During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of John Medina’s Brain Rules, Attention chapter. In addition to your summaries, write about what things vie for your attention, and how you manage your attention.
ENG1101 D371 English Composition I, SPR2015
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In this chapter, Medina talks about how the brain can only concentrate on one task at a time. The brain can also maintain its attention on a certain task for only 10 minutes before wandering somewhere else unless there is something else to spark back that attention. This usually requires something to bring out a strong emotion. I find myself loosing attention on many things. For example, since I take the same commute to school almost every day, many of the things I pass by go unnoticed by me. Usually, if I find myself straying in attention, I try to force myself to focus on the task at hand. There are certain things, however, that when they connect with one of the stronger emotions I feel, I will become a bit absorbed by it and will remember it.
After reading Attention chapter of John Medina’s Brain Rules, John discusses in this chapter of how most individuals minds can’t seem to pay attention to a certain thing for too long if they are not interested. Medina mentions in the chapter of how most college students tend to lose their focus after 10 minutes in a classroom only because they begin to have no interest into what’s really going on. Losing your focus well attention on something can become a negative impact on your everyday life. So lets say if you was driving and you’re just looking out to the road but all of a sudden you lose focus and you pass a red light, boom! You got into in accident. This is probably what many drivers go through when they get themselves into an accident. They begin to lose concentration on what really matters and let their minds wander off. Whenever I feel that I am starting to lose my attention I just sit up straight and lean in forward to the speaker or something that I need to pay attention to. Not only does this help me avoid wandering off, but it helps me gain more information that’s given to me.
In John Medina’s book Brain rules in the chapter Attention he discusses how we can’t multitask and our brain processes one thing at a time. Like professor also mentioned in class that it’s just like a CPU and I strongly agree with him. We think we are multitasking but when we are thinking about several things our mind goes from one thought to another so fast probably in mill-seconds that we think we are thinking everything at once. And that is now it’s in computers as well, when we are using the computer if we go from one screen to another it changes so fast that we don’t even know and we think we are running all the programs at once. Usually emotional or things related to us catch our attention because we can relate to them and they somehow connect with us. Since they are related to us we want to look at them or learn more about them. And like John Medina said in his book that “We are better at seeing patterns and abstracting the meaning of an event than we are at recording detail.” I strongly agree with that as well. Our eyes are looking everywhere and those are the things that catch our attention the most.
In this chapter, John Medina discusses ways the brain pays attention, how multitasking is a myth, and how key ideas along with meaning captures our attention more than details. He mentions that people tend to lose attention during the last ten minutes of a lecture but are more attentive during the first ten minutes. He explains the three cognitive networks, arousal, orienting, and executive, and how those systems can be used to hold his student’s attention within those last ten minutes, involving emotional arousal. In terms of multitasking, Medina mentions that the brain sequentially focuses on one task at a time. As you have your attention on one task and something else interrupts you, your brain has to disengage from what you were paying attention to, then engage on what just caught your attention. This shift happens every tenths of a second. Medina refers to the 1984 commercial ad for Apple and uses that as an example of how the ad was Apple’s most memorable commercials. According to the chapter, the brain pays more attention to the gist that emotionally charges it, rather than details. The commercial gave a huge impression on Apple by how it used scenes from the movie 1984 and gave a logical twist to it. Medina says that people learn by paying attention to information presented to them in a logically organized, hierarchical structure. After reading this chapter, I have realized that everything Medina mentioned, in terms of how people learn, applied to me. I pay attention to key ideas and facts rather than long details.
