A Daily Deluge Of Junk Information
The way many of us, especially young adults, consume digital media, often by multitasking, can impair attention, according to new studies.
Media multitasking, which is engaging in the TV program while texting or using social media, is a common activity among the younger population.
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Some of the effects of media multitasking include reduced attention spans, lapses in attention, and forgetfulness of information due to reduced brain-signal patterns.
The lower sustained attention can also result in people having memory recall issues in the long run, as the everyday behaviour evolves into a steady pattern.
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Recent studies suggest we employ the same neurophysiological mechanisms while dreaming that we use to construct and recall memories while we are awake.
Studies also found that vivid, bizarre and emotionally intense dreams are linked to parts of the amygdala and hippocampus. The amygdala plays a key role in processing and memory of emotional reactions. The hippocampus is implicated in important memory functions, such as the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory.
- When English speakers use hand gestures to talk about the past and the future, they thrust a hand over the shoulder for the past and put a hand forward to indicate the future. English speakers also talk of the past as "leaving behind" and the future as "looking forward."
- The Yupno people of Papua New Guinea don't think of the future as before you, but as uphill. Their concept of time is not anchored in the body, but to the world and its contours.
- We give gaze physical properties.
- We create implicit mental programmes in which the visual attention of others is understood as a forceful beam emitted from the viewer’s eye and directed at the object of interest.
- These mental programmes allow us to use cognitive shortcuts in order to process peoples’ visual attention quickly and efficiently.