attention-training

The development of functional promotion methods in military tactics, especially shooting, is essential for the military. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of neuropsychological rehabilitation on the improvement of cognitive function related to accuracy and attention in military shooters with moderating effect of organism constraint.

The current study was a quasi-experimental with pre-test, post-test and retention design with control group, it was performed on 64 military shooters aged 25 to 34 (32 people with competitive state anxiety and 32 people without competitive state anxiety). Participants were randomly selected from a military base in Tehran, Iran and were purposefully divided into four groups 1) experimental without competitive state anxiety, 2) control without competitive state anxiety, 3) experimental with competitive state anxiety and 4) control with competitive state anxiety. Experimental groups received neuropsychological rehabilitation for 7 weeks in addition to shooting training (three sessions per week). Control groups participated only in shooting training. Competitive state anxiety was considered as moderator of organism constraint. Instruments included neuropsychological rehabilitation program, the continuous performance test and the cox competitive state anxiety inventory.

Results of data analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant difference between the mean scores commission error, omission error and hit reaction time of the pre-test and post-test experimental and control groups. the experimental group without competitive state anxiety as well as the experimental group without competitive state anxiety, showed significant improvements in cognitive functions related to accuracy and attention following neuropsychological interventions; while no change was observed in the control groups (p<0/001). Competitive state anxiety also contributed to differences among groups.

According to the findings of this study neuropsychological rehabilitation can be applied as an efficient method to the improvement of cognitive function related to accuracy and attention in military shooters in status without competitive state anxiety and with competitive state anxiety.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) of the American Psychiatric Association has introduced the Borderline Intellectual Functioning (BIF) individuals under the category of a group of individuals with intelligence deficiencies, with 70-85 IQ, and individuals who are prone to many obstacles including academic achievement. About 13.5-14% of the population of any society constitutes borderline intelligence individuals; therefore, these individuals have to share the same educational, developmental opportunities as others do. Academic achievement defined as the cumulative of knowledge, skills, and abilities in cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains, including math academic achievement. Due to the short attention span of the borderline intelligence, low intelligence and or slow-paced students are not able to learn materials and solve problems with the speed of their peers and their classmates. Attention span refers to the extent that the individuals can perceive as many as objects in a short segment of time as they can. Slowly paced individuals do not have such ability and confront with specific problems; thus, the slow-paced students do not gain the necessary and the efficient academic achievements. Attention is composed of a series of complex cognitive processes that put the focus on goals and working to achieve them, along with retaining and keeping information while being alert for an extended period. If one were not able to pay attention to class material, he or she would pay attention to things that are not related to class activities. In rehabilitation sense, having an ability to focus on curriculum materials to acquire educational objectives is necessary because it speeds up learning. Math academic achievement affects borderline individuals, and it is related to the academic self-efficacy. It defined as a trait, as a characteristic, or as a global self-confidence in mastering various abilities related to environmental demands and perceiving self-competence; it is the individual's belief in having the skills to finish a job in a specific condition that would have an effect on his or her effort and persistence. The individuals with high self-efficacy pay attention to their class activities. Bandura believes that low achieved individuals have less self-efficacy and slow paced ones have low self-efficacy as well. Therefore, instructing the attention would have an impact on the slow-paced children’s academic performance. Hence, the purpose of the present research is to investigate the effect of the attention training on math academic achievement and the academic self-efficacy items on students with borderline IQ. The research method was experimental with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. Using the simple cluster sampling method, from the entire 4th-grade elementary slow-paced girl students of the first district in Kerman, 24 borderline students were recruited and placed into two control and experimental groups, each group 12 students. The experimental group trained for 12 sessions of 45 minutes, while the control group did not receive any training. The training sessions based on the “Learning disabilities: From identification to intervention.” book and “Effect of Panoura and Filippo's metacognitive instruction model on improving knowledge and metacognitive problem-solving skills among students with a special disability in dyscalculia” article. To gather data Wechsler Intelligence Scale was used as a borderline screening tool and the math academic achievement test and academic self-efficacy questionnaire used as the measurement tools. Data analysed with multivariable analyses of covariance (MANCOVA) method was used, along with the aid of SPSS-20. Findings indicated that the impact of attention training on the slow-paced students with the math academic achievement (p˂0.001), with the aptitude (p˂0.001), and with the context (p˂0.001) are significant but with the effort is not significant. Overall, can be concluded that attention training, considering the aptitude and the context, leads to improving the slow-paced girl students’ math academic achievement and attention training would be useful on their academic self-efficacy.

Background and Test anxiety is a state of general anxiety and it includes cognitive, physiologic and behavioral responses related to the fear of failure that affects students at the time of their academic performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of attention training on attention control, focused attention and dispersed attention in female students with exam anxiety.
The research method is experimental with pretest-posttest design with control group. Thus a sample of 30 female high school students with anxiety test in Isfahan during the academic year of 2015-2016 selected by multistage cluster sampling and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The tools used in this study were anxiety questionnaire (Sarason, 1984) and measurement instrument of focused and dispersed attention (Yazdi, 2011) and attention control questionnaire (Diri Beri & Reed, 2002). Before intervention, both groups were evaluated. Then, the experimental group received educational intervention during 8 sessions in 2 months. Data were analyzed using covariance analysis.
The results showed that attention training has a significant effect on attention control, focused attention and dispersed attention (P Therefore, according to the results of this study, attention training can be used to increase the attention and concentration of students with test anxiety.

Background and Given the importance of interventions to improve the spelling disability and the need to prevent future problems, the purpose of this study was evaluate the effectiveness of attention training on improving the academic performance of students with spelling learning disability.
The method research of current study was semi-experimental and research design is pretest- posttest with control group. The statistical population consisted of all third and forth grades primary school students with spelling learning disability in Isfahan in 2014-2015 year. Sixty student were selected through multistage random sampling, and allocated into control and exprimental groups. The program of attention training was presented in fifteen sessions of 80 minutes on the experimental group. Pieron Precision Test (Pieron,1986), Jordan Attention Deficite Disorder Scale (Jordan,1992) and Fallah Chay Spelling Learning Disability Test (Fallah Chay,1998) were used as the research instruments. Data were analyzed using analysis of covariance.
The results of data analysis showed that attention training significantly increased the mean scores of the academic performance in experimental group compared to the control group at the post-test stage (P 0.01). Also, there was a significant difference between the mean scores of boys and girls in the spelling scores (P 0.05).
The results supported the effectiveness of attention training on improving spelling ability and academic performance in student with learning disability and have important implications in regard to attention training to reduce academic problems of students with spelling learning disability.