CASE STUDY 3: DEBATES OVER ATTENTION, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGYFeb 24 & 27 — Attention, Motivation, and Well-Being

By: Nadia Kelley & Florence Grant

Gallagher, W. (2009). Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. New York: Penguin, pgs 1-28; 99-132; 145-218.

Chapter 10: Focus Interruptus

o Absentmindedness/Daydreaming Scott Hagwood: winner of USA Memory Championship if you don’t

pay attention to something that you want to learn, the information will not get stored in your long-term memory (p. 146-147).

Levels of attention can be plotted on a bell-shaped curve—some people are simply better at paying attention than others, just as some people are better at writing or singing (p. 147-148).

Moments of forgetfulness are not a cause for concern; they are “normal, even sometimes beneficial, mental phenomena” (p.147).

Absentmindedness is not related to how good your memory is (p.149). Daydreaming can be helpful for solving problems and gaining new

perspectives (p.150).o Multitasking

It is not possible to multitask—you cannot effectively pay attention to two demanding activities at once. When you think you are multitasking, you are really just switching back and forth from different activities (p.152).

Multitasking is inefficient, dangerous, hinders learning, and makes people think shallowly, rather than deeply (p.153-155).

o Improving Attention Coffee improves attention and short-term memory (p.156-157). Stimulants like Ritalin and modafinil improve attention (p.157) Computer programs that give you “attentional workouts,” such as the

Brain Fitness program, which help you workout your attention skills like you would workout your muscles to make them stronger (p.157-158).

Meditation (p.158). o Meditation

When you meditate by focusing on something like your breath, you “strengthen attention’s selective orienting system,” which improves focus and short-term memory (p.160).

Two types of meditation: (1) focusing on breathimproves ability to focus (2) focusing on the moment, sounds or sightsimproves ability to change focus (p.160-161).

o Concluding Points

“Attentional lapses are not only normal but beneficial” (p.161). Technologies like cell phones do not decide what we focus on—we

decide to focus on our cell phones. If they are distracting us, it is up to us to turn them off (p.162).

Ch. 10 Discussion Questions

1. What specific techniques do you use to help improve your focus/attention when you are performing activities like studying for a test or driving a car?

2. Do you agree with the author that it is impossible to successfully multitask?

Chapter 11: Disordered Attention

o ADHD There is no single determined cause of ADHD, and there is no single test

to diagnose ADHD (p.163). ADHD is not well understood because clinicians do not base their

questionnaires to diagnose ADHD off of researcher’s findings (p.164). Parents are skeptical of giving their kids drugs that may have long-term

side effects (p.165). ADHD can be caused by (1) lack of motivation (2) anxiety (3)

nurture/experience (4) biology: delayed brain development and smaller brain and cerebellum (5) genes (6) neurotransmitters: dopamine contributes to attention, cognition, and reward centers (p.167-169).

Brownout: “clockwork pulses” in the brain that keep its circuits communicating with each other. People with ADHD may have irregular “brownouts” (p.169).

o Concluding Points Ritalin, Concerta, Adderrallincrease dopamine (p.170). From an evolutionary perspective, kids, particularly boys, have issues

paying attention in school but not playing sports or games because we evolved needing to be able to change focus and males naturally focus more on actions than females (p.171).

90 minutes is the best amount of time to spend on something that you really want to focus on (p.172).

Ch. 11 Discussion Questions

1. How long do you think parents should wait before getting their child tested for ADHD? Does a boy in kindergarten who has trouble focusing and likes to run around necessarily have ADHD, or does that seem like normal behavior for a child his age? At what point does it become a disorder?

Chapter 12: Motivation: Eyes on the Prize

o Motivation and Attention To get motivated, you need a goal to focus on (p.173). If you pay attention to what you eat, you will end up eating less. This is

called “mindful eating,” and believes that if you pay attention to how your food tastes and what you are eating, your brain will know when you are full and you will receive that message. One way to engage in mindful eating is to keep a notebook of what you eat throughout the day (p.174-175).

“Attention is the link between your goal and the resources you bring to it” (p.176).

o Motivations Three basic motivations according to David McClelland: “will to power,”

achievement and affiliation (p. 176). Motivations “arise from heredity and experience” (p.177). It is better to be intrinsically motivated, or “self-motivated,” meaning that

you want to accomplish a goal for personal reasons, rather than extrinsically motivated, meaning that you want to accomplish a goal to please others (p.177-178).

o Grit Grit: remaining motivated and committed; persevering despite obstacles;

“stick-to-itiveness” (p.178). People with grit have focus and tenacity (p.179). Grit is undervalued in American society because we think that the ability

to be a “fast learner” or to naturally be good at something is more impressive than putting in effort and not giving up, even if takes longer to achieve your goals (p. 180-181).

o Impulse Control/ Willpower It is hard to control our impulses because of hidden/unconscious

motivations and “mystery moods,” which is when we feel an emotion but don’t know why we feel it (p.182-183).

