The last post was about selective attention, which means criteria on which we select information channels to bundle our attention on a certain item.
Today we will speak about divided attention namely to do two or more things at the same time, commonly known as multitasking. There are certain factors that influence the performance of doing things simultaneously:
- The similarity of tasks: the higher the similarity of tasks the lower the performance, because our brain cannot make a clear distinction between the two tasks.
- Exercise: The more experience we have on one task the less it disturbs the other e.g. driving and listening to an audiobook.
- Task difficulty
Why is this so: Our working memory has a hierarchical character that means the central executive the structure of attention is at the top of the pyramid. It controls and coordinates behavior. The components under work independently.
This is the reason for building habits because they make our life much easier. The more we exercise one thing regularly the better we get at it and in time we perform it on autopilot. The advantage of automatization is:
- It is quick
- You need less attention – that means you can focus on other things better
- they are performed without consciousness
When we succeed to build a series of daily habits the only thing we need to focus our attention on is to “change” between the different programs.
In the next videos, you can make some exercises to train your divided attention:
If you want to play some science-based interactive games to train attention, I want to invite you to make yourself a profile on:
They have also a free version, but you can upgrade also to the premium version to make your brain fit like a sneaker!
Looking forward to reading your feedback in the comment section!