The Attention Span of the Preschool Child - Research Paper Example

He was wearing a navy t-shirt, khaki shorts, plain white socks and white tennis shoes. He paid no attention whatsoever to his clothing during the period of observation. He was accompanied by his mother, a young woman who referred to him exclusively as “Pumpkin”. I observed Pumpkin run, walk, climb a short ladder, slide down a small twisty slide and write legible letters in dirt with a stick, as well as drawing various human and animal figures and numbers. His physical development and coordination seemed appropriate to his age, perhaps slightly advanced but not significantly so.

Pumpkin did not appear to derive the same degree of satisfaction with his playground exploits as did the other children in his age range, and only climbed the ladder to the slide at the insistence of his mother. At no point did Pumpkin interact in a sustained way with any children his own age on the playground. I observed some fantasy play, but no cooperative or parallel play during this period. Pumpkin engaged exclusively in solitary play for the duration, with occasional attempts to engage his mother's attention.

Pumpkin interacted only with his mother during the course of the observation. He was very independent throughout, and showed no discomfort or significant displeasure at any point. He appeared to have fostered a healthy and secure attachment to his mother, and was comfortable venturing a reasonable distance away from her. Pumpkin was fairly polite with his mother, asking, “Please help me write this” and so on. His mother made several attempts to redirect Pumpkin toward the playground before he gave up and went back to entertaining himself by writing in the dirt.

I observed some fairly sophisticated grammar from Pumpkin during this time period. Most notable about his speech was that despite the complexity and length of his statements, the sound /r/ was entirely absent. This made even sophisticated phrasing sound very juvenile at times. Much of Pumpkin's speech was directed toward himself, in the form of questions and answers (“What do we call animals who eat plants? Animals who eat plants are called 'herbivores'.”) as well as running commentary about what he was drawing (“I'm a friendly triceratops, I like to run fast and I have three horns on my face.”) Pumpkin engaged in running commentary at every stage of self-directed play.

A smaller portion of his speech was directed toward his mother, usually in the form of a question such as "How do you spell 'diplodocus'," or "How many groups have more than three?" His mother usually responded only by repeating the question back to Pumpkin, smiling and saying, "That's nice, Pumpkin", or with a non-committal hum as she continued working on a crossword puzzle. When I began my observation, Pumpkin's mother had just convinced him to climb the slide. As soon as he got to the bottom, he began drawing with a stick and did not stop before I completed my observations.

During his drawing time, Pumpkin drew dinosaurs, dinosaur footprints, letters, numbers, and circles (around “groups”). His favorite number was 3. This observation leads me to believe that Pumpkin is not a typical preschooler. His attention span was extremely long, and his choice of activities did not align with those of his age mates. At no point did he attempt to engage any children of his own age in play, though he seemed perfectly comfortable speaking with his mother and seemed aware of the other children (if not particularly interested in them).