It is easier to control our impulses if we plan out our actions in advance (p.183).

Willpower: capacity to choose and follow a course of action despite obstacles (p.185).

o Concluding Points It is important to pay attention to both your immediate interests and long-

term goals. Willpower comes into play when you are able to focus on your long-term goals while faced with what you have in the present (p.187-188).

“Despite our cultural fixation on innate giftedness, the old-fashioned quality of grit may be a better predictor of real-world performance (p.188).

Ch. 12 Discussion Questions

1. Do you find yourself more impressed with people who are naturally skilled/talented, or people who had to put in a lot of effort but eventually achieved their goals?

2. Why do you think “mindless eating” has become such a problem in America?

Chapter 13: Health: Energy Goes Where Attention Flows

o Attention and Well-Being/Mental Illness Psychiatrist Aaron Beck discovered that positive thinking can help cure

mental illness, and negative thinking contributes to it. People with depression, for example, focus overwhelmingly on negative thoughts (p.190-191).

Negative thinking and attention is a public health issue because depression costs the economy $44 billion a year, and adults with depression can increase the likelihood of their children becoming depression (p.192).

Focusing on negative information contributes to conditions such as anxiety, panic disorder, hypochondria, and insomnia (p.192-193).

o Attention and Longevity Researchers have found that people who focus on positive thoughts live

longer than people who focus on negative thoughts (p.193). Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Memorial

Medical Center, created the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR), which helps people with conditions such as chronic pain. Through meditation, they become aware of their pain and their thoughts about their pain, and learn to separate them. In one study, half of the chronic pain patients reported decreased pain after 8 weeks of meditation (p.194-195).

Meditation promotes healing because it affects our nervous and immune systems (p. 196).

o Attention and Anxiety People with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) struggle with increased

focus on negative events, lack of flexibility in their thinking and “excessive verbalizing” (p.199).

With the East-West treatment, patients first pay attention to their negative thoughts and try to correct them, and then move onto “classical mindfulness,” where they work on becoming aware of reality without judging it (p.199-200).

o Concluding Points Changing negative thoughts to positive thoughts, or trying to think

productively about negative events, is “one of the most important of all ‘health habits’ to cultivate” (p.201).

Ch. 13 Discussion Questions

1. If negative thinking and attention is a public health issue, what steps do you think should be taken to combat this issue?

Chapter 14: Meaning: Attending to What Matters Most

o Paying Attention to the Deep Questions/Meaning of Life Thinking about deep topics and questions such as the meaning of life

helps you focus on becoming a better person, and encourages you to pay attention to how you can help others (p.203-204).

o Buddhism Buddha believed that in order to cope with the struggles of life, you need

to remain in the present moment and focus on positive thoughts such as kindness. People who can successfully live in the present are considered “enlightened” (p. 205-206).

Eckhart Tolle believes that we need to ignore the material aspects of life and simply focus on reality, or the “Now” (p.209-210).

o Virtues Virtues help you become a better person. According to psychologist Chris

Peterson, there are 6 virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, humanity, and transcendence (p.210).

You need to focus on bettering yourself and pay attention to moments when you can exercise your virtues (p.211).

o Savoring/Appreciating the Little Things in Life Savoring: mindful, intentional focus on positive feelings (p.214). If you pay attention to the positive things in life, you will feel better

physically and emotionally (p.216). “You see what you look for” (p.215).

Ch. 14 Discussion Questions

1. How do you personally focus on virtues in your daily life?2. Overall, do you think that society is good or bad at savoring the positive aspects of

life?

2. Ragan, S.R., Massey, J.D., Jennings S.R. (2014), Unregulated use of laptops over time in large lecture classes. Computers & Education.

The researchers conducted a study to learn how students in both large university lecture

classes and classes that last for 2 hours and 50 minutes use laptops during class time.

According to the authors, researchers have determined in previous studies that students

use laptops for both class-related and non class-related work, and that the subject of the

class contributes to how students differ in their laptop use. Additionally, previous studies

have found that the use of laptops in lecture classes is distracting for both the users and

non-users of laptops, and that the use of laptops negatively affects students’ GPAs and

performance in the class. The researchers note that not many studies have focused on

laptop use in large lecture classes.

Research questions: (1) Why do students not bring laptops to class?

(2) For the students who do bring laptops to class,

how do they use their laptops?

(3) How does students’ laptop use change during the

class?

Methods: (1) Survey: questions included asking students if

they brought a laptop to class, and if not, why. If

students said that they did bring laptops to class,

they were asked how they used their laptops during

class.

