Cognitive Psychology in Education
By Angela Watson
The modern debate of how much cell phones distract us from everyday responsibilities can be settled by cognitive psychology. Researchers found that the average person only studies for approximately six minutes before moving on to a new task, which was primarily linked to cell phone and media usage (1). The prefrontal cortex is designed to only focus on a single item, leaving us to “swap focus” between items at a rapid pace when we multitask (2).
By Joseph Contezac and Darlene Valdez
If you go in any coffee shop or public place on a college campus other than the library, you will see students studying and chatting with their friends. But is chatting while you study preventing you from remembering key info on that test you are studying for? Though studying with a partner has been shown to actually help with remembering information, simply chatting about everyday things while you study is a distraction that is anything, but helpful to your academic success. Due to the amount of media we consume and how readily available it is, millennials have adopted “strategies” for multitasking. Millennials in general, are all about multitasking, especially when the amount of work you have is not equal to the amount of time you have to do it. Focusing more on chatting and studying, it is important to note the reasons why this might be affecting your ability to remember key material. It all comes down to the concepts of divided attention, and the distinction between on-topic and off-topic conversation.
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