Why you're easily distracted - according to psychologists

Are you here looking for distractions?

Now scientists have found a reason why people can be so easily be distracted.

A new report published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General claims that one's level of distraction is determined by how engaged one is with the task at hand.

Psychologists from the University of Illinois, professors Simona Buetti and Alejandro Lleras have tested the accepted theory that the more difficult a task, the more distractions the human brain tries to find.

Particpants were asked to complete a maths problem, while photographs of neutral scenes (fields, cows, flowers etc) flashed up on a computer screen at three second intervals.

A device that tracked their eye movements recorded how often they looked up from their maths problems, and for how long.

Contrary to the accepted theory, the results showed that participants were more likely to become distracted when the problems they were solving were easier.

Beutti explained their findings.

This suggests that focus on complex mental tasks reduces a person's sensitivity to events in the world that are not related to those tasks

The findings compliment pre-existing resarch regarding 'inattentional blindness', when people who are engrossed in something fail to notice unexpected happenings in their immediate environment.

They also found that financial incentives had a neglible effect on how often people interacted with distractions.

Participants who were given a mix of easy and hard problems were found to be just as focused as those who were only given easy problems to solve.

From this, Buetti and Lleras concluded:

Characteristics of the task itself, like its difficulty, do not alone predict distractibility. Other factors also play a role, like the ease with which we can perform a task, as well as a decision that is internal to each of us: how much we decide to cognitively engage in a task

HT Science Daily

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