Are you concentrating? Some teachers are checking whether their students are paying attention by using headbands that read brain signals.
Focus headbands, made by BrainCo in Massachusetts, were used in a recent trial with 10,000聽schoolchildren aged between 10聽and 17 in China. Over聽21 days, students wore the headsets during class and teachers could monitor their average attention levels using an app.
Lights on the front of the headsets also show different colours for distinct attention levels 鈥� flagging to teachers when聽a student might be daydreaming.
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The device can help teachers identify students who may need special assistance and pitch their lessons right, says Bicheng Han, founder of BrainCo. However, aside from the potential privacy issues around monitoring students鈥� brain activity, some are聽.
The Focus headband uses electroencephalography (EEG)聽sensors to detect changes in brain waves when the wearer is highly engaged in a task. Typically, the聽brain鈥檚 high-frequency beta聽waves聽are increased when聽we聽are focused, and the low-frequency alpha and theta聽waves are more excited when we are relaxed.
The patterns vary from person to person, so Focus determines each user鈥檚 maximum attention level via a series of mental tasks.
Attention gaming
Students who participated in the experiments also had to play a聽smartphone game every day at home for 25 minutes aimed at increasing their ability to concentrate. The more they concentrated, the further they progressed in the game.
鈥淎fter a few rounds, they will learn how to stay focused,鈥� says Han. He says students in the trial saw a 10聽per cent improvement in their grades and reduced the amount of time they needed to spend on homework.
The effectiveness of such techniques is debated, though. There isn鈥檛 any strong scientific evidence to prove that this form of attention training works, says Russell Barkley at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Although improvements are often observed, it is a placebo effect, he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 from parents鈥� expectation, not the products.鈥�
Brain waves recorded by EEG are used to diagnose attention disorders, but must be combined with other measurements, says Sandra Loo at the University of California, Los Angeles. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not that accurate by itself,鈥� she says.
What鈥檚 more, says Brian Anderson at the Texas A&M University, a student鈥檚 attentiveness doesn鈥檛 necessarily assess learning. 鈥淲hat if the students are very smart, so they don鈥檛 need to pay that much attention to understand?
Han says parents were informed about the products and聽gave consent for the trial. 鈥淲hat we really care about is for聽users to reach their personal best.鈥�
