In the AT&T commercial above, a man asks a group of children, "What's better, doing two things at once or just one?" All the children yell, "Two!" The commercial ends with "It's not complicated. Doing two things at once is better."
Except AT&T is wrong. It might seem better. But our cognitive abilities are not built to allow us to do two things at once. Hell, we often have a hard time doing one thing. (Or is this just me?)
I just finished reading A Deadly Wandering, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Matt Richtel. I wanted to know more about how technology impacts attention because attention is critical for learning. Since we regularly use technology for workplace learning, does technology positively or negatively impact our ability to attend? Most people in our field seem to assume that technology is good for learning. Here's my take: Assume nothing. Follow the evidence.
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| A Deadly Wandering, by Matt Richtel |
In the book, we follow Reggie's story along with how neuroscience experts see his story. Reggie Shaw makes a tragic mistake and accidentally kills two men while texting and driving. The story follows the accident, Reggie's prosecution, and what we can learn as a result of his horrific mistake.
It also follows what science knows and is learning about attention and technology. Richtel offers insights throughout the book from Adam Gazzaley, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Neurology, Physiology, and Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. And from David Strayer, PhD., University of Utah.
Earlier attention scientists found that neural conduction (how the brain and nervous system transmit signals and commands) is much slower than expected. Mental processing is not instantaneous. As we increase demands on mental processing (too much to look at, process, think through, make sense of), we "lose the thread" and make mistakes. Add in technology and demands on mental processing can increase a lot, sometimes exponentially.
For example, when we take our attention away from driving for a second or two (for example, to see where something dropped on the floor or to talk to someone in the car), it takes many seconds to regain full focus and understanding of what we are seeing and doing. Texting and driving don't only impact processing of the road while looking at the phone (which is terrible enough). It affects the ability to process what is happening around us for many seconds after looking at the phone. It's like no one is driving for those seconds because thinking is elsewhere engaged.
My insight: Anything that diverts attention while learning (music, interruptions, bells and whistles, going elsewhere to get a question answered) makes it MUCH harder to return to full focus.
People simply cannot learn or perform well under these conditions. Reggie's accident was a prime example. Anything else we try to do while driving, diminishes our ability to perform. Anything else we have to deal with while learning diminishes our ability to learn.
The bottom line here is that attention can be a delusion because our processing capabilities are quite limited. We easily fool ourselves into thinking we can do more than one thing at a time. But focus and attention are fragile and we are easily distracted. And while distracted, our processing capabilities are elsewhere.
Richter explains that the distractibility of the technologies in our lives and work have increased a great deal and continue to increase. To keep up we feel we must multi-task. But this is not how our minds work. We cannot change how we process and the speed of processing so we must change what we do to accommodate what is so.
In this section of the book, I want answers to the following questions.
- How can we keep technology from capturing attention away from learning?
- How do we learn while facing an onslaught of distraction information and demands?
Feel free to offer your insights and answers. I'll be back soon with more insights from A Deadly Wandering.
Great post Patti; I'll have to look into that book. Question: Remembering what you and others, myself included have posted on LinkedIn, etc., re: that the term "neuroscience" is so often misused in L&D today, it was a little confusing to see it here. I understand that you're writing about something else (i.e., apples/oranges) but it's still a little confusing.
ReplyDeleteKim, I wondered if someone would catch that! I looked at the two neuroscientists' research and they study attention and its impacts. That's why I put in links to information about both of them. I think much of this is that in-between area of cognitive neuroscience. I think this area is one where useful insights are to be found.
ReplyDeleteTechnology for my part introduced waiting time. There was no waiting time with paper. It started by compilation, now it's publishing, transpiling, downloading. So your work stops. What are you going to do of those 20 seconds? Stay idle, meditate would be the best but often I resume reading a post I kept aside or I check my email. If there is valuable content I'm lost when I resume my work. If it's not valuable, I wasted my attention. Being focused on single task for long is almost impossible. Shouldn't we explore strategies to take it into account?
ReplyDeletePS: I don't drive :)
Bruno, These are terrific points and thanks so much for bringing them up. When my connection is slow, something is taking a while to load, or as you said, waiting is needed (letting a large file download), I almost always switch attention. This is often the times I use Duolingo (learning Spanish) or clean up the things on my floor. But you're right, my original attention is damaged and replaced.
ReplyDeleteResearch clkearly shows that attention often wanes over time. A friend of mine told me about serial-tasking (doing one thing at a time and them going to something else within an hour or two). It works well. But when I'm writing, the day can pass in a flash without me noticing it's now dinner time. So it's clear that we CAN pay attention for longer periods of time (but how well? Will have to look into this.).
Research says we should be careful to not introduce distractions (there will be plenty on the person's end and we cannot help this). Also allow for breaks and chunk content for ease of attending and processing.
I drive but when going with others, I ask them to drive. My attention to driving is affected by the thoughts in my head and I've found no way to stop this. When I drive alone, I turn off the radio.