In 1990, imagine I told you that I was going to invent a sinister tool…
As people used it, their attention spans would degrade, as the tool would constantly shift their focus, weakening their powers of concentration and contemplation.
This tool would show people whatever it is they found most difficult to look away from — which would often be what was most threatening about the world, from the worst ideas of their political opponents to the deep injustices of their society.
It would fit in their pockets and glow on their night stands and never truly be quiet; there would never be a moment when people could be free of the sense that the pile of messages and warnings and tasks needed to be checked.
What would you have thought this engine of distraction, division, and cognitive fracture would do to humanity?
Phones!
Alerts = Bottom-up attention.
Learning (conditioning) to respond to alerts = Top-down attention?
Opening your phone even when there’s no alert = Top-down attention
Our mind becomes like a pinball propelled from lever to lever by text chimes, social media notifications and targeted ads…
Without top-down control of our attention, we open ourselves up to stimuli that steer our attention for us.
Life issues (top-down): issues in my life, other works, other deadlines. NOT COVERED IN PSYC2016
Drives: hunger, sleepiness, boys. NOT COVERED IN PSYC2016.
Cognitive, interest, learning (top-down): boring lectures, social media - instagram, phone, tangents, spring break planning, content is too hard or ez. MULTIPLE CHAPTERS MENTION MEMORY, + CHAPTER 16
Not just interesting, but also a social reward (everyone wants to be liked)
What distracts you during studying?
phone; phone; Phone; Phone; phone; Phone; phone; my phone; cellphone; My phone; buzzing phone; Phone buzzing; My damn phonnneeee :(
My phone, the habit of picking it up all the time
messages/instagram
flat mate coming into my room
The clock
Social media
my boyfriend playing video games right next to me
snacks
vacuumming in the background, remembering random things
My own thoughts
Cans of kombucha being drunk.
my housemates
Social facilitation
- Harness social attention to keep you on task! - Study groups - Group workouts
In 2004, the average time people spent on a single screen was 2.5 minutes.
“I was astounded. That was so much worse than I’d thought it would be,” said Gloria Mark.
But that was just the beginning.
By 2012, Mark and her colleagues found the average time on a single task was 75 seconds. Now it’s down to about 47.
Multi-tasking?
We can only focus on one thing at a time.
Task-switching.
“It’s like we have an internal whiteboard in our minds,” Mark said.
“If I’m working on one task, I have all the info I need on that mental whiteboard. Then I switch to email. I have to mentally erase that whiteboard and write all the information I need to do email. And just like on a real whiteboard, there can be a residue in our minds. We may still be thinking of something from three tasks ago.”
When have you been most focused?
Menti.com
Get involved in research!
alex.holcombe@sydney.edu.au
When we find something rewarding/worthwhile, ideally we exploit it
But exploration is also a drive
The yin to exploitation’s yang
The explore/exploit trade-off
Vigilance is more about threats than about exploration
Exploitation - using known information to get rewards
Exploration - exploring the environment to look for new information/rewards
All day, the world makes its demands. There’s so much of it, world
begging to be noticed.
ultrawhelmed sensorium, my self
ultrawhelmed sensorium, my self
taxed with being a self, brimming with living’s rowdy mechanics
and disruptions unremitting,
a thought flits by, then another (an unpaid bill, a jingle’s tenacious refrain)
and, … I attend, as best I can,…
yielding to the most persuasive god, the most recent,
Irish Times article
Social facilitation
- Harness social attention to keep you on task! - Study groups - Group workouts