In John Medina’s, “Brain Rules” on Attention, he focuses the importance of paying attention, and the myths circulating about multitasking. Medina concluded that a good attention must have three important fundamentals that I agree on; Memory, Interest, and Awareness. The reason because, it does not only make us become proactive in the class, but it also allow us to absorb more information at the same time. Furthermore, it increases the performances in our mental capacity to enhance our abilities, such as, inventing new stuff, thinking critically, or asking logical questions. Medina supported his claim by what he has observed from his class. He realized that, his students often lose their attention within ten minutes into their class. Because, students do not indulge or even attempt to focus on the class, they would tend to turn on their laptop, or use their phone while listening to him at the same time. Medina soon found out that students who were easily distracted did not do well in class than student who were not. This is because, students that were attempting to multitask during his lecture were not able to insert all information at once. One misconception about multitask that Medina mentions is that, we humans think we can multitask because we “can”. However, what we do not know is that, even though we may be good at “multitasking”, our brains are not multitasking. When we do two things at once, our brain has to consistently switch from one thing to another, just like an on and off switch. When it comes to paying attention, Medina concluded that our brains are not capable of focusing two things at once because our brains are not meant for that, unless we have more than one brain.
I can totally relate to this chapter because, I lose my attention all the time. I have an attention span of a gold fish. For example, I will never have any class lecture where I have not looked at my watch for less than fifteen times. The way I resolve this is by wearing long sleeve shirt to class or take off my watch.
The Attention Chapter was very informative. Unlike the last chapter I read about the “Night Story”. I was able to totally relate to all the examples given. I also recognize how it tied in to the function of the brain. I have to admit that I enjoy John Medina’s writing style more than I do Jonathan Gottschalls’. I like how John Medina backs up his theory with a lot of facts and examples. You are able to see the picture more vividly and I get a better understanding of what he is trying to convey.
I look at attention a lot more differently now. If you are able to chew gum and walk, than I was under the impression that you could multitask. After reading John Medina’s chapter on “Attention”,I understand that attention is deeper than just walking and chewing gum. It takes time time for your brain to disconnect from one activity and then to totally engage in another one. Even though this process happens at a very quick speed,and it still has to happen. The brain cannot be engrossed in one activity and go to another activity,without first disengaging from the first activity. And I think that was the point John Medina was trying to make.
According to Medina’s chapter “Attention”, the brain cannot multitask. It can only do one thing at a time for a limited time. When what we are doing is not interesting, we tend to lose our attention easily. We are naturally lazy so we only pay attention to important details and key idea rather than trying to remember everything in the reading or lecture. For something to grab my attention, it has to be something rare, unique or really exciting to do. In order for me to pay attention to something or someone, there have to be a benefit for it. I usually pay more attention to something that would beneficiate me now or in the future.
Attention is a common problem in everyday life.Whether its at work, school or even just listening to your friend talk it is usually hard to keep your attention towards that subject. A study has shown that after ten minutes of class the usual student loses focus on the lecture. This prompts the professor to change the subject every so often to keep the students engaged and focused. It has been proven that the best way to keep someone’s attention is through emotion. This immediately reminded me the super bowl commercials. These commercials are meant to catch the viewers attention through some kind of emotion like laughing or making a person sad. The state farm commercial about kids accidental deaths still resonates through my mind right now. It shows that if there is emotion then its easier for the mind to grasp or remember certain things.
In the chapter “Attention” the chapter shows examples of scenarios, where human’s grab attention. Our brain tries to grab as much information but some just get lost in trying to remember a particular event. There are particular events that can get our attention the most. Having emotions tied with an event can grab your attention and will be saved in your memory much easier than an event without any emotions tied with it. For example a TV show that shows drama, from the book “The Story Telling Animal” by Jonathan Gottshall, It mentioned how our minds are more aware of picking up things with emotions involved. Most people can easily remember the show they have seen the day before than the new calculus equation they learned that same day. This is because our mind pay attention more on emotions and its relatable. If calculus equations are more relatable maybe more people would get it. Medina also mentioned that our minds cannot multi task. Multi task is a myth, our brains cannot do two things at a time nor, have our full attention to one particular event. I always thought that humans can multi task before I read this chapter. This is probably due to the influence computers have brought upon me. Having to work with computers has enabled me to do multiple things at once, but that’s the computer’s doing, not exactly me.
