COOL YOUR LIGHTING TRY MARTIAL ARTS
You might want to paint your walls a shade of blue or green, or invest in a tinted light bulb for your desk. That’s because just as we work best at certain temperatures (usually 16–24°C/60–75°F), visual warmth can have an impact too.
Researchers at the Technical University of Valencia tested 160 people in virtual reality classrooms, painted in different shades of 12 cold-hued colours (greens and blues) and 12 warm-hued ones (oranges and reds). They measured pupils’ attention by asking them to click on their mouse when they heard a specific sound, while also ignoring a series of other sounds.
The results: people performed better on the attention task (and a memory test too) when they were in rooms decorated in cooler colours, compared to the warmer ones. Using electroencephalogram (EEG) machines, the researchers also monitored the participants’ brain activity and heart rates throughout, which showed that people had different levels of physiological arousal in different coloured rooms.
The activation of the sympathetic nervous system in the cool-hue rooms was “appropriate to the maintenance of higher alertness and cognitive performance,” the researchers said.
White walls, meanwhile, may be especially distracting. Studies, including one by the Lund Institute of Technology and another by the University of Nevada, have found that children taught in classrooms with white walls found it harder to maintain concentration. As the founder of the Color Research Institute of America, Louis Cheskin, said in 1947: “White walls…. are an optical strain and a psychological hazard!”
Mr Miyagi could focus on his Bonsai trees for hours, so could martial arts work for the rest of us to improve our general attention, too? Yes, according to research by Bangor University, which found that people who practised martial arts achieved long-lasting improvements in their focus.
Study author Dr Ashleigh Johnstone explains that techniques to improve our focus mainly fall into two camps: attention training (AT – think typical ‘brain training’ exercises) and attention state training (AST).
“AT tends to be based on practising the same task repeatedly and developing that specific skill,” says Johnstone. “You’ve improved your attention on that task, but it often doesn't transfer to other tasks so your general attention likely isn't improved. On the flip side is AST, which is more about developing a state of mind that allows for a strong level of focus.” And that’s where martial arts come in.
“Because it’s based on a state of mind rather than practising one specific task, it tends to be more transferable and so you find those attentional improvements in other areas of your life too,” says Johnstone. “You’re developing a new state of mind that’s getting stronger.”
In her study, some of the martial artists hadn’t trained in the days leading up to the experiments, yet “still showed improved attention, which suggests that it’s not a short-term boost immediately following a training session that will fade away,” says Johnstone.
“We found that martial artists had particularly good vigilance (also known as alertness). This is a specific type of attention, which refers to being able to sustain a level of attention such that you can quickly and efficiently respond to unexpected events. We believe that this is due to attention-state training, with martial artists needing to really focus on the present moment so they’re able to respond appropriately while training.”
“I like to explain this by asking people to imagine they’re sparring; nobody wants to get hit in the face, so you need to be able to clear your mind and focus on what’s happening right now!”