Auditory Distraction

In the essay, “Blasting Music to Drown Out Reality”, by Sydney J. Harris, the author is determined that people use music as a way to, “keep reality at arm's length”. “It is not in order to hear the music, but in order that the vacuum in their minds may be soothed by the sound, so that silence does not force them into thinking about themselves or experiencing the real world of perception and sensation.” This shows how music has be used as earplugs to block away people's connection to the world around them, to silence their troubles if only for a moment. This thesis is explicit to make sure the readers can easily identify what the author's argument is going to be when they are examining

“involves a subject conducting a certain task, in this case recalling a series of numbers, while listening to different kinds of background music. If sound exhibits acoustical variations, or what Perham calls an "acute changing-state," performance is impaired. Steady-state sounds with little acoustical variation don't impair performance nearly as much.”(Cutler).

Not only does music affect thought, but it also benefits health. Students usually study in quiet, relaxed surroundings while listening to serene music. Classical music can steady a fast heartbeat and a slower heartbeat induces relaxation. Exercise plays a critical role in maintaining good health, and relaxing music can be favorable to this. Music reduces muscle tension, resulting in a better work out. Scientists performed controlled studies using adult males who were around twenty-five years old. Blood samples were taken before and after treadmill running. The experiment found that with the presence of music, “heart rate, blood pressure, and lactate secretion in the brain were significantly lower” . The results proved that music

“The reaction time of a distracted cell phone driver is more than 40% than those of an undistracted driver” (Hague).

T.S. Elliot once wrote, “Distracted from distraction by distraction.” This line comes from Eliot’s “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets. This quote means that we are letting the distraction of the internet distract us, or today’s teens, from the distraction of our daily lives. I challenge the decision to allow teenagers excessive access to social media and texting. These media outlets are doing more than just distracting today’s youth: it’s affecting their health, social life, and school career.

Many people have lost their lives on the road and caused other’s deaths because they were distracted with doing something while driving. In 2012, 3,328 people were killed in distraction-related crashes (“Statistics on Texting & Cell Phone Use While Driving” n.d.). Distractions while driving that result in these accidents include texting/making a call or becoming intoxicated and having high blood alcohol concentration. Many laws have been brought forth to help regulate the amount of people drinking while driving and using a cell phone while driving. Not only do people put their own lives in danger, they are also putting other’s lives in danger. People who take part in these distractions are not being responsible when making these rash decisions while driving and creating a hazardous environment for those around them.

In this article “Distracted Driving”, many distractions are mentioned other than just cell phone usage, such as changing the radio station or driving with kids in the back seat. It is stated that the dangers from distracted driving are because of the decrease in brain function and inability to pay full attention to the road. These practices lead to wrecks and in many cases death.

In the article “How The Brain Reacts” by Marcel Just and Tim Keller, the authors describe how they use science to show the brains reaction to what is happening around it when on the road. “Behavioral studies have shown that talking on a cellphone diverts the driver’s attention and disrupts driving performance.” They

The noise may influence communication as if it is noisy then, you may not be able to hear what the other person is saying, and then misinterpret what they are saying. Where as if it is quiet then you would be able to clearly understand what they are saying to you. So if a person has difficulty hearing then you would need to make sure that it is quiet so that they can hear what is being said. This would affect communication because if it is too loud then people will start to misunderstand what is being said or may not be able to understand what is being said all

Noise can be very distracting especially if someone wants to study, sleep, read, do homework, and do a project or anything else. I personally have experienced noise as a distraction and I would never intentionally try to distract someone from doing what they want buy making it hard for them to focus because of my noise.

The outcomes of the study were that the systolic blood pressure was greater for participants who listened to the obnoxious music than the participants who listened to calm music. Similarly, the systolic blood pressure of the participants who listened to obnoxious music before taking the mathematic test was higher than the participants that listen to calm music before the mathematic test. Also, for the participants who were told their grades would not be affected did not have an effect on their heart rates. However, the students that were told their test scores would determine the amount of extra credit they would get, their heart rate was notably higher for the participants who listened to the obnoxious music than the ones who listened to the calm

The purpose of this entire experiment was to see if music (a distraction) would affect how many time we could press a clothespin. We were hoping that the music would distract us from the pain we felt, and hopefully increased the amount of times we could press it. We even hypothesized that if we were distracted by fast-paced music, then the amount of total clothespin presses will increase. However, our hypothesis was not supported. The average amount of presses without music was 46.425, while the average amount of presses with music was only 43.9. The addition of music did not seem to affect the amount of presses in our experiment.

“A distracted driver may fail to see up to 50% of the available information in the driving environment. You may look but not actually “see” what is happening. Focus of the driver is not on the road or traffic and it becomes difficult to handle phone and vehicle at one time. Cell phones during driving also reduce the mental capacity of drivers as they fail to concentrate on minor or major activities happening around them. Cell phones distract drivers' attention resulting in comparatively slow response to traffic signals and other related traffic events. Studies have shown the fact that breaking reaction time is also slower while talking on a cell phone during driving. The perception, vision, general awareness, and concentration of the driver are impacted while communicating on a cell phone during driving. Especially during bad weather or driving on slippery roads, drivers engaging in conversation pay less attention to these areas increasing risks of fatal accidents.

Recently, a Texas woman died in a crash about twenty miles south of Pueblo. The woman was a passenger in a truck. The driver of the truck was likely distracted and crashed into the back of a tracker-trailer. He suffered minor injuries and the two occupants of the other vehicle were fine. While you may encounter many distractions while driving, there are certain steps you can take to reduce the number of distractions you face as a driver.

Auditory selective attention modulates the cortical responses. Because of the corticofugal feedback from the auditory cortex to the brainstem level, the brainstem responses are affected by higher order mechanisms. Auditory selective attention increases selectivity and shifts the responses to the target sound. In this study in order to evaluate selectivity at the brainstem level during auditory selective attention, the cross-phasogram method was used. The responses were obtained in 15 normal hearing subjects. In this study, the cross-phasogram method was applied to the brainstem responses to the diotically-presented /ba/ and /da/ stimuli. Then it was applied to the brainstem responses to the dichotically-presented /ba/ and /da/ stimuli while