Distraction

Distraction is the process of diverting the attention of an individual or group from a desired area of focus and thereby blocking or diminishing the reception of desired information. Distraction is caused by: the lack of ability to pay attention; lack of interest in the object of attention; or the great intensity, novelty or attractiveness of something other than the object of attention. Distractions come from both external sources, and internal sources. External distractions include factors such as visual triggers, social interactions, music, text messages, and phone calls. There are also internal distractions such as hunger, fatigue, illness, worrying, and daydreaming. Both external and internal distractions contribute to the interference of focus. Distraction is the process of diverting the attention of an individual or group from a desired area of focus and thereby blocking or diminishing the reception of desired information. Distraction is caused by: the lack of ability to pay attention; lack of interest in the object of attention; or the great intensity, novelty or attractiveness of something other than the object of attention. Distractions come from both external sources, and internal sources. External distractions include factors such as visual triggers, social interactions, music, text messages, and phone calls. There are also internal distractions such as hunger, fatigue, illness, worrying, and daydreaming. Both external and internal distractions contribute to the interference of focus. Distracted driving is a dangerous threat to road safety across the world. While drunk driving rates have been on the decline since 1983, distracted driving has been increasing in recent years. Many feel this incline is due to the widespread prevalence of cell phones. While distracted driving can be attributed to anything that diverts attention away from the road, it is often the cell phone that receives the blame for distracted driving incidents. Most of the recent Studies have shown that cell phone usage while driving has striking similarities to the effects of drinking while driving; Cell phones tend to take the driver's attention away from the road and onto itself. With drunk driving, drivers often experience the 'looking but not seeing' phenomena. While their eyes do indeed view objects on the road, their brains do not comprehend the meaning behind the image. All levels of distraction while driving are dangerous, and potential drivers are cautioned to keep awareness of their surroundings. Many psychological studies show that switching between tasks, use of technology, and overstimulation has increased levels of distraction in the school setting. At school, distraction is often viewed as a source of poor performance and misbehavior. Distraction makes focusing on singular, assigned tasks more difficult. Digital components of learning are an emerging component to classroom distraction. Parents, teachers, students, and scholars all have opinions about how technology either benefits or harms a students’ focus in an academic setting. Research studies show that neuron circuits indicate a decrease in ability to be attentive to goal relative stimulus with the addition of distracting stimuli interference. School-aged students, with developing brains, are more apt to conflicting stimuli while trying to focus. Large classroom sizes, technology use in and outside the classroom, and less natural stimuli have been seen as contributing factors to deflating test scores and classroom participation. Multitasking could also be considered as distraction in situations requiring full attention on a single object (e.g., sports, academic tests, performance). The issue of distraction in the workplace is studied in interruption science. According to Gloria Mark, a leader in interruption science, the average knowledge worker switches tasks every three minutes, and, once distracted, a worker takes nearly a half-hour to resume the original task. In works of fiction, distraction is often used as a source of comedy, whether the amusement comes from the gullibility of those distracted or the strangeness of whatever is utilized to create the distraction. Examples of comedic distraction, also called comic relief, can oftentimes be found in Shakespearean plays. In Hamlet, Shakespeare includes a scene in which two gravediggers joke around about Ophelia's death. While her death is by no means meant to be funny, a small break from the sadness helped to appease the groundlings in Shakespeare's time, as well as allow the rest of the audience to take a break from the constant 'doom and gloom' of his tragedies. Rabbi Allen Lew in his book, This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, writes, 'The thoughts that carry our attention away are never insignificant thoughts and they never arise at random. We lose our focus precisely because these thoughts need our attention and we refuse to give it to them. This is why they keep sneaking up on our attention and stealing it away. This is how it is that we come to know ourselves as we settle deeply into the act of prayer '. According to philosopher Damon Young, distraction is chiefly an inability to identify, attend to or attain what is valuable, even when we are hard-working or content. Distraction was a key battle strategy in tales from the Trojan War. According to the legend, the Greeks seemed to have retreated by pretending to sail away. In their stead, they left a large wooden horse, which the Trojans then chose to bring back within their walls in order to celebrate their supposed victory. The Greeks used the Trojans' pride as a distraction, as they actually hid men within the Trojan Horse in order to let the rest of the army in during the cover of night. The Greeks then entered and destroyed the city of Troy, effectively ending the 10-year standoff that was the Trojan War. Distraction is useful in the management of pain and anxiety. Dentists, for example may intentionally hum an annoying tune or engage in small talk just to create a diversion from the dental surgery process. Topical ointments containing capsaicin, provide a superficial burning sensation that can momentarily distract a patient's attention away from the more serious pain of arthritis or muscle strain. A similar effect is made by oil of cloves, which produces a burning sensation on the gums, and distracts from toothache. Distraction is often used as a coping mechanism for short-term emotion regulation. When presented with an unpleasant reality, humans often choose to occupy their attention with some other reality in order to remain in a positive mental state. This is referred to as ‘procrastination’ when the unpleasant reality is in the form of work. The natural human inclination to distract oneself was put to the test when the Department of Psychology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Humboldt University of Berlin) held an experiment to study distraction. The goal of the experiment was to examine whether the effects of distraction on where subjects held their attention during repeated picture processing is changed by regular emotional functions. Furthermore, they hypothesized that while distraction assists in short-term emotional regulation, it is actually harmful in the long term. In order to do so, the experimenters had subjects view 15 unpleasant pictures (Set A) and “attend” to them (meaning the subjects were asked to pay full attention to the pictures). Next, the subjects were shown 15 unpleasant pictures (Set B) and were asked to distract themselves from the pictures (meaning they were to think about anything other than the picture on the screen; their example was to think about “the way to the supermarket”). Finally, the subjects were shown 15 neutral pictures (Set C) and were asked to attend to them. After 10 minutes of rest, the subjects entered the “re-exposure phase”, which repeated the experiment- this time requiring the subjects to pay attention to all of the sets, including Set B. This experiment was performed on 3 separate blocks of participants. To examine the state of the subjects’ brain, the subject was to wear “Ag/AgCl-electrodes from 61 head sites using an EasyCap electrode system with an equidistant electrode montage. Additional external electrodes were placed below the left (IO1) and right eye (IO2), below T1 (ground), on the nasion, and on the neck.” The subjects were also asked to rate the unpleasantness of the picture on the screen on a scale of 1-9. To test whether distraction in the first phase resulted in increased responsiveness during the re-exposure phase, experimenters “compared mean unpleasantness ratings between unpleasant pictures that were previously presented in the attend (previous attention) versus distract (previous distraction) condition using a paired t-test”. The end results of the experiment were as such: