Parental Companionship Shapes Children’s Attentional Functions and Academic Achievement

For elementary school students, parental companionship plays a complex role—potentially providing support while sometimes creating interference—resulting in dual impacts on academic achievement. We propose that effects on children’s attention may be a key underlying mechanism. This study examined this hypothesis through two complementary studies with Chinese elementary school students. Study 1 employed a questionnaire method with Chinese elementary school students (N = 871,mean age = 11.52 years-old). Questionnaire data confirmed that positive dimensions (communication/interaction, accompanying) and negative dimensions (neglect, interference) of parental companionship had dual impacts on academic achievement. Attention mediated these relationships differently: partially for communication/interaction, completely for accompanying and interference, with no mediation for neglect. Study 2 utilized the Attention Network Test to analyze specific attention functions, comparing children with high (N = 53) and low (N = 53) parental companionship groups. Children in the low companionship group exhibited a significantly larger alerting effect compared to those in the high companionship group, suggesting they develop compensatory mechanisms to detect environmental cues. These findings suggest that attention may represent a cognitive pathway linking different dimensions of parental companionship to academic outcomes and highlight the critical importance of balanced parental involvement that enhances attention development without causing interference.