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Definition
The cognitive and behavioral process during which one becomes actively, and consciously, aware of one or several stimuli, while cognitively suppressing irrelevant stimuli. Attention is an executive function.
Introduction
George is 8 years old and he is attending the third grade of elementary school. During his first year of elementary school, when he was 6 years old, he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD, predominantly inattentive presentation) as he was meeting the diagnostic criteria of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association 2013). Specifically, George met six of the seven DSM-5 criteria for inattention, namely:
- (a)
He was failing to pay good attention and made careless mistakes
- (b)
He could not focus for long periods of time
- (c)
He was often failing to listen when others were speaking to him
- (d)
He would not pay...
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References
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Constantinou, M. (2019). Attention. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1105-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1105-1
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