• Posted November 5, 2025

New Research Explains Why Children Get Easily Distracted

Kids are known for jumping from one thing to the next, even when they’re supposed to stay focused, but a new study suggests that behavior doesn’t owe to curiosity alone.

Scientists say children’s working memory just isn’t developed enough to help them stay locked in on a single task. For the study, they forced adults to act like kids when completing a task.

Researchers at Ohio State University found that when working memory is overloaded, attention becomes scattered and adults start behaving just like young kids.

“We made it difficult for adults to focus by filling their working memory with things that weren’t relevant to what they were trying to accomplish,” study co-author Vladimir Sloutsky, a psychology professor, said in a news release. “And when we did that, adults began to over explore and scatter their attention much like children do.”

The study, published this week in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, included 40 5-year-olds, as well as 71 adults.

Participants played a computer game in which they collected virtual candy from four cartoon creatures. Each creature always gave the same number of candies: 1, 2, 3 or 10.

But no one knew that at first, so part of the challenge was figuring out which creature was the most rewarding choice.

Some adults were also given a second task that filled up their working memory: They had to watch a stream of numbers and say aloud when two odd numbers appeared in a row. The mental load made it harder to stay focused on the candy game.

Everyone was able to figure out which creature gave the biggest reward. But just like the young kids, adults who had their memory overloaded kept switching around instead of sticking with the best choice.

"Like in children, this scattered attention was observed, despite high levels of task accuracy,” lead author Qianqian Wan explained. Wan, who did the study during doctoral studies at Ohio State, is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California-Davis.

The findings suggest that what looks like distraction in children may actually stem from a still-developing brain, and may even help them learn in more flexible ways than adults.

“These findings could inform teaching strategies that work with, rather than against, young children’s natural learning tendencies,” Wan said.

More information

The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University has more on brain-building through play.

SOURCE: Ohio State University, news release, Nov. 4, 2025