Attention span is the amount of time …
Um, sorry, where was I? My mind wandered.
Oh, yes. Attention span is the amount of time one can spend on a task without being distracted.
New research finds the attention span for humans is about eight seconds. This is down from 12 seconds in the year 2000. Not good news.
What makes it even worse news is that the attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds. They beat us by a whole second.
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The research on humans was done by Microsoft and also by the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Library of Medicine.
There apparently are three kinds of attention span:
* Sustained attention: the ability to focus on one task continuously
* Selective attention: the ability to respond when distractions arise
* Alternating attention: what we now call multitasking
Researchers had 2,000 people take online surveys and play electronic games and then measured their brain electricity. The results showed that our ever-increasing use of digital devices lessens our sustained attention but improves alternating attention.
We are less able to focus on one task, the kind of concentration that produced the Sistine Chapel and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, for example.
But, oh boy, can we multitask: 75 percent of respondents to one survey use other portable electronic devices while watching TV; the average office worker checks his or her email 30 times every hour; a British survey found that the average person switches between electronic devices 21 times an hour.
Wow! Not only can we no longer concentrate long enough to compose Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, we don’t have the attention span to even listen to it. And to add insult to injury, there are those goldfish. Even goldfish can concentrate longer than you and I can?
Scientists can test you and me. But just how do they measure a goldfish’s attention span? I uncovered one way scientists measure goldfish memory: Scientists placed food around a Lego block in a fish tank for several weeks and then took away the block. The fish still swam to where the block had been, suggesting they could remember where the block had been.
Pretty smart, huh? The goldfish and – thank heavens – the scientists.
I worry, though, about the rest of us.