [2] An editorial about the UW study by Suzanne Fields in The Washington Times