By Sophia Simonis
Do you often have trouble studying for exams? Does it seem like even though you put in countless hours studying that you can never remember what you need to when it comes time to sit down and actually take a test? You may be studying wrong.
THE LOAD THEORY OF ATTENTION
The load theory of attention explains how people can focus on a certain task while ignoring irrelevant stimuli. This theory includes two concepts, processing capacity and perceptual load. Processing capacity refers to the limited amount of information a person can focus on at one time. Your working memory can only handle so much at a time and still successfully carry out a task. Perceptual load refers to the amount of information a particular task involves. A high-load task, involving a large amount of information, will fill up your entire processing capacity. A low-load task, dealing with a small amount of information, will only take up a small portion of the processing capacity (1). In other words, a difficult task will require all of your attention to perform, while an easier task leaves room for distractions to take over your attention.
When performing a low-load task, your processing capacity is underfilled, and you are therefore susceptible to being distracted. When performing a high-load task, your processing capacity is full, so inattention al blindness takes place and you disregard irrelevant information (2). So, if you try to do an easier, small task, you may have trouble ignoring random stimuli that shouldn’t otherwise catch your attention if you were focusing on a more difficult task. Research on this theory has suggested that the productivity of work environments may increase if the tasks given are of high-load, so that they take up the entire processing capacity and help eliminate distractions from off-task stimuli (3).
However, distractions are not always external. Internal distractions in the form of task-unrelated thoughts can also take up some of your processing capacity (4). These thoughts generally stem from a wandering mind, but can also be due to a separate external distraction.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH STUDYING?
Well, if you tend to study with music or a movie on in the background, you may be occupying your processing capacity with those stimuli, rather than the material you are trying to retain. Trying to stay focused is hard enough as is, but when you add in your phone, your favorite music, or your guilty pleasure movie, it’s difficult to not get distracted or let your thoughts roam. If you are trying to study while your phone is buzzing with notifications or you have music on, your thoughts can stray from what you are supposed to be the task at hand and cause you to struggle to retain information. When you don’t give yourself a big enough task when studying, these distractions can overtake your session and render it useless. If you don’t want to take time out of your day to not retain any information, but instead get some successful studying done, some changes will have to be made to how you carry out your studying.
SO, WHAT CAN YOU DO?
First things first, you need to put your phone on silent and away. Out of sight, out of mind is the trick. If you hear notifications or take breaks to text someone back, it will interfere with your attention and ability to concentrate on what you are studying (5). Using your phone will obviously distract you, but even hearing notifications will cause your mind to wander and leave you thinking about who posted what on Instagram instead of what the Pythagorean theorem is.
This same sentiment also applies to visual media, such as TV shows or movies playing in the background. Even if it’s a movie you’ve seen thousand times and swear it won’t distract you because you already know what’s going to happen, it will still take some of your attention and clog up your processing capacity. Despite being something you won’t be captivated with since you probably know it like the back of your hand, you will still look up at your favorite scenes and lose track of where you were at in your studying. So, turning off the TV will help you focus in on your studies.
Next up, music can be a double-edged sword. While most people will put on their favorite music while they study to relax, it can counteract your ability to focus (6). There are two ways you can fix this. The best option is to have no music on while you study. This will eliminate an extra auditory stimulus that can easily distract you from the task at hand. If you can’t stand being in absolute silence, try putting on instrumental music with no lyrics instead of what you listen to when you are jamming out to on long car rides. The removal of words stops you from the possibility of being distracted by hearing a line in a certain song and it reminding you of someone or something that has no relation to what you are meant to be studying. But, you still get to groove along to some music.
And finally, my personal tip is to adjust the way you are actually studying. If you typically just read through your notes taken during a lecture or skim through the chapters of the textbook, you may benefit more from creating your own mock exam. I have found that the process of writing up a quiz over what will be o an exam is an excellent studying approach. By the time you get done making the test for yourself, all of the information is swirling around in your brain, and you can immediately apply it when taking your mock exam. You first review the information while writing up the quiz, and then you apply all of it when taking it. Thinking of the ways questions may be asked on an exam also seems to help with remembering the answer when seeing a similar question when the time comes to take the real thing.
If you have been experiencing trouble with studying, the load theory of attention may be just what you need to propel your chances of exam success.
REFERENCES
(1) Lavie, N., Beck, D. M., & Konstantinou, N. (2014). Blinded by the load: attention, awareness, and the role of perceptual load. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 369(1641). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2013.0205
(2) Lavie, N. (2010). Attention, Distraction, and Cognitive Control Under Load. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 143–148. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41038558
(3) Forster, S., & Lavie, N. (2008). Failures to ignore entirely irrelevant distractors: The role of load. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14(1), 73-83. doi:10.1037/1076-898X.14.1.73
(4) Forster, S., & Lavie, N. (2009). Harnessing the wandering mind: The role of perceptual load. Cognition, 111(3), 345-355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.02.006
(5) David, P., Kim, J.H., Brickman, J. S., Ran, W., & Curtis, C. M. (2015). Mobile phone distraction while studying. New Media & Society, 17(10), 1661–1679. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814531692
(6) Kotsopoulou, A., & Hallam, S. (2010). The perceived impact of playing music while studying: Age and cultural differences. Educational Studies, 36(4), 431-440. https://doi.org/10.1080/03055690903424774