Research
The Young Mind
The effects of digital technology on cognition
The impact of interruptions from communications technologies upon the ability of an individual to concentrate upon the task
Dr Martin Westwell & Dr Jonathan Sharples
The impact of interruptions from communications technologies upon the ability of an individual to concentrate upon the task at hand is of significant scientific, social and economic interest. The Institute for Innovation and Information Productivity (IIIP) collaborated with the Institute for the Future of the Mind and contributed funding to a pilot study (Apr 2006 – Apr 2007) to determine how communication technologies impact upon the ability of individuals to attend to a task.
A group of 18-21 year olds were asked to perform a particular cognitively demanding task that required a significant level of concentration. The volunteers were interrupted during the task with either a telephone call, an SMS text message to a mobile telephone or an Instant Message to a desktop computer. The same procedure was used with a group of 35-39 year olds. These two age groups were chosen assuming that the 18-21 year olds would have been familiar with similar communications technologies during their childhood and adolescence whereas the 35-39 year olds would have only experienced them in adulthood.
As might be expected, the younger group performed better at the task than the older group. However, when the interruption was introduced (as above), the 18-21 year olds lost this advantage over the older group, for whom the interruption did not significantly change performance (see figure 1).
This study illustrates how the research of the Institute can have an impact beyond academia. The results of this study were released to IIIP and subsequently appeared on the front page of the New York Times (25 March 2007) and prompted a program for television in the USA on the 20/20 show, made by ABC news. The results will be presented at an international systems conference (Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)) and submitted for publication in the associated (peer-reviewed) conference proceedings in 2008.
IIIP have asked the Institute to prepare two further collaborative research funding proposals and inform the organizations global research strategy and academic collaborations.
Figure 1 Effect of interruption from communication devices on attention to a cognitively demanding task.
18-21 year olds lose their advantage over the 35- 39 year olds when interrupted. The older group are more able to switch attention between the task and interruption and back again, thus suffering no significant impairment due to the interruption.
The Institute for Innovation and Information Productivity (IIIP) is an organisation backed by a consortium of high-tech companies (e.g. Microsoft, Unisys, HP, Johnson & Johnson) to determine the implications of “the impact that information technology has on innovation and information work productivity in all sectors of global business.”