In John Medina’s, “Brain Rules, Attention,” Medina talks about what grabs and holds our attention. These things are what interest us, what we have memory of and what we are aware of. In this chapter, he talks about what is going on in our brain when we give attention, how emotions or events of high importance are linked to attention and the myth of multi tasking. There are three networks that are going on in the brain when we give attention. These networks are alerting, orienting and executive network. Alerting network is the general attention we give on a daily basis. It monitors our surroundings for unusual activity. If we are alarmed, the mind then activates the orienting network, which is the attention we give to a stimulus that alerted us. We then decide what to do and the mind transitions to the executive network which controls what actions we take based on the stimulus that caught our attention. Medina also states emotional events of high importance are remembered better and longer than normal events. Medina says our brains are not made for multi tasking. Our brain cannot have it full attention on one thing at a time. If you believe you can multi task, it just means you have good memory that can pay attention to several things more than once. With today’s technology, social media apps are what grab my attention. Sometimes it dominates my time, so I delete the apps from my phone so I can focus my attention to my priorities.
In the chapter Attention from Brain Rules, Medina talks about how we think that our brain do multitasking but in reality it only focus on one thing at a time . A study has shown that eating while watching TV we thing that is multitasking but actually we lose our attention from one thing and normally it is food and later we complaint about over eating . The brain cannot keep attention on one thing more than ten minutes , we always need something to keep our Attention on whatever we are doing .Another study have shown that we pay more attention on what we see visually than what we listen or read . Sometimes a distractions can cause a big damage, as an example every day we see many traffic accidents and most of them happens due to our lack of attention on road and one of the main reason is use of cell phone while driving . As professor Ellis mentioned in his class that even compute CPU process information one by one, It just does it so fast that we think it is doing multitasking .
In the chapter “Attention” of John Medina’s “Brain Rules”, we learned about the things we pay attention to, why we pay attention to those things and why we lose attention or focus on things. We pay attention to the more interesting or important things in our lives. Of course, it is no secret that the more/better we pay attention to certain things, the better our ability to retain the information to what we payed attention to is. We do not pay much attention to boring details, which is why those boring things becomes gradually harder to focus on. The things that do catch our attention has to appeal to our emotions. If they did not, they would be considered boring. Attention grabbing stimuli also has to appeal to one of either three; memory, interest and awareness. The chapter also states that our brains are not capable of multitasking. We are only able to focus on one task at hand at a time.
The human mind is decisive, deciding what to pay attention to. JM states in Brain Rule #6 that “We don’t pay attention to boring things”. JM means boring in a way that it varies from person to person. An example of an important thing to me would be a criminal trying to cause material harm to me. JM states that “In the moonlight, I could see the six-foot frame of a young man in a trench coat, clutching a flashlight and examining the contents of our house”. This is a classic burglary. I know this as my house although not my apartment was broken into; The robbers took high value goods from a fellow tenant. Attention itself is simple enough, if humans see harm, they will likely pay attention to it rather than something of a comparatively lesser magnitude. The brain relies on stimuli to determine the level of importance of a particular matter. Th stimuli could be danger, pain, anything adverse picked up with our 5 senses, etc.. This in itself is hard to explain. My attention is focused on me, persons around me, and other things. This all may sound selfish but my attention must be divided and I must “watch my back”. Many things in life vie for my attention, the question is what do I pay attention to?
In the reading “Attention” by John Medina he explains that after a period of 10 minutes people tend to zone out especially college students with lectures. He said in order to have a person’s attention they have to be emotional connected to what is going on around them. For example, he said when his mother would get angry she would bang pots and pans together and it would get his attention because he had a emotional connection to that and he always knew that was a sign for “You’re in trouble now”. Also, Medina talks about multitasking is not a good thing because the brain only focus on one thing at a time. There are times where one level of your brain can multitask such as walking and talking at the same time. However, multitasking can be confusing you while you are trying to pay attention.