Distracting Ourselves Thoughtless
Connie Marshner
What are we learning while we read blogs, watch youtube
clips, glance at the morning paper, and talk on the phone all at the same time?
Very little!
Poldrack did functional magnetic resonance imaging of the
brains of people learning something new under two different sets of
conditions. One group learned the task while
focusing on it; the other group learned while being forced to multi-task, in
other words, while being distracted.
Surprise, surprise: the multitaskers performed worse than
the focused group.
When learning without distraction, the hippocampus of the
brain was engaged. That’s the part of
the brain responsible for storing complex information, which can be retrieved
on a very flexible basis. When learning in
the face of distraction, the part of the brain engaged was the basal ganglia,
the part used to build habits and less flexible types of knowledge.
Which type of learning will enable deeper comprehensive,
creative recall, and stronger ability to draw inferences and conclusions? Somehow I doubt it’s the basal ganglia type
of learning.
The implications are vast, for state and church and family.
How do most Americans do their learning and thinking about
politics? By listening to a commentator
on TV or radio, while at the same time intercepting a cell phone call, having a
conversation with a spouse, maybe fixing
dinner and trying to help a kid with homework…. Basal ganglia, not hippocampus learning.
How did most of Gen X and Gen Y “learn” the tenets of the
Catholic faith? CCD? A gaggle of kids gathering for an hour or two
a week, sneaking their ipod earphones in, covertly checking their text
messages, waiting to laugh at the kids who actually did the homework and can
answer the teacher’s questions, in a classroom that all too often attempts to make
the content “relevant” by disguising it as games or tricks?
What happens to family life as kids move through
school? High school used to be the time
of life when thought and learning got serious. Today it becomes the maximum multitasking time: sports practice and games three nights a
week, social engagements the other nights, parents exchanging strategic pickup
and drop off messages by cell phone in between errands and jobs, radios or TV’s
or ipods or cell phones on every waking minute -- How can the hippocampus even survive this?
Are we distracting ourselves so much that we are learning nothing? How about if we all gave up one of our distractions for Lent?
