How Does Distraction Affect Information Processing?

Multitasking, helpful or harmful? In Alina Tugend’s “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus”, Tugend explores multitasking in several ways. Explaining how we as humans sacrifice focus “shifting focus from task to task gives illusion that we’re simultaneously tasking”. Also, how our brains react to operating and trying to do more than one task at once. Only one or two visual stimulants can activate our neurons at one particular time. Lastly, how we can recreate boundaries and cope with everyday life and multitasking. Tugend reiterates several times the importance of one task at a time so we as humans can effectively complete tasks to the best of our abilities instead of giving partial focus and not efficiently completely a task. Multitasking is very beneficial at times, but more often there are significant downfalls; it is crucial we learn how to manage the downfalls of juggling tasks, events, conversations, and daily events.

In order to do any sequenced action, any cognitively planned activity, or any thought one must use sustained attention and it seems to be harder to maintain attention on simple and automated tasks. To investigate whether increase in the proportion of automated tasks affects sustained attention performance, 636 psychology students did the SART which they were required to response when the digit is over ‘5’ and not response when the digit is less than ‘5’. As hypothesised, participants who took the test with more repetitive response actions required are more likely to make errors than were participants who were tested with less repetitive response actions required. These findings suggest that repetitive and automated tasks have a significant impact on sustained attention performance.

In each trial, the participants were presented with a sequence of words on the left side of the window. Each word was presented for one and a half seconds. After all the words were presented, the response buttons were presented on the right side of window. These response buttons were labeled with words from the sequence along with new distractor words that were not part of the sequence. The goal of the participants was to click on the response buttons and identify all the words that were part of the sequence. The independent variable for this study was the types of words that were presented on the test (response buttons). The dependent variable was the percentage of each types of items reported.

While students feel they are great at multitasking, studies show that they actually perform academically at a lower level than those who do not multitask. A study was conducted by a respected research lab in Stanford University. Clifford Nass, a professor of communications at Stanford University, introduces us to a study conducted on carefully-selected high chronic students who multitask (Digital Nation). The experiment was structured for students to identify numbers as odd or even, letters as vowels or consonants. Professor Nass wanted to test how quickly these students can switch tasks without losing focus. The results showed that people who multitask are slower than those who do not multitask. While slower does not mean horrible, it should raise a sign that if they had focused on their work only they would get better scores in their respective studies. Sherry Turkle, in an interview, displayed the differences between two common multitasking activities: taking a break from your studies to stretch and surfing the web. Turkle says: “When you get up and stretch and take a walk around the block, you can stay with your problem. You can clear your mind; you can move your body. You can stay

“Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era,” a chapter from The New Brain deals with the effects of modern technology. Here Restak examines the brain’s ability to multitask and the consequences of multitasking, for example, the risks of talking on a cell phone while driving. Our tendency to juggle tasks, Restak warns may be both unproductive and damaging to our brains. Multitasking forces our brains to process ever-increasing amounts of information at ever-increasing rates. Although technology has bettered the world, it is addictive and can lessen the human brain. With the constant use of phones and laptops it makes multitasking less productive. Your mind should be able to concentrate

Distraction is one of the most detrimental effects of technologies on our daily life. While these devices such as computers,

Each child was fitted with an electrode cap. The child was seated on a parent’s lap in close proximity to the experimenter where subjects were directed to watch the stimuli. Each participant received 20 sentences in the correct condition mixed with 20 in the syntactic violation condition. However, due to the troubling task of keeping the child’s attention focused on 20 sentences, a break was administered for 15 minutes halfway through the analysis.

memory capacity of the individual and their ability to effectively engage in the distraction technique. This study aims to extend on previous research pertaining to working memory capacity, distractibility and pain perception. The objective of this study is to observe the effect distraction has on altering pain perception relative to an individual’s working memory capacity. In this study we will utilize the operational span task (OSPAN) developed by Turner and Engle (1989) to split the participants into high and low working memory span groups dependent on their OSPAN scores. Participants will then engage in a simulated pain task under two conditions: distraction and no distraction. This study will include 40 participants; 20 in the low working memory span group and 20 in the high working memory span group. We expect that the low working memory span group will, on average, report higher pain ratings than the high working memory span group in the experimental (distraction) condition. We hope that this study will show that the inverse relationship between working memory and distractibility will have an effect on how people perceive pain. We hope that the current study will guide future research in exploring alternative non-pharmacological methods to relieve pain.