(2) Observations: researchers observed students’

computer use during class, and what kind of

students were using computers (gender, where the

students sat in the class.)

Participants: Participants were chosen from a large Introduction

to World Geography class of 2,724 students. There

were 212 participants in the survey section of the

study and 92 participants in the observation section.

Findings: (1) Students who brought laptops to class were

more likely to use their laptops for non class-related

tasks.

(2) 37% of students used their laptops to take class

notes.

(3) Students used laptops to multitask during class.

(4) As class time progressed, students became more

likely to start using their laptops for non class-

related tasks.

Gallagher, W. (2009). Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. New York: Penguin pp. 1-28; 99-132

Introduction: Choosing the Focused Life

Grand Unified Theory/ Theory of Everything: states that your life, what you are, what

you love, what you think, feel, and do is the sum of what you focus on

Your experiences depend on the material objects and mental subjects you choose to

ignore or pay attention to

If you focus on the right things you can ignore the bad things

Your life is a creation of what you focus on

You cannot always be happy but you can always try to be more focused

The best way to handle stress is to perfect our ability to choose one thought over another

Visual Searches: are when scientists measure how long it takes for you to find a specific

target among various distractions

Process of Selection: enhancing the most compelling or striking physical object of high

value and suppressing the rest

Rapt: is when you’re completely absorbed, engrossed, fascinated or carried away by

something

Humans are the only organisms that have accepted death and dedicate their lives to

finding something to focus on in order to pass time

We blame technology for distracting us but it’s actually our own faults. We don’t

appreciate our ability to use attention to select and create satisfying experiences

“Idle mind is the devils workshop”: this is referring to when you lose focus and your

mind becomes fixed on what’s wrong in your life. This puts you in a bad frame of mind,

as a result

Discussion Question:1) Why is it so difficult for us to focus on the right things and ignore the bad things?

2) What are some things in your life you choose to pay attention to over others?

Chapter 1: Pay Attention – Your Life Depends on it

Attention can shape your experience by selecting something in your external or internal

worlds and leaving the rest in a blur

Bottom up attention: involuntary, passive process, not driven by you but by what is

compelling in your environment

Change Blindness: when you’re familiar with a situation, it can sometimes cause you to

miss dramatic changes that may occur to it

Just thinking about the act of “paying attention” affects your brain and prepares it for the

actual experience

Magic occurs because we pay attention to something else while the magician is changing

something somewhere we are not looking

Implicit information: is information you don’t pay attention to; however, it slips into your

brain without conscious awareness

The only way to control your awareness is to focus, let things go, and move on or else

your thoughts will control you

Discussion Questions:1) What are some of the disadvantages of living a life based solely off of “Bottom-up”

attention?

2) What are some examples of when you hear implicit information and it slips into your

brain unknowingly?

Chapter 7 – Productivity: Work Zone

It’s hard to accomplish anything when you can’t concentrate on what you want to do

and suppress other distractions

Peak Experience: You’re completely focused on doing something that’s both

enjoyable and challenging enough. It’s manageable

You can attend to 110 bits of information per second or 173 billion bits over an

average lifespan

You know you’re in the right business if you feel that you’d work for the pleasure

you experience rather than a big salary

You can make a tedious activity enjoyable by turning it into an engaging one

People who are comfortable in their careers can avoid depression and burnout by

focusing on a new vocation or adding a new vocation to their usual business

Many people, in their free time, go into low-level information processing in which

they worry about things and watch television

Regardless of income, teens who spend more time with their peers and families focus

less on challenging activities

The author advices us to try to do more of what’s rewarding and less of what isn’t

Theory: what you focus on creates your experience and that choosing the best goals is

the key to the good life

Discussion Questions: 1) How do you know that you’re living the “good life”?

2) Many students choose majors they don’t like because their salary will be large in the

future. Do you think this is the right direction to take towards obtaining the “good life”?

Chapter 8 – Decisions: Focusing Illusions Principle of Bounded Rationality: We are reasonable-enough beings but sometimes we

focus on the wrong things

Cognitive Illusions: includes mistaken perceptions which our thinking gets confused by

If you focus on each issue separately and consider each loss and gain in isolation, you

will make mistakes

Research shows that we are more risk-averse than loss-averse. In other words, we are

more sensitive to what we may have to give up than what we might gain

Hands on Experiencing Self: concentrates on being in the here and now

Evaluative Remembering Self: looks back on experience, focusing on its emotional high

points and outcomes

Research has shown that memory is biased

Fortune Cookie Maxim: nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are

thinking about it

Winning the lottery doesn’t guarantee lifetime happiness. Eventually, you will adapt to

all the money and stop paying attention to it

The focusing illusion predicts that you’ll exaggerate the importance of something just by

thinking about it

Humans are naturally inclined to attend to the end product, so we often end up regretting

our decisions

Satisfiers: are those people who are content with an object

Maximizers: are those people who have the best and agonize over too many choices

Discussion Questions:1) Why is it that older people are more likely to connect with the experiencing self?

