No inturruptions

In our technology filled world today it’s pretty easy to get distracted. Whether your phone buzzes or you just want to check the twitter feed, it takes all of 5 seconds to get completely side tracked with your phone. I know I’m guilty of it and so is this entire class. I will probably stop to check my phone while I’m writing this blog simply out of habit. Now we all know we do it, and of course it’s not good for us but does constant distraction actually make us dumber?

According to Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab, those constant distractions that we think nothing of are actually making us dumber. It’s not secret that multitasking is sometimes not the best option yet we all still do it. New research from the Carnegie Mellon study is scientifically showing us things that we already subconsciously know: When you do two tasks, they both suffer. Things like driving and texting or writing a paper and watching a movie, I’m sure many people are able to do at once but regardless both tasks suffer from the distraction of the other one. The study explains multitasking as a misnomer. This means that the person who is juggling emails, texts, and Facebook while in a meeting is actually doing something called “rapid toggling between tasks, and is engaged in constant context switching.” In economic terms, whenever you switch between things there is a cost involved. Such as switching to a new grocery store because it’s on your side of town. It might not have your favorite brand of cereal and it will take you a few weeks to find where everything is but ultimately this a cost you can deal with. The cost when switching between tasks that involve your brain such as an email to your boss and a text message to your friend are held at a higher cost.

In the few studies that have been done about this interruption culture, Gloria Mark of University of California, Irvine found that “a typical office worker gets only 11 minutes between each interruption, while it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption.” Although the data about how much quality work is done in between those time periods is somehow amiss in this study. Carnegie Mellon then launched an experimental study to see just how much brain power was lost when constantly being interrupted.

They took 136 students, divided them into 3 goups and asked them to read a short passage and answer questions about it. One of the groups was not interrupted at all, another was interrupted between 1 to 3 times and the other was told to expect a message but never got one. So in other words the groups can be labeled as, interrupted, high alert and control.

During the first test both the interrupted group and the high alert groups, test scores were 20% lower than the control group. “In other words, the distraction of an interruption combined with the brain drain of preparing for that interruption, made our test takers 20 percent dumber. That’s enough to turn a B-minus student (80 percent) into a failure (62 percent).” (Peer) After running the experiment again, they found that the groups improved slightly to a 14% lower score than the control group, still enough to think twice about if you ask me.

To me, that is a pretty significant jump in grades that my GPA cannot afford. My problem with this study is that it does not take into account the different types of distractions that students like us occur. Does a distraction mean eating chips while you write a paper or does it only apply to answering a text message? The technology world is one of my biggest downfalls when it comes to distraction but is that the only kind of distraction that is making us dumber? I’m not exactly sure and it’s something I wish they looked further into.  The study size is also pretty small to say definitively that this is true.  136 people is not quite enough to convince me that what they are claiming is correct.  To say making us “dumber” is a little bit of a stretch but overall I think they do have a valid point. Looking at it from a testing standpoint-it wouldn’t be that hard to experiment not touching your phone while you write a paper. You might miss a few text messages but you also might improve your grade and to me that is an experiment worth trying.

RENEGADE_INTERRUPT__Yo_Imma____by_AuraHACK

Most famous interruption of all time.

 

quotesfrenzy.com

Couplesacademy.org

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/opinion/sunday/a-focus-on-distraction.html?_r=0

3 thoughts on “No inturruptions

  1. Alexi Zacarias

    I really liked this article. Cell phones and social media is such a huge distraction and can really affect someones school work. I feel myself trying to multitask all of the time and it doesn’t work. It makes getting things done a lot harder. Checking my phone or any notifications delays my work by hours.

  2. cmh5996

    I love the Kanye and Taylor picture. Although, our interruptions are not broadcasted on national television like that one was, I completely agree that our generation is horrible when it comes with our need to check our phone. I tell myself that if I turn my phone off I could get my work done in two hours. Even though I tell myself this it seems I am sitting at my desk 4 hours later. I think I would be able to tell people more information about who posted what instagram than I would be able to tell information about the subject I was studying. I need to try my best to break this habit because with such limited time in college I think it would be very beneficial to myself if I could find a way to quit this habit. Baylor University talks about how many people can never seem to put their phone down. Check it out! http://college.usatoday.com/2014/09/05/cant-put-your-cell-phone-down-youre-not-alone/

  3. nao5072

    I think that this post was right on the target. I do believe that our constant multitasking has detrimental affects. I think it is important to not that in the long run it will also affect our attention span.

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