The Development of Higher Forms of Attention in Childhood

The history of attention in the child is the history of levels of the organization of his/her behavior. This history begins from the very moment of birth. Initially the child's attentional processes are carried out through inherited neurological mechanisms that organize the functioning of his/her reflexes in accordance with the well-known physiological principle of response dominance. This principle asserts that the organizing feature in the nervous system is a single, supreme center of stimulation whose strength grows at the expense of these inherited mechanisms. The dominant response provides the organic basis of the behavioral processes referred to as attention.