Frequently Asked Questions

Parents often ask about this. It is a common phenomenon among children in the lower grades, usually appearing in grades 1 and 2. Because the grade 1–2 curriculum is fairly simple and is repeated many times in class, and because today's children are generally quite bright — most with a foundation of early education — a child may feel they have mastered the material just by listening occasionally, even if their attention in class is not very focused. From grades 3 and 4 onward, however, the difficulty and pace of the coursework increase markedly and teachers no longer repeat each knowledge point over and over. Without a good level of attention to support learning at that point, a very noticeable decline in grades begins to appear in grades 3 and 4. Parents should therefore communicate with teachers regularly about how their child listens in class rather than looking at grades alone, so that possible attention problems can be spotted and corrected early, while the child is still in the lower grades.

During EEG-biofeedback training, the equipment only reads the bioelectrical signals on the surface of our skin — signals that exist on the body surface at every moment whether or not they are being read. The bioelectric sensors only read; they emit nothing, much like the electrocardiogram taken during a physical exam. This technology is therefore a safe, green training method with no side effects whatsoever.

This is a very typical question. When a child is doing things they enjoy — playing games, watching cartoons — their attention is being attracted; it is passive. Psychology calls this passive attention. After age 5, a child's active attention develops rapidly: the child becomes able to take part in less inherently interesting chores, homework and lessons, and to keep at them for some time. This relies on the child's capacity for active attention, which psychology calls voluntary attention. So the attention used for cartoons and games and the attention used for study are two different kinds of attention. Some children who become overly accustomed to the passive mode of attention lack effective active projection of attention and struggle to form effective voluntary attention. What we ordinarily call attention training refers to training this voluntary attention.

Attention training is similar to sports training, yet different: sports training trains the body, while attention training trains the brain. Anyone can take part in attention training, whether or not their attention is problematic, and individual starting points differ. Generally, a complete course of training takes 80 sessions, divided into 3 stages: the first 30 sessions are the initial-results period, after which changes in the child's behavior begin to show; the middle 30 sessions are the improvement stage; and the final 20 sessions are stability training. A complete course usually takes 6–8 months and provides the most fundamental support for a child's lifelong learning.

Research has found six main factors behind poor attention in children: 1) family heredity; 2) pregnancy and delivery issues — the effects of premature birth, difficult labor or cesarean delivery; 3) sensory-integration dysfunction, with insufficient crawling practice between 7 and 12 months having a significant effect; 4) too little outdoor exercise and insufficient coordination training; 5) excessive reliance on passive attention — large amounts of multimedia courseware, games, cartoons and toys; 6) organic brain injury.

By ages 12–15, about 60% of children with poor attention improve noticeably. But we also see that about 40% of children carry these problems into adulthood. Many adults zone out badly in meetings, while reading, or when doing things they dislike but must do — mostly cases that did not improve during adolescence. The communication problems, falling grades, feelings of inferiority and negative feedback from society caused by attention problems in childhood can greatly affect a child's development. Moreover, this attention gap tends to widen gradually during primary school. Many children show mild attention problems in grades 1 and 2 while their grades still keep up, but the situation worsens markedly in grades 3 and 4 and their schoolwork gradually falls behind.

The KingBrains attention-training program includes 7 approaches — EEG-biofeedback training, visual attention training, auditory attention training, dynamic attention training, music assistance, breathing coaching and home auxiliary training — with more than 4,000 training modules at difficulty levels targeted to the trainee's age. For details of the individual modules, please consult our advisory teachers.

The five elements of intelligence are attention, observation, imagination, memory and reasoning. Attention is called the readiness state of intelligence: without a good level of attention, the other elements of intelligence cannot perform well. Many parents feel their child has become smarter after training — in fact the child has not become smarter; rather, their intelligence is performing more consistently.

On average, results are significant after 30 sessions. Some children show clear results within 20 or even 10 sessions, while for others results may take 40 sessions or more. Our statistics on the most recent 100 children at our training centers show a response rate of 67% at 20 sessions, 86% at 40 sessions and 94% at 60 sessions. How quickly a child shows results is affected by five factors: 1. Baseline condition before training 2. Sensitivity of the nervous system 3. Weekly training density 4. The child's age stage 5. The family education environment

Generally, training can begin at age 5, and attention training can continue throughout life — abroad, EEG biofeedback is used for the attention training of pilots, astronauts and athletes, all adults. But the golden period is the primary-school years; results are most pronounced before age 15.

Attention training is a highly specialized field. We have 30 categories of training modules. We first use 4 authoritative assessment systems to evaluate every sub-component of the child's attention in detail, identify the causes of the attention problems and draw up an individualized training plan. Training then combines EEG-biofeedback training, visual attention training, auditory attention training, dynamic attention training, music assistance, breathing coaching and home auxiliary training — with emotional-regulation work added when necessary — into a complete training system.

