Summary: A recent study found that distracting obstacles considerably affect our capacity to concentrate and leave us more in the memory. Scientists tested this by having individuals perform a 10-minute visual interest process while background images that were physically charged were visible.
Negative or positive images, such as crying babies, were more likely to obstruct work efficiency than negative or positive ones, and were remembered more effectively afterwards. These results provide insight into how personal restraints impair focus and may aid in the treatment of PTSD and stress.
Important Information
- Emotional Disruption: Upsetting interruptions lead to slower, less precise performance on attention-related jobs.
- Memory Bias: Bad critics are more likely to stick in people’s minds than negative or positive ones.
- Clinical Implications: Research may reveal potential notice weaknesses in PTSD and anxiety.
Origin: Boston University
There are many obstacles in the world, including unnecessary worries about the future, and messages of tasks to complete.
Prolonged attention, or the ability to maintain concentration on a particular stimulus or task for an extended period of time without significantly sagging concentration, is a fundamental mental trait that influences daily functioning and is frequently misplaced in a diversified population. It is a basic mental trait that underlies some additional cognitive functions.
While disturbing experiences and thoughts may impair one’s ability to concentrate while carrying out daily tasks, applying this happening to the lab has remained elusive.
Experts from Boston University Chobanian &, Avedisian School of Medicine, and VA Boston Healthcare System have discovered that obstacles that are uncomfortable or threatening are most likely to impede that concentrate in a new research.
The experts are hopeful that these findings will help with the treatment of panic and post-traumatic stress disorder.
According to related artist Michael Esterman, PhD, dean investigator in the VA’s National Center for PTSD and associate professor of psychiatry,” we found that negative distractions disrupted continued work performance and impacted  , the participants ‘ feeling by making them feel worse.”
A group of about 60 people performed a series of tasks ( the gradCPT ), which required them to maintain their visual focus for about 10 minutes without taking a break while background photos of distractions would occasionally fade in and out on a video monitor.
These visual cues could be upsetting ( a crying baby ), neutral ( a chair ), or positive ( a smiling baby ).
The researchers discovered that participants were slower and less precise at the sustained interest activity when the background were threatening. Even though they were instructed to dismiss these distractors after the job was finished, participants were quizzed about their memory of the background distractor.
They discovered that the entrancing backers were remembered more favorably than those who were negative or positive.
” We think this investigation will provide scientists with information on how distracting a person is, what they find to be the most confusing, and whether those distractions interfere with their memories.
We also think that it will provide new avenues for studying attention in scientific populations and their neural mechanisms alongside brain imaging, which is what we are already working on.
These studies are published online in Behavior Research Methods, a journal.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provided funding for this study through a J.D. Martinez Award for Merit Review from the VA Clinical Sciences Research and Development Service ( 1I01CX002711-01 ). D and M. E.
About this information on memory and attention studies
Author: Gina DiGravio
Source: Boston University
Contact: Gina DiGravio – Boston University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Initial research has been made private.
A fascinating mental gradual onset ongoing performance task by Michael Esterman and colleagues:” Characterizing the effects of mental distraction on continual attention and following memory. Strategies for behavioural study
Abstract
A fascinating personal gradual onset ongoing performance task explores the effects of mental distraction on continual attention and subsequent memory.
Using a novel gradual onset continuous performance task ( gradCPT ), this study examines the effects of emotional distraction on sustained attention. Constant attention is a fundamental component of cognitive development that is susceptible to both internal ( endogenous ) and external ( exogenous ) disruptions.
Basic aspects of attention as well as personal differences and physiological mechanisms have been characterized using reliable, validated paradigms to assess domestic sources of variation in continual attention as well as individual differences and neurobiological mechanisms.
However, due to their affective and/or arousing nature, sustained attention can also be slowed down by external distraction, particularly highly salient distractors. There has been significantly less research to create trustworthy and valid paradigms that can examine these effects on ongoing attention.
This study introduces a novel task, the emogradCPT, to analyze the impact of emotional distractors ( background images ) on the ability to maintain focus on a task that is emotionally neutral ( digit discrimination task ).
We demonstrate that emotionally negative distractors consistently and robustly disrupt ongoing ability to sustain attention, which is demonstrated by slower RTs and reduced accuracy in comparison to neutral, positive, and no distractor conditions over two experiments and three rounds of data collection.
In addition, we validated the task by comparing objective and subjective levels of distraction and by demonstrating the effects of these distractors on downstream memory encoding and affect.
We encourage the use of this paradigm to inform future basic, clinical, and neuroimaging studies of affective interactions with ongoing goal-directed attentional processes by making these data and tools publicly available.
