Developing Attention and Self-Regulation in Infancy and Childhood

The development of attention serves the child with mechanisms that allow an increased voluntary control of behavior and is tightly linked to self-regulation. Different facets of attention show major developmental changes during the first years of life, followed by a protracted developmental period in childhood and beyond. Evidence from cognitive neuroscience studies has helped to elucidate the neural networks and their operation underlying attention development, as well as genetic and environmental factors that contribute to individual differences in efficiency. Also, an increasing number of studies show that the executive control of attention can be enhanced by training, leading to benefits at both the cognitive and brain levels. This chapter relates changes in the ability of infants and young children to control attention and behavior to underlying brain function and connectivity, the factors that contribute to individual differences, and the type of experiences that may promote children's self-regulation skills.