Training can be scheduled Tuesday to Friday afternoons and all day on weekends. Each session lasts an hour and a half. During the school term, children train 2–4 times a week — no fewer than 2 — and during holiday intensive courses, once a day.

Given the adjustment cycle of the nervous system, 2–3 sessions per week is preferable. If the child's schedule is genuinely tight and only one session a week is possible, we need the cooperation of a home training plan, with about 20 minutes of home training each day.

A person's attention level is regulated by the nervous system. Zoning out in class, restlessness, carelessness, procrastination and impulsivity are signs of poor nervous-system regulation. In particular, the underdevelopment of the autonomic nervous system common in childhood often leads to weak self-control of behavior. The technical depth of brain science limits how far this can be discussed here. In plain terms, theta waves (4–8 Hz), SMR waves (12–15 Hz) and high-beta waves (18–36 Hz) in our brainwaves are closely related to attention level. Where nervous-system regulation is poor, the EEG typically shows excessive power density in theta (4–8 Hz) and high-beta (18–36 Hz), while SMR (12–15 Hz) is unstable with insufficient power density. Theta is normally the dominant band during sleep, but if theta runs too high during waking hours, the person is often in a state of brain inhibition, showing up mostly as pronounced staring blankly and zoning out. SMR is the brain's basic rhythmic capacity — brain science calls it the attention wave — the ability to keep behavioral activity on a good rhythm; when this band's amplitude is high, attention is good, and when it is low, attention is weak. Too little SMR is the main factor behind scattered attention that shows up mainly as hyperactivity. Excessive high-beta intensity indicates neural activity prone to impulsivity, temper flare-ups, tension and anxiety, and easy fatigue. EEG-biofeedback training uses the electrical waves emitted by the thinking brain to analyze the brain's level of attention. When the brain is being used efficiently, the software system awards points; when it is used inefficiently, the system alerts the trainee and deducts points. Efficient brain use is continually rewarded while inefficient use is flagged and promptly corrected. By interacting with the training program, the trainee's brain is repeatedly rewarded for correct, efficient use, learning and consolidating correct attention habits and fundamentally improving attention ability. EEG-biofeedback training adjusts the stability and EEG power density of each attention-related band, thereby adjusting the level of attention. A deeper theoretical discussion is available from our consulting teachers.

The core of EEG-biofeedback technology is a process of self-adjustment of a physiological capacity (such as attention). To keep children interested in training, biofeedback usually uses vivid, engaging visuals. The equipment analyzes the data of each attention-related band in our brainwaves and converts it into a real-time image on the computer — for example, a racing car. The attention wave drives the car: the higher the attention wave's amplitude, the faster the car runs; otherwise the car will not get going. The state of the car we see is actually our own current state of attention. Through continued training, repeatedly capturing the mental pattern present when the car is running makes the car run more and more steadily. The feedback loop helps us keep adjusting our attention state, and repeated training raises the amplitude and stability of the attention bands — the child's attention improves.

Since its invention in the 1980s, EEG-biofeedback attention training has been widely applied in pilot training, shooting, archery and many other fields demanding high-level attention, achieving training results recognized by the world's brain-science community. Since the beginning of this century it has spread much more widely into children's attention training; millions of children worldwide are now receiving EEG-biofeedback training with very significant results.

EEG-biofeedback training and classic training contribute to results in a ratio of roughly 7:3. EEG biofeedback is mainly used to improve zoning out, restlessness and impulsivity, while classic training effectively improves the resolution, stability, breadth, sensitivity and precise movement of auditory and visual perception, reducing the carelessness and procrastination caused by mishearing, misreading, copying errors and poor symbol sensitivity. The two kinds of training are complementary, each with its own strengths, combining to solve a child's compound problems.

Attention training is adjustment training of the nervous system. Once training establishes a new operating pattern in the nervous system, it becomes fixed, and after later maintenance training the results will not rebound. It is like learning to ride a bicycle: once the nervous system forms the mental model of balance, it is usually never forgotten and remains very stable.

Sensory-integration training usually addresses underdeveloped vestibular balance and poor coordination of the large muscle groups; a child with those problems should do sensory-integration training first. Learning activities such as listening in class and doing homework involve the precise coordination of higher sensory systems — visual, auditory, motor and cognitive — and that is typically the territory of attention training. Sensory-integration training is more foundational than attention training, and children who have been through sensory-integration training generally still need attention training to improve precise coordination, the projection of voluntary attention and stability. Simply put, sensory-integration training focuses on balance and large-muscle coordination, while attention training focuses on improving the self-regulation and rhythmic capacity of the nervous system, addressing problems such as zoning out in class, hyperactivity, impulsivity, procrastination and precise movement.

This is one subtype of poor attention, called the hyperactive-impulsive type. It shows as constant squirming, always having small objects to fiddle with, frequently kicking the legs back and forth, and being unable to stay seated. In severe cases the child leaves their seat and walks around during class, or can stay settled in a formal setting for less than 5 minutes. This is one of the problems attention training addresses.

