Kristin's Research Summary 3
Kristin Theimer
Cognitive Psych
April 24, 2008
Summary 3
When driving in an automobile of any type, cell phones pose a great risk to drivers themselves, as well as others on the road. A recent article published by Route One Publishing threw out another danger—signs. Signs are put into place to help with traffic, keep pedestrians safe, advertise, and inform the driver, so how could they possibly hurt people? Working memory is very important for learning and solving life’s little problems every day—such as remembering a phone number, driving, having conversations, etc. So, when it is overloaded, concentration has been found to decrease, letting us perform less successfully.
Oliver Clark and Simon Davies of the University of Hull in the UK think that “road safety could be improved if there were a reduction in the amount of advertising and signage drivers are exposed to on the road.” They performed an experiment to see if people that were visually distracted by road signs had any negative relation in driving performance compared to those with no visual distractions. The researchers found a significant decrease in reaction times with the increase in visual distractions. Therefore, increases in visual distractions pose higher safety risks. But is there a solution?
Having too much visual input (this could be wanted and unwanted distractions) eventually fills up the working memory or short-term memory. These areas only store information temporarily and do not have lots of free space. How much working memory you have greatly affects your concentration levels. Therefore, if the working memory has little room for actually working, concentration levels go way down making it even harder to ignore visual distractions.
In a study performed by Dr. Jan de Fockert, participants were given numbers to memorize while being distracted by celebrity images. The researcher performed the study to “understand the relationship between visual and working memory” (Africast, 2000). The more numbers participants were asked to remember, the more difficult it became for them to ignore visual distractions. In short, the high levels of working memory resulted in a low level of being able to filter out those visual distractions (Knight, 2007).
Dr. de Fockert advises that you should “try to avoid mental tasks when dealing with visual environments that include distracting objects” (Knight, 2007). Another way of looking at this to make it relevant to college students would be don’t study or do homework while on the phone or watching television. Going to a library or someplace else with fewer visual distractions for a quiet, mellow environment to study in would increase concentration and help with working memory. Fockert also says, “Do not engage in deep thought or a demanding conversation while driving.”
In another article published by Africast.com, Fockert is cited as well. He says that “the ability to ignore irrelevant distractions is critical to concentration, but this ability requires a certain amount of free working memory.”
The brain areas required for focusing attention are located in the frontal cortex (Knight, 2007). Activity here increases as more attention is required for something more difficult. The human brain has troubles filtering out all distractions, including visual, when its full of things that need its attention.
To sum it all up, memory overload from thinking and visual distractions prohibits the brain from functioning at optimum levels. On task performance is greatly decreased and attention span loses its ‘span’. Finding a way to avoid visual distractions is a must.
References
Visual distractions cause memory overload. (2008). Retrieved April 22, 2008 from http://student.bmj.com/back_issues/0401/news/92b.html
Memory overload hinders concentration. (2000). Retrieved April 22, 2008 from http://news.africast.com/health_article.php?newsID=551
Too many signs poses safety risk. (2008). Retrieved April 22, 2008 from http://www.intertraffic.com/news/breakingnews_detail.asp?newsid=4568
