As I sit in my dorm room with my window open, I hear all sorts of sounds. People playing games in the grass, the band’s drums from a distance away, even people in my hall. I hear this all as I try to do my homework. Every day it seems like I hear these sounds and it got me thinking about my concentration. Are these background noises affecting my work?
Research was done by Louisiana State University to test if distractions can hurt cognitive performance. Researchers asked second grade students and college students to participate in this experiment. The participants wore headphones and were shown words on a computer screen and were to memorize them in order. Meanwhile, while they read, unrelated words were put through their headphones. It is unknown what the experiment size was to this observational study. But, the researchers concluded that the performance to multitask decreased. In the college students, their performance went down 10% while the second grade performance decreased 30%.
As I researched the topic a little more, I started to wonder what not only the sounds around us were doing, but what our phones and computer screens were doing to our performance. Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon University conducted an experiment to test how much brain power was lost when we are interrupted. 136 participants were asked to read and answer questions about a short passage. They were broken up into three groups; Control group, Interrupted group and On High Alert group. During the first test, the Interrupted and On High Alert groups were interrupted twice, while the second test the Interrupted group was the only one to be interrupted and the On High Alert group waited for an interruption that never happened. The result from the first test is that the groups answered correct 20% less often than the control group. The second test showed improvement for the Interruption group because they were able to improve how to deal with the interruptions; they now answered correctly 14%. Meanwhile, the On High Alert group did increasingly better. They increased to 43% because their brains were able to adapt. The conclusion is that it is possible to train from distractions.
To go off of the study done by Acquisti and to bring my topic full circle, a study done by the University of California asks the question if we can train our brain by using sounds to ignore distractions. By using both aged rats and humans, researchers used various frequencies as both targets and distractions. Throughout the experiment, the participants had to determine the target frequency while also hearing the distraction frequencies. At the end of the experiment, the researchers concluded that both rats and humans were able to ignore the distraction sounds and focused on the target sounds.
It would seem that we are able to train our brains to stop hearing these distractions that surround us every day. However, this could be considered a false positive. In order to be more certain, more tests will have to be done.
I definitely agree that some noise can be a distraction, but I really think it depends on what you are doing. Unless I am reading something that i need to particularly concentrate on, I need to be listening to music while doing homework. Answering math problems or short answer problems for economics is painful without music. With that said, I can not read an economics article with music on because I find myself singing the song instead of reading and focusing on what the article is saying. I believe it really depends on the person because everyone has unique study habits.
I think that noise does effect work, it is a major distraction in todays society. That’s why as college students we are urged to study at the library or just not study in our dorm rooms. The research at Carnegie Mellon University is a clear indication that noise does effect work. I am often easily distracted by little things that go on when I am trying to do work, but I often wonder if silence is also a a major distraction. Think about it this way, when we sit down to do work in silence have you ever found yourself distracted and thinking about the most random thinks. So I wonder maybe silence and noise isn’t necessarily the key to the reason we get distracted and it effects our work. I believe that it’s just because we don’t want to do our work that we find anything possible to distract ourselves from the mission we are intended to complete. I know for a fact when I have to do work I find every excuse in the books to not do work or to find something to distract myself.
I find that when I am writing a paper or answering math problems and stuff like that, I work better and am better able to focus when I am listening to music. But when I am reading a book or textbook and taking notes, I need it to be silent or else I cannot get anything done. I don’t know why this is, it is just how it is.
I get distracted so easily. So even hearing the littlest background noise distracts me. It gets hard at times to do work because it takes me so long to finish it. However, being in college, I have learned to tune out some of the noises. The results of the experiment you talked about with college students and second grade students make a lot of sense. As one gets older, they learn how to do work with background noise and can still manage to do well. However, little kids can not because they do not know how to tone out the noises. Another interesting experiment that could be conducted is do different types of background noises affect an individuals performance differently. For example, if the background noise was a music band or a lawnmower. Which one would you able to focus better with?
The fact that i am now in college the background noise personally doesn’t affect me. The noise lets me know that once I finish my work I will be able to have as much fun as the person walking by window while it is open. I do wonder how ever how people in large groups get work done? The concept that people are able to come together to study makes no sense since studying to me is constantly working at something until you can achieve it.
I often think about this problem, especially now since I am in college. It is hard to find a space that is completely silent, even in your dorm room because there are noises outside. In high school, I definitely had trouble working when there were noises around me. Now, in college, I have found that I am getting better at working with distracting noises. I agree with your statement that, “it is possible to train from distractions.” Noises and talking while studying still seem to bother me, but not as much. I also think that if they looked at their studies further, they would notice that you can more easily become distracted if you let yourself become distracted. I always find that I focus on the noise instead of my work, which obviously inhibits my work pace. This was very interesting, and relevant to college students, thank your sharing!