Kansas Parker-McKinnell
How many times have you been driving around looking for a place you have never visited and found yourself turning the radio down? I find myself doing this quite often, even with my GPS giving me turn-by-turn directions. Why do we do this? We are not looking for our destination with our ears. Or are we? While everything in our brain pertaining to how we process information is linked in some way, two methods I will describe are what is happening in our working memory and the distribution of cognitive resources.
Your brain initially uses selective attention to determine which information is most relevant. Obviously, following the directions to the new location, looking for the road signs, paying attention to traffic, and so on take up most of the cognitive resources allowed. Driving is a low-load task because we have practice with driving every single day. However, looking for unfamiliar road signs and following unfamiliar traffic patterns is a high-load task. Our textbook defines high-load tasks as those that “are more difficult and…not as well practice…and use more of a person’s cognitive resources” (Goldstein, 2011).
After determining how much of the cognitive resources will be allocated to finding this new location our brain then begins processing out all irrelevant information. We focus more on the directions and looking for specific landmarks than what is playing on the radio. We have allocated most of our resources and the radio is becoming more of a distracting hindrance than a help. Our working memory begins translating the incoming information. In order to reduce the amount of unattended information that may snag our attention, we just turn down the radio.
Our working memory kicks in at this point and is defined as a “limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning” (Goldstein, 2011). The central executive, a part of the working memory, takes over and coordinates processes happening in our memory. These processes are the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketch pad. We know that we are looking for Main Street, so while reading the passing street signs we repeat to ourselves the name of the street we are looking for. This process is the articulatory rehearsal process in the phonological loop. What this does is keep the information from disappearing from our short-term memory and slowing the decay process. Also, the visuospatial sketch pad helps us keep track of the roads we have passed, which roads we may be approaching, what buildings are in our surroundings.
I do not know if anyone else has noticed that turning the radio down does help with focus, but I know I do it just about every single time. My children laugh at me and tease me that I am not looking for the location with my ears, but it is possible that directions would be more difficult to follow with a distraction in the background. Our attention filter does weed out most of the unneeded information but why not just make it easier on yourself and turn down the radio?
Reference:
Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting MInd, Research, and Everyday Experience. 3rd. Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
It is amazing that I never put these two together! I do seem to turn down the music when I am driving and lost or simply trying to maneuver my car in what appear to be a difficult spot! Oddly enough while I am working it is like music distracts me from the time and amount of work I am doing so that my day seems to go faster.
It would seem as though what Goldstien explains as the central executive of my working memory is a major player in this process. The central executive divides my attention to the more important process that required in my work, such as read the numbers, figure out the next step I need to take to fix an account, and then still gives slight attention to the music allowing me to keep humming along with the song. Maybe since a lot of my work is repetitious it could be deemed somewhat of a lower load task at times so it is not a hindrance for my working memory to be divided between working and listening to a song, same as driving in a familiar area; but when I get to an issue where I have to focus I find myself pulling my ear-buds out and my central executive then decides that my work is the most important task at hand.
Incredible how something so simple has never come across as such a complex process. I could only imagine the damage to my work if the order of importance was mixed up and my focus was more on my music. I don’t think I would be attending class as I am currently, so thank you to my traffic cop of my working memory, the central executive!
Reference:
Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting MInd, Research, and Everyday Experience. 3rd. Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
I do this all the time! Turning down the radio truly does sharpen my focus, although I’ve never thought about why that may be. You mentioned that your kids makes fun of you, but no one has ever pointed out to me before that this was a somewhat odd thing to do. Everyone I’ve ever been in a car with has also done it. I can’t begin to count how many road trips have ended in a GPS announcement of: “the destination is on your right”, only to have to turn the radio down all the way as if what I’m looking for will be shouting and waving at me on the side of the road. I think it’s fascinating to note that we seem to go into a sort of autopilot while driving around areas we are familiar with, yet when it comes to following directions we tend to act like we’ve never had to focus so hard on anything in our lives.
I’m wondering now if we’d still need to turn the radio down to focus on directions if the music playing in the car was instrumental and had no words to distract our hearing.
I always seem to find myself turning the music down in the car while looking for a place I have never been before. It has almost become habit, to the point where I don’t even notice I have turned the music down until minutes later. I do find that turning down the music increases my concentration … and come to think of it, I find myself turning the music down whenever I feel as though I need to concentrate more on a task. I connected with your post as each point you made directly correlated with what I find myself doing. I always seem to talk to myself, repeating the names of streets, address numbers, or business names, which does seem to help! After your explanation, it all made a bit more sense as to why the repetition helps, as it is slowing down the decay process and keeping it in my STM. I found your descriptions, of the processes in which our brain goes through while we navigate, very easy to follow!
The topic of your blog is exactly what goes through my mind anytime I am driving in an unfamiliar place and I turn down the radio. I always think to myself, my auditory functions have nothing to do with me using my visual functions to find the location of a place. But after reading your blog, you helped me better understand the functions our brains go through. And the necessary requirements for our brain to function at its highest level. I did know the reasoning for my impulse to turn down the radio did involve the interference it was causing with processing the new location. But it is interesting that our cognitive abilities can determine what is of low-load task and what high-load task, like driving is low and directions is high. Then the ability for our brain to shut out the music by having us turn it off, sometimes subconsciously. Overall I found your blog very interesting.