Attention Span and inclination

[Timberman]

I was fascinated by the research presented by the masters student on attention.  Are you aware of any research into the impact of inclination on attention span.  By which I mean that the attention tests referred to seemed to be more mindless tasks like a soldier on duty.  Is attention span affected by the inclination of the individual.  In other words if a person is interested in a particular topic does their ability to attend to it increase higher than the 10 minutes indicated?
Once again many thanks for the information in the abstract.
Timberman


This discussion is related to An experiment on  the attention span of childern at a different time of the day..

[Trialanderror]

I can not directly answer your question but wanted to mention that Mary Sheedy Kurcinka pointed out in her books that "spirited children" seemingly have a short attention span but do very well when interested in a subject - while children with ADD/ADHD can not focus, no matter how much they are interested or "inclined".
I am not sure what you mean by the "10 minutes indicated" but if you are looking for more research, you could probably even go all the way back to research in primates. The chimpanzee that really wanted to get to the ant hill must have spent more than 10 minutes to figure out that a stick stuck into the ant hill could give him all the ants he wanted to eat. And when my sometimes restless son wants to build something, hours will pass until his dream city is created.

Where can we find that masters student`s research?

[RockRose]

I would say "interest" rather than "inclination".  

And yes,  interest in a topic definitely increases attention span.  Have you ever heard teenage boys rattle off stats about cars or baseball teams?  Little kids who can't remember to brush their teeth and then put on their socks can rattle off ever kind of dinosaur name there is?