Distractions can be beneficial to people with shirt attention spans, It may seem from an outsiders point of view that the distraction is doing just that; distracting from what sed person needs to be doing, but in fact it’s giving their mind a short break that allows them to then go back to their work with a clear mind-set and a new point of view towards their task at hand.

This research project explores the effects and consequences of visual distraction on reaction times in adults. In this study we want to see if participants who are visually distracted have a slower pre-motor time than those who are not visually distracted. This is crucial in situations such as driving as we believe there are many accidents that arise from distractions. In order to address the question, we will collect sufficient participants and perform simple experiments to gather required results. Our results will contain accurate measurements of reaction times which will be a critical factor for gaining knowledge in this area.

Both are quite common distractors which one might experience. They are distractors which people do not always pay heed to, so they can go unnoticed to a large degree. Our study was concerned with intentionally presenting either one of two auditory distractors or silence and using a word lishttps://www.grammarly.com/?q=writing&utm_source=placement&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=46860B.png&utm_term=paperratert and free-recall task to determine how much of the attended message (the word list) was recalled despite the distraction of the unattended message (noises). Our hypothesis was that the comedy program would result in a significantly greater distraction than the silence or children noises. Our reasoning for this prediction was that a comedy program would be more engaging . It depicts fictitious characters in amusing situations. There is a low level of emotional involvement from the viewer toward the program, so it allows free expression of emotion without the consequences. Consequences of free emotional expression in a conversation involve the reaction of the other person taking part in the conversation. If the viewer of a program laughs, the actors on the program cannot tell. If the viewer shouts, curses, and flings objects at the television, the actors are unhurt. Children, on the other hand, can react to input from other people. Our thoughts are that the comedy program is more engaging, so will have a higher distracting

The independent variable is the anagram task (difficulty of task) with three levels: easy, moderate, or hard. With this in mind, the following are the dependent variables which are the participants’ responses such as the ease of the task, ease of the task for other individuals, whether they solved the CINERAMA/AMERICAN anagram and the frustration during the task. Each participant was timed from the time they started to solve the anagrams in this study. Finally, they filled out the questionnaires after completing the anagrams. Our hypothesis was that participants in the hard and moderate groups would be impacted by learned helplessness by failing to solve the former words that would affect participants to give up on following words (solvable or unsolvable). Finally, the level of frustration will be higher on the hard level than in the

The experiment utilised two lists containing 30 words of between 3 and 6 character length. The first list (marked as condition 1) contained words with colour connotations (e.g. grass and blood). The second list (marked as condition 2) acted as the control and used words which had no direct colour connotations (e.g. ledge and sty). The words within the lists were coloured in one of 5 inks (red, green, orange, purple and yellow) and although the order in each of the lists was random the word length and first letter of each word corresponded (i.e. S for sky in condition 1 and S for sty in condition 2). Each sheet was printed with the same paper, font style and size – 36pt Arial on standard

This report aimed to investigate the generation effect occurs for low frequency words. The experiment used a sample of 117 second year Research Method students from Birkbeck Univerity in within and between subject design. There were two independent variables, read and generate items and two dependant variables, low and high frequency. This data was analyzed with related sample t test to examine whether the generation effect occurs for low frequency words and independent sample t test to investigate whether there is a difference between generation effect with low and high frequency words. The results show that there is significant difference between generate and read condition

Unfortunately, cell phones have become one of the biggest challenges instructors face in college classrooms as these devices have become a pervasive part of young people's lives. What used to only make phone calls and send text messages, now does our emailing, sends us Facebook and Snapchat notifications, and plays music. Additionally, our cell phones are not only used for personal activities, but for school and work life. We want to be reachable in case of an emergency, but the constant stream of notifications has led our productivity to significantly tumble down. Recently, I noticed that in many of my classes, even though the professor says there is a “no phone” policy, many students are scrolling through their social media feeds or responding to a text rather than paying attention to the lecture of the day. I admit to using my phone constantly during class, which often has led my grades to suffer poorly. Rather than paying attention to the lesson, I was checking on buzzing notifications of entertainment news and random trivia. Because I was not listening to my professor earlier in the day, I had a difficult time trying to complete the homework assignment. Thus, in an attempt to be epistemic temperate, for the last two days, I tried to not use my phone during class lectures and study time to measure my productivity.