2) What kind of people in our society would you consider to be examples of maximizers?

New York Times – Your Brain on Computers

Growing Up Digital, Wired for DistractionMatt Richtel

Researchers are saying that the lure of technology affects adults but it’s more powerful

for young people. This is because youth have developing brains which can become easily

accustomed to constantly switching tasks – and less capable of sustaining attention

There’s a concern that we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screen and their

brains will be rewired

Schools have adapted to the technological advances by implementing technology use in

their lessons

When the use of digital devices are unchecked, students can become addicted to the

virtual world

Half of students aged 8 to 18 are using the Internet, watching TV or using some other

form of media either “most” (31 percent) or “some” (25 percent) of the time that they are

doing homework.

Their choice in devices reflect which personality they have. For example, social students

tend to be heavy texters while shy students are into video games

It’s hard to monitor cell phone use especially since parents want their kids to have access

to one in case of emergency

In an experiment at the German Sport University in Cologne in 2007,  they found that

playing video games led to markedly lower sleep quality than watching TV

Teachers have to adapt to their students’ short attention spans. For example, one teacher

expressed having the class read articles in groups cause they can’t do it on their own

Discussion Question: What step should parents take towards regulating how much technology their children are using?

Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed DowntimeMatt Richtel

People are often using their phones and other devices in gyms, to relieve boredom or to get work done

When people are keeping their brains busy with digital technology, they are wasting time that could be used to come up with new ideas or learn new information

People may feel relaxed and entertained by using their technology. However, scientists believe they are taxing their brains

Business people have an excuse to constantly check their phone but it can become a mental toll

People tend to fill up moments with their phone no matter where they are People are on their technology way too much and are losing sleep, as a result

Discussion Question: During what times of the day do you use your phone to fill up time?

Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the BrainMatt Richtel

A group of scientists went on a trip to see what happens when they step away from their

devices and rest their brains

They believe it’s important to study attention because it could help find treatments for

ADD, schizophrenia, and depression

The scientist were divided into 2 groups; the believers and the skeptics

Believers: argue that heavy technology use can inhibit deep thought and cause anxiety,

and that getting out into nature can help

Skeptics: usually use their digital gadgets without reservation

Some scientists believe heavy multitasking fatigues the brain, draining it of the ability to

focus

Behavioral studies found that performance suffers when people multitask.

After this trip, a scientist wants to use imaging technology to see whether the effect of

nature on the brain can be measured and whether there are other ways to reproduce it

Discussion Question:Do you believe that the addictiveness of digital stimulation leads to poor decision-making?

Attached to Technology and Paying a PriceMatt Richtel

Scientists say that juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can

change how people think and behave

The distraction from technology is the primary cause for accidents and train engineers

causing wrecks

Heavy multitaskers have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information,

and they experience more stress

Studies have shown that the brains of internet users become more efficient at finding

information and players of video games develop better visual acuity

At home, people consume 12 hours of media a day on average,

Researchers found that multitaskers seem more sensitive than non-multitaskers to

incoming information.

Research shows some people can juggle multiple information streams. These

“supertaskers” represent less than 3 percent of the population

Internet users showed greater brain activity than nonusers

Video games can improve reaction and the ability to pick out details amongst disorder

Discussion Question:Why do you think the use of video games and cell phones can create attention problems for children?

An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and ForgetfulnessTara Parker-Pope

Some experts believe extreme use of the internet, cellphones and other technologies can

cause us to become more impatient, impulsive, forgetful and vain.

Our dependence on technology takes away from our time with family and friends in the

real world

The storage available in e-mail and on the internet is preventing many of us from letting

go. Everything can be saved and viewed repeatedly

Technology is such a huge part of our lives that those who are addicted can’t using it

because it’s a part of our lives

If people gave up technology cold turkey, it would make their lives difficult and they

could no longer connect with people

Discussion Question:The first step to treating addiction is to admit you have a problem. How can people tell they’re addicted to their technology?

More American Sense a Downside to an Always Plugged-In ExistenceMarjorie Connelly

Interviews were conducted with 855 adults

726 said they use a personal computer/smartphone

Almost 30 percent of those under 45 said that the use of these devices made it harder to

focus, while less than 10 percent of older users agreed

Almost 40 percent check work e-mail after hours or on vacation

The people who are most computer-dependent tend to be better educated and more

affluent

One in seven married respondents said the use of these devices was causing them to see

less of their spouses

1 in 10 of married respondents said they spent less time with their children under 18 years

of age

Discussion Question:Why do you think it’s so difficult for adults to disconnect from their devices especially after working all day?