The Distracted Mind in a Tech World: Potential Solutions?

Scientists have now documented for several years how the overuse of our electronic devices, multi-tasking, and task-switching can impair both performance and cognition. Doing too much at once is never as good as doing one thing at a time, the old-fashioned way. It seems that the conscious mind can only do so many things at once. There are well known performance costs to everyday activities such as driving while talking on the phone, texting while reading a scientific article, and listening to a lecture while working on a laptop—even while taking notes about the lecture! (It seems taking notes by hand, as in the case of handwritten notes, leads to better academic outcomes than taking notes by laptop [click here for more info].)

Source: Wikipedia PD

Though these activities stemming from the technological developments of the twenty-first century have detectable costs, they will continue to occur, for they have become part of the fabric of our behavioral repertoire. The question now is: Are there any potential ways to diminish these negative effects?

In The Distracted Mind, Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist, and Larry Rosen, a psychologist, explain in beautiful prose why our primate-based brains are simply not built for multitasking and for the complexity of the modern, tech-based world. In addition, the authors propose clever ways to live in our high-tech world without giving up our modern technology: According to the authors, we can change our brains for the better in various ways, including through means such as meditation, video games, and physical exercise. The authors propose, not that we give up our devices (which is an unrealistic feat in our tech-dependent work environments), but rather that we use our devices in a more balanced and strategic manner.

For example, the effects of distraction can be diminished, and our behavioral and cognitive performance can be improved, by planning one’s accessibility to the cyberworld and by accepting the potential anxiety of not always being connected to everyone else and not always being "current" regarding the day's events. The authors bring together the mounting scientific evidence regarding the nature of distractibility and offer potential solutions in one authoritative book.

Source: Wikipedia PD

Substantial research has indicated that, under normal conditions and for optimal behavioral performance, one can perform only one action at a time (e.g., one can utter only one word at a time). Such limitations, stemming from the basic constraints of the effector system (in which only one word can be uttered at a time, to use our example), introduce a “functional bottleneck” in a stage of processing known as “action selection." Action selection is, in essence, deciding what to do next (e.g., to press one button versus another button or to say one word versus another word). This stage of processing is different from that of perceptual analysis (which itself involves many stages of processing) and from that of motor programming, which is quite sophisticated and controls which muscle fibers are activated at a given time in order to enact a motor response (e.g., grasping an object). (Motor programming is largely unconscious.) Action selection is a stage of processing falling somewhere between perceptual analysis and motor programming. It is in the middle of the perception-to-action cycle.

According to a framework concerning the role of consciousness in action control (Passive Frame Theory; Morsella & Walker 2016), in order for an overt behavior to be adaptive, it must be “integrated,” meaning that it must be influenced by all the important, action-related information composing the conscious field at one moment in time. (The conscious field is composed of all that one is conscious of at one moment in time.) "Integrated action" occurs when one, say, holds one's breath and experiences the tendencies to both inhale and not inhale (because one knows that one is underwater and should not inhale). This requirement has been referred to as “collective influence," in which many action systems of, specifically, the skeletal muscle output system “sample,” and are influenced by, the contents of the entire conscious field (at one moment in time). In such a functional architecture, a bottleneck in which action-selection can transpire only sequentially arises because the adding up the activation levels across the action systems must transpire within a certain time window, as must all forms of summation (see evidence for such a bottleneck in Pashler, 1993; see discussion here). For this reason, in conscious action selection, one can decide only to do one thing at a time. This limitation, though an obvious problem for the multi-taskers of today's tech world, is actually adaptive over the course of a lifespan, for it is this very limitation that permits integrated behaviors—voluntary actions such as holding one’s breath while underwater (see discussion here).