Strange Distracters
Report from:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002493.html
Summary of reports: Last April and May, there was a media avalanche about how email, texting and other communications technologies "are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis" (according to the Guardian), "lower the IQ more than twice as much as smoking marijuana" (according to the London Times), "reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic" (according to CNN), have effects "similar to the impact of missing an entire night’s sleep" (Red Herring), "temporarily knocks 10 points off a users' intelligence, compared to four for a joint" (the Mirror). The associated headlines were things like Why texting harms your IQ; E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot'; Distractions at work 'lower the IQ of staff'; and TXTING MKS U STPID: It lowers your IQ more than smoking cannabis. This research has become part of the public's conventional wisdom about the deleterious effects of modern life, as suggested by browsing the 615,000 Google hits for {"email IQ pot"} and similar probes.
Comment from the original researcher: This "infomania study" has been the bane of my life. I was hired by H-P for one day to advise on a PR project and had no anticipation of the extent to which it (and my responsibility for it) would get over-hyped in the media.
There were two parts to their "research" (1) a Gallup-type survey of around 1000 people who admitted mis-using their technology in various ways (e.g. answering e-mails and phone calls while in meetings with other people), and (2) a small in-house experiment with 8 subjects (within-S design) showing that their problem solving ability (on matrices type problems) was seriously impaired by incoming e-mails (flashing on their computer screen) and their own mobile phone ringing intermittently (both of which they were instructed to ignore) by comparison with a quiet control condition. This, as you say, is a temporary distraction effect - not a permanent loss of IQ. The equivalences with smoking pot and losing sleep were made by others, against my counsel, and 8 Ss somehow became "80 clinical trials".
Since then, I've been asked these same questions about 20 times per day and it is driving me bonkers.
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My comments
I missed most of this media avalanche. Probably because of my theory that paying too much attention to media hype has some kind of association with stupidity.
But back to these strange distracters: e-mails, phones ringing, media hype. Especially media hype. People can turn off phones and email info. Pop-up web ads and flashing screen ads are other problems. But technology works both ways. People use pop-up blockers. And ads don’t flash me for long. If I want to read the page, I just adjust the window so the ad is hidden.
I think there is a place for more cognitive engineering on media hype and general news glut. I get most of my news from Yahoo now. Since it is sorted into categories, I can manage the news glut by putting the less important categories on pages I look at only rarely. One improvement I would like to have is a way to filter out news items on subjects that I don’t want more info about. I can set a filter now to show me stories about Paris Hilton. What I would like is a filter to exclude stories about Paris Hilton. Or about text messaging and IQ. Or about flu vaccine shortage.
This seems a natural for Google. They have the search technology. They could easily let people set up a Junk News filter to put items they don’t want on a junkyard page.
Being Google, they would aggregate the data on what people designate as junk. They would probably report it as news, just as they report the most frequent searches. News media might use the info to moderate their hype before it starts getting laughs.
The Junk News filter might even work for networking. There are various arrangements to let you send other people the news items you think are important. You can, for example, put links in your blog and other people could subscribe. How about an Unblog? People could subscribe to Junk News filters from people they trust. They could get rss feeds to keep their filters up to date. Well know people would probably offer their Junk News filters just for the visibility.
You could probably get a Junk News filter from Paris Hilton.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002493.html
Summary of reports: Last April and May, there was a media avalanche about how email, texting and other communications technologies "are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis" (according to the Guardian), "lower the IQ more than twice as much as smoking marijuana" (according to the London Times), "reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic" (according to CNN), have effects "similar to the impact of missing an entire night’s sleep" (Red Herring), "temporarily knocks 10 points off a users' intelligence, compared to four for a joint" (the Mirror). The associated headlines were things like Why texting harms your IQ; E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot'; Distractions at work 'lower the IQ of staff'; and TXTING MKS U STPID: It lowers your IQ more than smoking cannabis. This research has become part of the public's conventional wisdom about the deleterious effects of modern life, as suggested by browsing the 615,000 Google hits for {"email IQ pot"} and similar probes.
Comment from the original researcher: This "infomania study" has been the bane of my life. I was hired by H-P for one day to advise on a PR project and had no anticipation of the extent to which it (and my responsibility for it) would get over-hyped in the media.
There were two parts to their "research" (1) a Gallup-type survey of around 1000 people who admitted mis-using their technology in various ways (e.g. answering e-mails and phone calls while in meetings with other people), and (2) a small in-house experiment with 8 subjects (within-S design) showing that their problem solving ability (on matrices type problems) was seriously impaired by incoming e-mails (flashing on their computer screen) and their own mobile phone ringing intermittently (both of which they were instructed to ignore) by comparison with a quiet control condition. This, as you say, is a temporary distraction effect - not a permanent loss of IQ. The equivalences with smoking pot and losing sleep were made by others, against my counsel, and 8 Ss somehow became "80 clinical trials".
Since then, I've been asked these same questions about 20 times per day and it is driving me bonkers.
---
My comments
I missed most of this media avalanche. Probably because of my theory that paying too much attention to media hype has some kind of association with stupidity.
But back to these strange distracters: e-mails, phones ringing, media hype. Especially media hype. People can turn off phones and email info. Pop-up web ads and flashing screen ads are other problems. But technology works both ways. People use pop-up blockers. And ads don’t flash me for long. If I want to read the page, I just adjust the window so the ad is hidden.
I think there is a place for more cognitive engineering on media hype and general news glut. I get most of my news from Yahoo now. Since it is sorted into categories, I can manage the news glut by putting the less important categories on pages I look at only rarely. One improvement I would like to have is a way to filter out news items on subjects that I don’t want more info about. I can set a filter now to show me stories about Paris Hilton. What I would like is a filter to exclude stories about Paris Hilton. Or about text messaging and IQ. Or about flu vaccine shortage.
This seems a natural for Google. They have the search technology. They could easily let people set up a Junk News filter to put items they don’t want on a junkyard page.
Being Google, they would aggregate the data on what people designate as junk. They would probably report it as news, just as they report the most frequent searches. News media might use the info to moderate their hype before it starts getting laughs.
The Junk News filter might even work for networking. There are various arrangements to let you send other people the news items you think are important. You can, for example, put links in your blog and other people could subscribe. How about an Unblog? People could subscribe to Junk News filters from people they trust. They could get rss feeds to keep their filters up to date. Well know people would probably offer their Junk News filters just for the visibility.
You could probably get a Junk News filter from Paris Hilton.
posted by Selby Evans at 10:35 AM
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