This is one subtype of poor attention, called the attention-deficit type. It shows as frequently staring blankly or spacing out during class or homework. In mild cases a small outside stimulus — calling the child's name — brings attention back; in severe cases the child must be called repeatedly before responding, seeming to live in a world of their own. This type often shows insufficient activation and is a classic attention problem.

The critical period for forming children's voluntary attention is ages 5–12; in older children, training results take somewhat longer to appear. But attention training can be done throughout life — for example, the attention training of athletes and pilots, constrained by career timing, usually begins only after age 20.

This is one subtype of poor attention, called the hyperactive-impulsive type. Some children show mainly hyperactivity, others mainly impulsivity. A quick or even fierce temper — flaring up fast, subsiding slowly, extremely stubborn, hard to persuade, hard to calm down within a short time, in some children accompanied by destructive tendencies — these are all classic presentations of the hyperactive-impulsive type.

A child being unable to recount what happened in class involves two possible factors: attention and memory. If the child normally has no trouble recalling the outline of other events from 1–4 hours earlier, then it is an attention problem, or a problem in the linkage between attention and short-term memory.

Homework procrastination also divides into the attention-deficit type and the hyperactive-impulsive type — showing as staring blankly and zoning out, or as hyperactivity, or as a mixed type. In some lower-grade children it also involves poor breadth, stability and resolution of visual attention. Attention training reduces hyperactivity, improves the persistence and stability of attention and, for some children, raises activation and reduces blank staring and zoning out — solving homework procrastination very well.

This is a common problem when children first start school. Although it is not strictly an attention issue, it troubles parents greatly. On the surface it looks like a fine-motor problem, but there is also a factor of poor stability in nervous-system control — that is, what appears to be poor small-muscle-group movement is, at a deeper level, caused by poor stability of nervous-system control. Our training system works on both of these aspects, and training results can be seen quite quickly.

Carelessness has three causes. First, poor stability of visual attention, poor resolution and weak precise visual positioning, showing as misreading, copying errors and skipping lines. Second, poor sensitivity to numbers and characters, requiring strengthened symbol-sensitivity training. Third, severe interference from noise waves: many children have large amounts of noise waves in the brain, and this interference causes loss of valid signals and transmission errors, likewise showing as misreading and copying errors. Our training system effectively solves these problems by reducing noise-wave interference, improving the stability, resolution and precise positioning of visual perception, and strengthening symbol-sensitivity training.

Many factors cause slow reactions. The most common are: first, the amplitude of interference waves in the EEG is too high, making the signal-to-noise ratio too small as information gathered by the eyes and ears is transmitted; second, weak sensitivity to symbols and text; third, an insufficient total quantity of neurotransmitters — with fewer neurotransmitters, information travels more slowly. Broadly, these problems are manifestations of insufficient brain activation and are addressed with attenuation training of the brain's inhibitory wave bands and dynamic attention-quality training; the results are quite noticeable.

This is a fairly common problem. Sleep problems divide into over-inhibition and over-activation: severe over-inhibition shows as occasional bed-wetting, while over-activation shows as abundant dreaming and restless movement during sleep. A child's brain consumes a great deal of energy over a day's activity: at 2% of body weight, the brain uses 20% of the body's total energy — a classic heavy consumer. Apart from nutrition, sleep is the second most important factor in replenishing the brain's energy; it is the brain's recharging process. Modern brain-science research shows that many intellectual activities — comprehension, inspiration, memory — undergo important processing during sleep. A child who sleeps poorly is under-recharged and under-rested, which harms daytime attention and other intellectual activity. The KingBrains attention assessment system evaluates a child's sleep quality, and adjusts it when necessary. Improving sleep quality is an essential part of attention training for some children — a blind spot of traditional attention training. We had a 4th-grade child here whose attention was very poor on arrival; assessment found that sleep quality was the main problem behind the poor attention. We then gave adjustment training for sleep quality, and the child's attention improved markedly within about 4 weeks.

In some nervous systems, high-pressure environments trigger a surge of noise waves, and tension and anxiety also cause a marked drop in attention level. With attention waves down and noise waves up, normal signal transmission is severely disturbed, producing extremely low-level mistakes — misreading, miscopying, miscalculating — so the child underperforms and scores worse than usual. The attention-training system includes attention-stability training that eases anxiety. A classic application is pre-competition EEG-biofeedback training in competitive sports at international level: it effectively lowers anxiety and raises attention so that everyday performance comes through normally — and with activation-raising and stability-strengthening training, performance can even exceed the usual level.

In principle, 2–3 sessions per week at a KingBrains training center meet the training requirement and no extra training is needed. If a child's situation is more serious, or the family wants faster progress, home training can be added. Home training comes in two forms — equipment training and exercise-sheet training; the former involves an additional cost, the latter does not. Home training follows the child's progress in the training course and takes about 20 minutes a day.

The KingBrains EEG-biofeedback training device comes in a home edition and a professional edition, and can be rented. For details please email support@kingbrains.com.