Richards, J.E. (2004). The development of sustained attention in infants. In M. Posner, Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention (Chapter 25, pp 342-356). Guilford Press. (PDF)
Attention may be characterized by its selectivity and intensity. The selective aspect of attention narrows the focus of information processing from a wide range of available stimuli, thoughts, and responses, to a single aspect of the environment, or a selected set of stimulus-response activities. The intensity aspect of attention improves the quality of information processing once the information processing focus is narrowed. This results in improvements in the quality of the cognitive activities involved in the attentive behavior. This latter aspect of attention is often called sustained attention. Infants show increases in sustained attention over the first year of life. In this chapter some research will be reviewed that illustrates the development of sustained attention in young infants.