[ExI] Attention Spans Decreasing?

[William Flynn Wallace]

OK Spike, Bill will comment:

I recently was asked by a neighbor who knew of my academic background (Ph.
D. exp. psych) and a hobby, gardening, and brought a bug over for me to
identify.  When I went to get my bug book he said that he was devastated
that I did not know right away.  After all I was so smart, right?

Point:  why memorize something, spending all that time and energy when all
you need is to know is where that information is and how to interpret it
when you find it.  On a visit to a physician he got out a big book and
looked up something in it.
Rather than being insulted that he was some kind of incompetent, I was
favorably impressed.  No one can put all of that in his head.

And if he did, could he get it out?  Superficial evidence of memory decline
is often the result of conflicting memories, and the more you have in
memory the more you have the possibility for conflict - meaning that you
just cannot get it out at least temporarily.

In working my crossword puzzles I often think of a word that would do as it
is similar to what I was searching my brain for, but it is wrong and
somehow blocks my search for the right one (aka interference theory).

The idea that video games or anything else has dulled our brains is just
silly.  The games cause our brains to work in certain ways and not others.
Studies show that gamers do better than nongamers on some nongame mental
tasks - not surprising.

Nor have we devolved.  Anyone who has taken Psych 101 knows a bit a how
memory works.  How about attention?  Listening is a learned skill and not
at all easy to learn.  Then you have to get it into memory and that is also
a learned skill, not automatic in any way except in some people who cannot
help but memorize every license plate ahead of them.  I did not forget some
things in the novel I read last week, as I did not put them into memory in
the first place.  Generally speaking one has to try and sometimes try hard
to get something into memory and if it ain't there you can't find it!

Nowadays we talk about teaching how to think critically and creatively but
I haven't seen much evidence that it is done right.  Just like religion:
you can't just teach honor and virtue etc., you have to tell people what
not to do as well.  Does anyone know of classes at any level that teach all
the cognitive errors I mention so often (search Wikipedia for 'cognitive
errors')?  Do economics or finance classes teach how to avoid scams?  Why
not?

The most effective people at drug addicts' facilities are former addicts,
who know all the wrong kind of thinking.

There is more bullshit surrounding psychology than any other field I know.
So, Spike, we have to be doubly alert and set our BS detector on high.  The
problem is keeping an open mind to new things that will pan out.
Unfortunately most of them in my field won't (bet we are slowly getting
better though we won't catch up with physics and chemistry for hundreds of
years, I think.

Duke Ellington:  "If it sounds good it is good."  May work for music.  It
works all too well for the snake oil salesmen of the world.  Oh excuse me,
snake oil vendors, I meant to say politicians.


On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 5:14 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 2:46 AM, spike wrote:
> <huge snip>
> > I have an alternative explanation: as we grow older, we start to take in
> > more information and process more information.  The children focus right
> > down on the critical core.  To them, old people appear slow.  Not
> > necessarily stupid, just slower.  Reason: we are dealing with a lot more
> > information, and seeing a lot more alternatives simultaneously.
> >
> >
>
> Confirmed by recent research and paper:
> <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12078/full>
>
> Quote:
>
> The Myth of Cognitive Decline: Non-Linear Dynamics of Lifelong Learning
> As adults age, their performance on many psychometric tests changes
> systematically, a finding that is widely taken to reveal that
> cognitive information-processing capacities decline across adulthood.
> Contrary to this, we suggest that older adults'; changing performance
> reflects memory search demands, which escalate as experience grows. A
> series of simulations show how the performance patterns observed
> across adulthood emerge naturally in learning models as they acquire
> knowledge.
> Our results indicate that older adults'; performance on cognitive
> tests reflects the predictable consequences of learning on
> information-processing, and not cognitive decline. We consider the
> implications of this for our scientific and cultural understanding of
> aging.
> ------------
>
> I don't know if it is mentioned in the paper, but I would add that
> because of their senior status, old people have a greater fear of
> making a mistake, or getting the wrong answer. So they check and
> recheck their results before answering.
>
>
> BillK
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