In order to read this text you are focusing your attention on this single task, and you are filtering out distractions from your surroundings. People with ADHD, myself included, have difficulty doing this. A radio playing in the next room can act like an unwanted magnet to attention. But we also often struggle with distraction from […]
Attention
Why do we sleep? Apparently, this simple question has no simple answer, despite decades of research. According to leading sleep researcher William Dement, “the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy.” But just because we may not know why we need to sleep doesn’t prevent us from knowing […]
When two talking heads are better than two flips of a coin: Social interaction helps team performance Put a few people together on a team and you get teamwork, which Wikipedia lauds as “a means of assuring quality and safety in the delivery of services” in at least some domains. Put a few people together on […]
Like many mental health professional, the UK’s famed National Health Service (NHS) notes that “it can be easy to rush through life without stopping to notice much. Paying more attention to the present moment – to your own thoughts and feelings, and to the world around you – can improve your mental wellbeing.” This ability to “live in […]
Suppose you are asked to name a few pictures. You are shown the drawing of a tiger and you say “tiger”. Then a mouse appears and you say “mouse”, and so on. The experimenter avoids pictures of a gerenuk or babirusa, so you are cruising along nicely. And then this pops up: The holiday is […]
Imagine the following dystopian job: You are working in a factory, and your task is to look for that matching sock so the pair can be packaged together. To make things worse, you are given another sock every few seconds, together with a new drawer in which to look for its twin. To manage the […]
You are deeply involved in a conversation with someone at a party when suddenly you hear someone say your name, and, before you even know what happened, your attention is transported toward the voice that uttered it. This is an example of the cocktail party effect, first described in 1959 and recently extended even to visual stimuli. This […]
When opposites slow you down but don’t collide: Negligible dual-task costs with stimulus incompatibility Doing two things at once is hard. But why? Answering this question can give us key insights into how the human mind works. Everyday life in the 21st century is rife with attempts to multi-task (e.g., using a mobile device while doing […]
Trouble finding the red pen? Just say “tomato.” High-level conceptual information can direct our attention during visual search. Wouldn’t it be handy if saying “metallic” made your keys pop out when you were looking for them? Or if saying “green” helped you find your beer on St. Patrick’s Day? Language is used to orient our […]
The ball is about 20 cm from the hole. The grass is smooth. There is no wind, it is not raining, and you have done this hundreds of times before. A gentle tap and you sink the ball. Just as you would expect from looking at the picture below. Now replay the scenario in your […]