On April 8, 2026, Bridget K. Daleiden (Educational Psychology) presented “'Easily Distracted': A Thematic Analysis of College Students’ Attentional Self-Efficacy and Self-Regulated Learning” in a paper session on motivation, belonging, and help-seeking at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.

The study, co-authored with Lisa D. Bendixen (Educational Psychology), Kendall Hartley (Teaching and Learning), and Abraham E. Flanigan (Georgia Southern University), examined undergraduate students’ attentional self-efficacy and their strategies for focusing during independent study. Findings highlight variability in students’ beliefs about attentional control and suggest that attentional self-efficacy is a useful framework for understanding how students regulate attention and manage distraction in modern learning contexts.