Attention skills and looking to television in children from low income families

Attentional skills and home environment were examined as predictors of looking patterns during television viewing by 70 48- to 91-month-old children from low income families. Looking to the television was assessed in conditions without distractors and with continuous distractors. Looking patterns during television viewing reflected attentional inertia and the expected distribution of many short looks and few long looks (i.e., lognormal distribution) in both viewing conditions. The hypothesis that core attention skills and the home environment predict individual differences in looking patterns was partially supported by multiple hierarchical regression analyses. Looking patterns were predicted by orienting attention network skills in the no-distractor condition only. Alerting attention network skills and home environment factors were not significant predictors. The current study with a sample of children from low income families supports the idea that television viewing is a complex cognitive task that requires different mechanisms depending on the viewing condition.