Friday, July 13, 2012

Attention Span of a Toddler

   I thought I'd give long-time (or short-time!) followers a break today from my long-winded Science Friday posts and do something more simple.  When Q-ball turned 1, I found a copy of Gesell Institute of Human Development’s series on child development, by Louise Bates Ames.  I've talked about Gesell in some posts before- I've always found his research interesting, hence the read.
   One of my favorite parts of the books was the following image. In it, Gesell and his fellow researchers recorded the movements of children of various ages around a nursery over a 7-minute period.  Q-ball is only 16-months, but I've just assumed that 12-18months pretty much all looks that same.  This image pops into my mind at about 4:45pm almost every day as I haven't gotten any of the tasks done for the day but am totally exhausted.

Photo Credit: longestshortesttime.com
Does this remind you of your child?


6 comments:

  1. Wow! The first age group looks perfectly accurate, but it's crazy to see how drastically things change! I have definitely been noticing a whole lot less bouncing around from place to place lately, but I had thought of it more as a phase than a sign of development. I suppose I just have a nearly two and a half year old now. Makes me glad to be this pregnant now rather than a year ago. No wonder I was so tired during my first trimester! ;)

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  2. Woah! That is crazy to actually *see* it like that--but it does make perfect sense.

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  3. Hmph. I commented yesterday and then came back to show this to my husband and my comment never showed up :/ Hopefully that's not happening often! Anyway, I'm glad you posted this! It's amusing and enlightening all at once. Annabelle has definitely had a noticeable decrease in the amount of bouncing around the house she does, and I had thought of it as a phase more so than a developmental thing. I suppose I do have a nearly two and a half year old on my hands, however, so in light of this it's not going to go back the other direction anytime soon!

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  4. I felt the same way-how interesting it most have been to be a researcher and actually conduct this experiment!

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  5. Blah problems with comments! I've looked into it, and there's some bigger-than-me issue of Blogger, disqus, and smartphones. So, if you are on a smartphone maybe that's the issue?
    Glad you liked the post! My husband actually really gets a kick out of this image too. I must say I'm kinda looking forward to the slow down!

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