Eight-year-old Jack liked to read the encyclopedia and share what he learned, so he clearly understood the words. Yet, he struggled to read longer passages due to weak attention skills… even short stories were a struggle. After training with the Attention Arcade for three months, Jack read the entire Harry Potter series over the summer – more than 4,000 pages.

Attention skills are critical to being an efficient reader. And now there is a fun way to train attention skills!

Founded by two leading neuroscientists in the areas of eye movements and attention, along with an experienced entrepreneur, BrainLeap is focused on changing the way that attention issues are addressed in schools and homes. Our mission is to empower one million children per year to train foundational attention skills through fun and engaging video games.

BrainLeap’s attention training games were initially developed and tested at UC San Diego before launching the company. The games demonstrated measurable improvements in attention during the initial study and later in an independent study at the University of Florida – Gainesville.

Our vision is a world where attention training is the norm for improving attention control, where every child has the opportunity to train attention skills and build the confidence that comes from working to improve their capacity to learn and engage with the world around them.

• Awarded SBIR Phase 1 & 2 grant from the National Science Foundation (over $1 million for R&D)
• Partnerships established with complimentary companies outside the US: Lexplore (UK), Kaiyon (South Korea)
• Commercialized product with a scalable (Firebase) backend
• Selected for the Ubisoft Entrepreneurs Lab
• Accepted into the USC EdTech Accelerator
• $30k in sales generated to date
• 19 pilot schools (10 paying)

With a rise in ADHD, increased use of social media, and two years of remote/hybrid learning, attention challenges are at an all-time high. Even worse, schools lack the tools to cost-effectively help students train foundational attention skills.

Attention is more than just paying attention in the classroom. It is a foundational skill for learning. According to Digital Promise’s Learner Variability Project, attention plays an important role in:

• Social and emotional learning
• Cognition
• Literacy

Just as literacy is a foundational skill for learning, attention is foundational to literacy. Without strong attention skills, children can struggle with reading. As you can see in the image below, the reader on the left struggles to move his eyes efficiently over the page like the reader on the right. Even when children can decode and understand the words, weak attention skills keep them from moving their eyes and attention efficiently across the page.

Attention skills are the non-language skills needed for reading. Schools need a way to empower children to strengthen the foundational attention skills that are essential for building literacy and increasing their capacity for learning.

The good news is that attention skills can be trained! The Attention Arcade is a suite of specially designed video games, run on a Windows or macOS computer, that students control using only their eyes via an eye tracker — an off-the-shelf sensor that is attached to the bottom of the computer screen.

Controlling the games with only the eyes is important to training attention skills. To put it simply, where you look and where you are planning to look is where you are placing your attention. The games leverage this connection to train attention skills at a foundational level. The Attention Arcade measurably improved attention skills in a pilot study at UC San Diego (Chukoskie, L., Westerfield, M., & Townsend, J. (2017). A Novel Approach to Training Attention and Gaze in ASD: A feasibility and efficacy Pilot Study. Developmental Neurobiology.) as well as two follow-on studies at UC San Diego and The University of Florida that are being prepared for publication. These studies were not peer reviewed. 

The suite of games includes 9 different games that each train different aspects of attention and give players variety to keep them engaged. The games are designed for children ages 7-14 and players typically start to see improvements after 8 hours of training (30 minutes per day 3-5 times per week) with the largest benefits coming after 20 hours of training.

Attention skills form the non-language skills needed to be an efficient reader. For students who have the ability to read and decode words, but struggle to maintain attention on the page, attention training can have a dramatic impact on their reading ability.

BrainLeap sells annual software licenses to schools for $2000 per school site as well as the eye tracking hardware ($300 per computer). We believe there is also a longer-term opportunity in direct-to-consumer as eye tracking becomes common in VR headsets.

Based on National Center for Education Statistics projections, US schools will spend $158 billion on Literacy for students in grades 2-8 with $11.1 billion of that total spent on Literacy Programs. Plus, schools currently have an extra $122 billion to spend on Learning Loss because of the American Rescue Plan.

• CBS News including the Denver affiliate: New gaze-driven game helps train children to stay focused 
• Science Magazine: Can science-based video games help kids with autism?
• ADDitude Magazine: BrainLeap Technologies: The Attention Arcade
  
• Cheddar News: Gaming to improve Focus and Attention

Our understanding of how eye movement and attention work together allows us to use eye movement to train attention. The Attention Arcade gradually shapes behavior using visual and auditory feedback provided in real-time. The games are designed to improve the speed, accuracy, and control of eye movement and in doing so they improve the speed, accuracy, and control of attention.

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