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In psychology, concentration refers to the ability to control the focus of one's thoughts or to hold one particular object in mind. The inability to concentrate is often described as mind-wandering.

Western tradition
see Attention.

Within psychology and cognitive neuroscience, concentration has been studied under the term attentional control, or the executive control of attention. Attentional control defined as the ability to control what we pay attention to and what we ignore is thought of according to Michael Posner's model of attention, the others being the orienting and alerting systems. Whereas the orienting system is mediated by the parietal lobe and the ventral visual stream and the alerting system by the brainstem and parts of the right frontal lobe, the executive or volitional control of what we attend to and what we ignore is mediated by the frontal lobe including the anterior cingulate cortex.

Concentration linked to academic achievement. Self control linked to health, wealth and long-term outcomes.

Development of concentration see attentional control

Eastern tradition
see Mindfulness see Samadhi_(Buddhism)

Detail from Tang and Posner

The ability to control to focus of attention has been researched for thousands of years within the Buddhist traditions.

Exposure to television
Infants were initially thought to have no ability to concentrate, and to be completely passive in their allocation of attention, although more recent work has shown that some concentration abilities do exist during the first year of life. Throughout childhood and adolescence, however, concentration abilities have been widely reported to be substantially lower than they are in adulthood. This is thought to be because of a number of factors, such as that the [frontal|frontal lobe]] parts of the brain that are required to exercise attentional control are slower developing that other areas of the brain such as the [occipital|occipital lobe] and [parietal|parietal lobe] cortices.

Improving concentration
Cognitive training to improve concentration - mindfulness based training - tang - training working memory - klingberg - training attentional control - rueda, wass - neurofeedback - computer games

Related terms
Attention Attentional control Attention span Mindfulness (psychology)