Phones, emails, notifications...: how does the brain react to digital distractions?
Today, screens and notifications dominate our daily lives. We are all familiar with these digital distractions that pull us out of our thoughts or activities. Between an important email from a superior and a call from school that forces us to leave work, postponing the task at hand, interruptions are an integral part of our lives—and seem destined to become even more prevalent with the proliferation of connected objects in future "smart homes."
Sibylle Turo, University of Montpellier and Anne-Sophie Cases, University of Montpellier
However, they do have an impact on our ability to complete tasks, our self-confidence, and our health. For example, interruptions can increase the time it takes to complete a task by 27%.
As a cognitive psychology researcher, I study the cognitive costs of these digital interruptions: increased stress levels, increased feelings of mental and physical exhaustion, and fatigue, which can contribute tothe emergence of psychosocial risks and even burnout. In my work, I have drawn on theories about how the human cognitive system works, which provide a better understanding of these cognitive costs and their impact on our behavior. Studies of this kind highlight the crucial importance of finding a balance between our use of technology and our ability to concentrate, for our own good.
Why worry about digital interruptions?
The integration of connected objects into our lives can offer greater control over various aspects of our environment, allowing us to manage our schedules, remember birthdays, or control our heating remotely, for example. In 2021, the penetration rate of connected homes (i.e., the number of households equipped with at least one connected home device, including those that only have a connected plug or light bulb) was around 13% in the European Union and 17% in France (compared to 10.7% in 2018).
While ease of use and perceived usefulness of connected objects have an impact on their acceptability to a large part of the population, the digital interruptions often associated with them hinder our cognition, i.e., all processes related to perception, attention, memory, understanding, etc.
The impact of digital interruptions can be seen in both the private and professional spheres. On average, it takes a person more than a minute to get back to work after checking their email. Studies show that employees regularly spend more than 1.5 hours per day recovering from email-related interruptions. This leads to an increase in perceived workload and stress levels, as well as feelings of frustration and even exhaustion, associated with a sense of loss of control over events.
There are also effects in the educational sphere. In a 2015 study of 349 students, 60% said that the sounds emitted by cell phones (clicks, beeps, button sounds, etc.) distracted them. Thus, digital interruptions have much more profound consequences than one might think.
Better understanding where the cognitive cost of digital interruptions comes from
To understand why digital interruptions disrupt our thought processes so much, we need to take a look at how our brains work. When we perform a task, our brains constantly make predictions about what will happen next. This allows us to adapt our behavior and perform the appropriate action: the brain sets up predictive and anticipatory loops.
Thus, our brain functions as a prediction machine. In this theory, a very important concept for understanding the processes of attention and concentration emerges: that of processing fluency. This refers to the ease or difficulty with which we process information. This assessment is done unconsciously and results in a subjective and non-conscious experience of the information processing process.
The concept of fluency formalizes something that we understand intuitively: our cognitive system does everything it can to ensure that our activities run as smoothly (fluently) as possible. It is important to note that our cognition is "motivated" by a belief that it formulates a priori about the ease or difficulty of a task and the possibility of making good predictions. This allows it to adapt as well as possible to its environment and to the smooth running of the task at hand.
Our attention is drawn to simple and expected information.
The easier information seems to process, or the more our brain evaluates it as such, the more it attracts our attention. For example, an easy-to-read word attracts our gaze more than a difficult one. This reaction is automatic, almost instinctive. In one experiment, researchers showed that individuals' attention could be involuntarily captured by the presence of real words as opposed to pseudowords, words invented by scientists such as HENSION, especially when they were asked not to read the words presented on the screen.
One of our studies showed that fluency—the perceived ease of a task—guides participants' attention toward what their brains predict. The study sought to understand how the predictability of words would influence participants' attention. Participants were asked to read incomplete sentences and then identify a target word from among words that were either consistent or inconsistent with the sentence. The results showed that consistent, predictable words attracted more attention from participants than inconsistent words.
It would appear that an event consistent with the current situation attracts more attention and potentially promotes concentration. To our knowledge, our study is one of the first to show that processing fluency has an effect on attention. Further studies are needed to confirm our findings. This work has been initiated but could not be completed in the context of the Covid pandemic.
Unforeseen events cause a "fluency break."
As we have seen, our cognitive system constantly makes predictions about future events. If the environment does not match what our brain had predicted, we must first adapt our actions (often when we had already put everything in place to act in accordance with our prediction), then try to understand the unexpected event in order to adapt our predictive model for next time.
For example, imagine you are reaching for your cup to drink your coffee. When you grab it, you expect it to be rigid and perhaps a little warm. Your brain makes a prediction and adjusts your actions accordingly (opening your hand, grabbing the cup more from above). Now imagine that when you grab it, it's not a rigid cup, but a more fragile plastic cup. You'll be surprised and try to adjust your movements so that your coffee doesn't slip out of your hands. The fact that the cup bends between your fingers has created a gap between what your cognitive system predicted and your actual experience: this is called a fluency break.
Digital interruptions disrupt our predictive system
Interruptions, whether digital or not, are by nature unexpected. An impromptu phone call, for example, causes a break in fluency, meaning that it contradicts what the brain had anticipated and prepared for.
Interruptions have behavioral and cognitive consequences: cessation of the main activity, increased stress levels, time needed to resume the task at hand, loss of concentration, etc.
The disruption of fluency automatically triggers the implementation of adaptation strategies. We focus our attention and, depending on the situation we encounter, modify our actions, update our knowledge, revise our beliefs, and adjust our predictions.
The interruption in flow refocuses attention and triggers a process of searching for the cause of the interruption. During a digital interruption, the unpredictability of this alert prevents the brain from anticipating or minimizing the feeling of surprise following the interruption in flow: the (re)mobilization of attention is then disrupted. We do not know where the interruption will come from (the phone in our pocket or the email inbox on the computer) or what the content of the information will be (the children's school, a telemarketing call, etc.).
Strategies for a healthier digital life
Finding a balance between the benefits of technology and our ability to maintain focus is crucial. It is possible to develop strategies to minimize digital interruptions, use technology mindfully, and preserve our ability to stay engaged in our tasks.
This could involve creating uninterrupted work zones (e.g., reintroducing the conventional individual office), temporarily disabling notifications during periods of intense concentration (e.g., phone silent mode or "focus" mode in word processing software), or even adopting smart technologies that actively promote concentration by minimizing distractions in the environment.
Ultimately, the shift towards an increasingly intelligent, or at least connected, environment requires careful consideration of how we interact with technology and how it affects our cognitive processes and behaviors. The transition from the traditional home to the connected home is one of the issues addressed by the HUT project, which I worked on as part of my postdoctoral research. Many researchers (in management sciences, law, architecture, movement sciences, etc.) have worked on issues related to the hyperconnectivity of homes, uses, and well-being within a hyperconnected observatory apartment. This has enabled us to determine together the ideal conditions for the housing of the future, but also to identify the impact of technologies within a connected home in order to prevent any negative consequences.
Sibylle Turo, Doctor of Cognitive Psychology and Postdoctoral Fellow, HUT Project, University of Montpellier and Anne-Sophie Cases, Professor, MRM Laboratory, University of Montpellier, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.