MSUToday | Michigan State University: Short interruptions – such as the few seconds it takes to silence that buzzing smartphone – have a surprisingly large effect on one’s ability to accurately complete a task, according to new research led by Michigan State University.
The study, in which 300 people performed a sequence-based procedure on a computer, found that interruptions of about three seconds doubled the error rate.
4 comments:
The researcher cited in this article said that he was surprised that short interruptions cause so much error. However, this research does not surprise me at all. In our world within the School of Drama and within theatre in general, brief interruptions definitely surround us. As a freshman, I find that working efficiently in the studio is almost impossible to achieve. Without realizing it, one minute you are drafting and the next minute you are briefly distracted by a classmate dancing in the front of the room, a fun conversation going on next to you, and loud music playing over it all. While working in the studio can definitely be fun, I've learned that the brief interruptions in the studio often turn into pretty long interruptions, since they often cause you to lose your train of thought. When you add in the technology of phones and Facebook that surrounds our lives, our working time can double or triple.
Jess, I think the article's referring to a different issue than length of time to complete the task. The experiment described breaking the subject's flow by introducing new instructions ("type two letters") and then returning them to the main task, upon which they started to get more responses wrong than those uninterrupted. A more representative example would be that you're drafting away and someone asks you to borrow a pencil, and when you return to drafting you make small mistakes because you're trying to get back into the mindset of where you were in your drafting. The argument is that interruptions cost time and cause errors because your brain has to change gears, which I will totally buy and certainly should not have surprised the researcher. My take-away from this article is that when you really have to get something done, turning off the phone and getting to a quiet unpopulated place is really valuable, because you'll get it done quicker with less mistakes. That's a viable (if not earth-shattering) conclusion.
I definitely believe this is true. While I agree with the previous comments in the light that this is not an earth-shattering realization, it does seem to be one that everyone is forgetting about. Checking to see who texted you three minutes ago becomes more important than getting what you are doing done faster and more correctly. This urge is not foreign to me. Rationally, I know that the text I got three minutes ago is probably not too important. If something that required absolute immediate attention had happened, I would have been contacted in several other manners. However, this is the generation of instant gratification. I want to deal with certain things now, as opposed to pushing them to the back of my mind until later. It's about prioritization - keeping what is first right now separate from what will be first later.
I'm not surprised with the conclusions the study came to, however I am quite sure that they are true. It just makes sense that the mind works better when it's focusing on just one thing. It may only take ten seconds to answer a text, but now you're thinking about your conversation, and what the person might say back, rather than focusing on the task which you interrupted to check the phone. This brings up the issue of self control. If you don't have the self control to not check your phone, it shouldn't be sitting next to you as you write an essay. Essentially common sense.
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