Attention! Media multitasking fuels forgetfulness
Shrinking pupils may signal poor memory performance linked to attention lapses and heavy media multitasking, a major new study by Stanford University shows.
Heavy media multitasking has long been linked to underperforming memory and attention. The latest findings shed new light on why people may fail to remember something from one moment to the next, and why some individuals remember better than others.
The results, published in the journal Nature recently, could lead to ways of improving attention, learning and memory in everyday life and influence how conditions such as Alzheimers are treated. Stanford University psychology professor and co-author Anthony Wagner, who reviewed 10 years of data on attention, memory and multitasking in a prior study, explained why multitasking challenges attention. We don t multitask. We task
’ switch. The word multitasking
‘ ’ implies that you can do two or more things at once, but in reality our brains only allow us to do one thing at a time and we have to switch back and forth.”
Heavy media multitaskers have many media channels open at once and they switch between them. A heavy media multitasker might be writing an academic paper on their laptop, occasionally checking the sports on TV, responding to texts and Facebook messages, then getting back to writing
— but then an e-mail pops up and they check it.
Eighty volunteers, 18 to 26 years old, took part in the latest experiments, which now allow scientists to predict whether
“an individual will remember of forget based on their neural activity and pupil size ”.
Lead author Kevin Madore, based in the Stanford Memory Lab, said: We know that constrictions
“in pupil diameter
— in particular before you do different tasks are related to
— failures of performance like slower reaction times and more mind wandering.”
The scientists found that people with lower sustained attention
“ability and heavier media multitaskers both performed worse on memory tasks ”.
What people do before they remember even before they learn can impact how well they recall,” said Wagner. While it s logical that attention
’ is important for learning and for remembering, an important point here is that the things that happen even before you begin remembering are going to affect whether or not you can actually reactivate a memory that is relevant to your current goal,” said Wagner.
For example, to improve memory performance by influencing their mindset, individuals need: readiness to remember, limits on potential distractions, and conscious awareness of attentiveness.
The researchers noted they had demonstrated a correlation so far, not a causation.
We can t say that heavier
’ media multitasking causes difficulties with sustained attention and memory failures,” said Madore.