Some people claim they can learn new information while their attention is divided. Think of the college student who is watching television while studying for an exam. Such claims appear not to be true. Murphy and colleagues evaluated the ability of participants to learn new information while dividing their attention between studying a list of words and performing a secondary auditory detection task. They found that, compared to participants who could devote their full attention to studying the list of words, participants with divided attention performed less well in recalling the list of words later. Interestingly, the effect of divided attention while recalling the list of words was less severe. Does this mean that while students should not watch television while studying, it would be okay for them to listen to a baseball game while taking their final exam? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t recommend it!
Continue reading “Paying Full Attention is Crucial When Learning New Information”Category: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Eye Movements Reveal How We Remember Visualspatial Information
When we have to learn something new, that new information has to get through what you might think of as “gates”: first it has to be perceived, then pass into working (or short-term) memory, and then finally into long-term memory. Moving information from working to long-term memory usually requires rehearsal, like repeating someone’s name to yourself over and over again until you have it memorized. This experiment by Sahan and colleagues shows that the same is true of visual information and answers the question: how exactly do we rehearse visual information? Their answer: we rehearse visual information with help from our eyes!
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Dr Martin Fracker 