Tag: Attention

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Load Theory of Attention: The Ultimate Theory to Success

By Bailey Newhouse

Intro:

Have you ever noticed that, when you are working on a tough homework assignment, the world shuts down around you? You become hyper-focused on the task in front of you that you barely register someone coughing a few feet away from you or the sound of music playing through your headphones. However, when you pull out your phone and start watching Tik Tok, suddenly every single noise is audible. The person talking loudly across the room, the sound of someone getting out of a chair, the person coughing from early, all of it begins to distract you from your daily doom scroll. Why is that? Well, you may be experiencing something called load theory of attention, and when it comes time to study for those college exams, it may be something you want to be aware of.

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Focus Like a Pro: How Selective Attention Can Help You Become a Superior Studier

By Matthew Baird

Many people have said that you must go to college to get the “college experience,”  

which would open you up to new opportunities and material that would help fulfill your dreams in life. 

Over the years I have recognized this fantasy and replaced it with a more “real” outlook on college.  

Deadlines lurking around every corner,  

A new assignment posted every hour,  

A forgotten project pushed to crunch time.  

In short, the college experience has been extremely overwhelming and tough, but there is no reason to fear it because there are many ways in which you can drastically increase your attention ability.  

We will look at a particular psychological concept in this paper, that can improve your cognition and daily functioning [1], and help you grasp the most important information for studying. This concept is known as selective attention, and it works as our brain’s built-in thought filtration system. 

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Split Focus, Sinking Grades: The Truth About Divided Attention

By Navada Roberts

Imagine, you’re getting prepared to study for your next exam. You have your textbook open, your notes are ready, but you’re watching a TikTok on your phone. Or maybe you have a Netflix show on in the background for some “background noise”. Does this scenario sound a little familiar?

It may feel like you’re being productive because you’re multitasking multiple things at the same time, but in reality, cognitive psychology says otherwise. You’re not actually multitasking; you’re performing something called divided attention and it might be the reason why your study sessions aren’t as useful as you expected them to be. Don’t worry though, in this post I will discuss what you can do to balance your study and TikTok time.

What is Divided Attention?

Divided attention occurs when you try to focus on more than one task at a time. It splits all your mental energy between multiple tasks, unlike focused attention, where all your mental energy goes to one task. Your brain isn’t designed to completely process multiple tasks at once. Instead, it switches between the tasks, resulting in something called the switching cost. The switching cost is when you lose time, make more errors, and overall remember less information [1]. Research shows that even small distractions, like your phone buzzing or music playing in the background, can affect how you store information in your memory [2]. This is true when it comes to studying, because the more divided your attention is, the harder it is to understand and remember the information you’re learning. So next time you think that multitasking will save time, remember that it’s most likely the opposite.

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Unlocking your brain’s power: The secret to easier studying

By Isabella Carbajal

For first-year college students, the transition from high school to college can be challenging, especially when the ways of studying and learning begin to change. Luckily, there are beneficial ways of improving and overcoming these challenges if we understand the concept of load theory of attention. Do not fear, it is not as complicated as it may seem, and will change the way you think about studying!

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SQUIRREL! (Understanding Selective Attention)

By Lydia Clark

Introduction

Have you ever sat down to do homework, study, or to focus on a topic and realized that it is difficult to ignore distractions around you? Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to filter out distractions, even though you desire to be productive? At several points in a student’s academic career, most people often struggle with truly remaining focused while doing schoolwork and other important tasks. There can be many aspects of why a student cannot stay focused, especially if they are preoccupied with other events in their life. 

What is Selective Attention?

One main reason that students can become so easily distracted is that selective attention is an obstacle that every student faces. Selective Attention is the process of having an ability to focus on a particular subject in their direct environment for a specific amount of time. For a student to be truly productive with their work, they must put in effort with this process and actively ignore all other distractions around their working environment. For this process to be a success, a person must be selective in their own attention and realize what they must drown out in the background. For a lot of young people, it can be a challenging task to drown out distractions such as their phones or other technology that is not helpful to be used in the moment.  

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One at a Time: The Hidden Power of Singular Focus

By Gabrielle Penberthy

Running Away Balloon Meme | MULTITASKING: LISTENING TO MUSIC WHILE STUDYING; YOU; MULTITASKING: LISTENING TO MUSIC WHILE STUDYING; ME: YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO STUDY EFFICIENTLY; YOU | image tagged in memes,running away balloon | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

While studying, everyone has experienced the need to snap back others, listen to music, and browse Instagram. We laugh when we communicate with others, we groove to music, and we stay connected when we browse Instagram. We run the risk of drifting from our study goals when we engage in these activities while studying. It is all fun and games until we get a bad grade on that important test or the homework assignment that is half of the final grade. I understand how difficult it might be to resist temptation when your phone is so close. I find myself picking up my phone to put on music or snap others back. But when I do this, I find that I start singing along to the music, which diverts my attention from my studies. Why is this a task so hard to complete? Divided attention, or multitasking, is the term used to describe this. When this occurs, I typically end up with a low grade or find it difficult to respond to an important quiz question. This causes an excessive amount of worry and self-doubt.  

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Blind to Reality

By Kennedy Savage

You’re driving down the road windows down and music blasting, while looking out the window you notice the sunset and people going about their day. All of a sudden your focus shifts and you notice a car swerving into your lane, unable to break fast enough you rear end the car causing a traffic incident. This split second failure to notice fully visible, yet often times unexpected objects is and example of inattentional blindness.  

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Is the Load Too Much to Bare?

By Sarah C. McSparin

You feel as though everything is piling up and you’ll never get it all done. Join the club! Your not alone; there are thousands of students and employees with a mountain of responsibilities that seem too overwhelming. Not to mention the countless distractions life throws at you, especially cell phones. You wish there was some formula for completing all the tasks your assigned. Unfortunately there is not but by gaining knowledge about your ability to pay attention you can learn some tips and tricks to help you focus your attention on the things you want while ignoring the things that are distracting.

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Attention!! Stress is Limiting Your Potential

By David Schultz

First days of college are exciting times, but college is an ever-changing world. However, there are two things that will always remain constant, stress and homework. Sadly, there is nothing you can do about the homework but there are things you can do to alleviate your stress. Each student suffers from some sort of stress and that stress strangles a student’s attention. Research has shown that ordinary chronic stress limits the flexibility of the student’s attention. Also stress temporarily reduces the connectivity of the attention regulating area of the prefrontal cortex. (1) Considering attention is one of the main processes that drive cognition, stress is going to be a huge issue for student’s grades. Attention is commonly referred to as a spotlight, and stress is shown to be like smoke, limiting the effectiveness of the spotlight. High stress could be like trying to use the spotlight during a soupy fog. But exams and tests are not the only issue that students face during stressful times. Being able to pay attention to the questions asked on exams are not the only effected area. But stress can affect the amount of information that a student can collect during lecture. It is common to see students bored by lectures or drifting off during reading assignments, we all have done it at least once. This is yet another why that attention is impaired by stress and there is data to support that. Research has shown that a person who is suffering from even acute stress can be imparted in attention allocation and distractibility during situations that involve information collection. (2) Stress can pull your ability to focus on the information in lecture and next thing you know you are in a daydream.

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Listening to Music While Studying

By Emma Hartmann and Hannah Menz 

In a world of technology, many people listen to music. With Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify, at our fingertips, it’s difficult to unplug. College students especially listen to their favorite songs walking to class, working out, or even while writing papers. Often, the flow of music is non-stop, continuing as they wander into the library to study for exams. Music is known to have many effects on the brain that alter mood and arousal states, yet, could these changes in cognitive functions help or hinder the productivity of student’s precious study time?

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