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Guest Essay 02/02/2025

Learning to focus: how early brain development boosts – and limits – raw learning power

Author: Sam Wass, Professor, Institute for the Science of Early Years, University of East London, UK

Figure 1

The development of brain cells in the part of the brain that lies under the forehead, known as the frontal cortex, from birth to two years. (Courchesne et al., 2005).

Early brain development resembles an upside-down U-curve. Connections between brain cells, called synapses, form at up to 1 million per second until they peak between 1-5 years (see Figure 1).

After this, the number of synapses begins to decline as our brains figure out which cells perform tasks most efficiently, different brain networks get specialised at performing different tasks, and unused connections are removed, or pruned.

Parents may not realise these changes happening in their child’s brain, but they will probably notice some of their effects. Between the ages of 1 and 5, children gradually start to develop the ability to focus— i.e., to zero in on a particular task and to inhibit irrelevant information that is irrelevant to that task.

Focusing and understanding go hand in hand. When we focus on something, a network of neurons that have fired together and wired together in the past become active, and they send out signals to dampen down activity in other, competing neurons. When this happens, we form a strong and stable understanding of what we are looking at, and we can focus on it cleanly. This ability is one of the hallmarks of mature brain function. It allows us to perform tasks, solve problems, and to survive in complex, dynamic environments that otherwise can be overwhelming.

Focus, then, is really important. However, parents and educators alike often forget that some of the most important – and hardest – learning has taken place already, before we learn to focus. It is during these earliest stages of learning that we first figure out how to convert the jumbled information that hits our sensory organs into something meaningful – whether learning language by deciphering how sounds map onto objects and actions, or learning motor control by figuring out how to coordinate the 30 or more muscles needed to reach out for a spoon and pick it up. This early learning relies on spotting patterns, or statistical regularities in the noise; and there is good evidence that pattern spotting works best when we do not have tightly wired neural connections. It is during the very earliest stages of life, when our synapses are first multiplying rapidly and we consequently cannot focus, that we find it easiest to flit between different ways of seeing things, which helps these crucial stages of early learning.

Many people who work with young children envy this ability in young children. As adults, our fine-tuned brains find it easy to ‘lock in’ to particular ways of seeing things. This means that we find it easy to focus, but it also means that we only see what we are looking for. Young children’s brains are messy, and overconnected, and it is because of that that they find it harder to focus. But it also means that they are more likely to see what is there, to flit between different ways of seeing things, and to learn unexpected patterns that an adult might miss. As we get older, our focus improves. But what nature gives with one hand, she takes away with the other.

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