Dividing Attention and Metacognition

2022 ◽  
pp. 62-90
Author(s):  
Yaoping Peng ◽  
Jonathan G. Tullis

Students increasingly control their learning as university instructors shift away from lecture formats, courses are offered online, and the internet offers near infinite resources for student-controlled informal learning. Students typically make effective choices about learning, including what to learn, when to learn, and how to learn, but sometimes make less-than-optimal study choices, including trying to study while multi-tasking. Dividing attention among various tasks impairs both learning and learners' control over their learning because secondary tasks divert cognitive resources away from learning and metacognition. This chapter reviews recent studies explaining how dividing attention affects students' metacognition, including their assessments of their own learning and the study choices that they make. This chapter reviews the fundamentals of metacognition, describes the impact of dividing attention on the effectiveness of learners' metacognition, and provides suggestions about how to enhance the efficacy of metacognition when students' attentional resources are limited.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis Sarigiannidis ◽  
Jonathan Paul Roiser ◽  
Oliver Joe Robinson

Anxiety alters how we perceive the world and can alter aspects of cognitive performance. Prominent theories of anxiety suggest that the effect of anxiety on cognition is due to anxious thoughts ‘overloading’ limited cognitive resources, competing with other processes. If this is so, then a cognitive load manipulation would impact performance of a task in the same way as induced anxiety. Thus, we examined the impact of a load manipulation on a time perception task that we have previously shown to be reliably impacted by anxiety. In contrast with our prediction, across two studies we found that time perception was insensitive to our load manipulation. Our results do not support the idea that anxiety impacts cognition by overloading limited cognitive resources. Thus, anxiety might affect cognition in a unique way, via an evolutionary-preserved defence survival system, as suggested by animal-inspired theories of anxiety, rather than competing for limited attentional resources.


Crisis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Arendt ◽  
Sebastian Scherr

Abstract. Background: Research has already acknowledged the importance of the Internet in suicide prevention as search engines such as Google are increasingly used in seeking both helpful and harmful suicide-related information. Aims: We aimed to assess the impact of a highly publicized suicide by a Hollywood actor on suicide-related online information seeking. Method: We tested the impact of the highly publicized suicide of Robin Williams on volumes of suicide-related search queries. Results: Both harmful and helpful search terms increased immediately after the actor's suicide, with a substantial jump of harmful queries. Limitations: The study has limitations (e.g., possible validity threats of the query share measure, use of ambiguous search terms). Conclusion: Online suicide prevention efforts should try to increase online users' awareness of and motivation to seek help, for which Google's own helpline box could play an even more crucial role in the future.


10.28945/2926 ◽  
2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
James N. Morgan ◽  
Craig A. VanLengen

The divide between those who have computer and Internet access and those who do not appears to be narrowing, however overall statistics may be misleading. Measures of computer availability in schools often include cases where computers are only available for administration or are available only on a very limited basis (Gootman, 2004). Access to a computer and the Internet outside of school helps to reinforce student learning and emphasize the importance of using technology. Recent U.S. statistics indicate that ethnic background and other demographic characteristics still have substantial impact on the availability and use of computers by students outside of the classroom. This paper examines recent census data to determine the impact of the household on student computer use outside of the classroom. Encouragingly, the findings of this study suggest that use of a computer at school substantially increases the chance that a student will use a computer outside of class. Additionally, this study suggests that computer use outside of the classroom is positively and significantly impacted by being in a household with adults who either use a computer at work or work in an industry where computers are extensively used.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Charles Girardeau ◽  
Philippe Blondé ◽  
Dominique Makowski ◽  
Maria Abram ◽  
Pascale Piolino ◽  
...  

Objectives. Prospective memory (PM) consists of remembering to perform an action that was previously planned. The recovery and execution of these actions require attentional resources. Mindfulness, as a state or a dispositional trait, has been associated with better attentional abilities. In this study, we investigated the impact of mindfulness on PM. Methods. Eighty participants learned 15 cue-action associations. They were, then, asked to recall the actions at certain moments (time-based items) or places (event-based items) during a walk in a virtual town. Before the PM task, participants were randomly assigned to a mindfulness or mind-wandering (control condition) session. Dispositional mindfulness was measured via the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). Results. We found no difference between the two groups in the PM scores. Nevertheless, the natural tendency to describe one's own sensations (the Describing facet of the FFMQ) predicted time-based performance in both groups. Conclusions. To our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the link between mindfulness and PM. We did not report any effect of a short mindfulness session, compared to mind-wandering, on PM. We discuss different hypotheses to explain this finding. Our main observation is a positive link between the Describing facet and time-based PM performances. We propose that this link could be due to the common association of this mindfulness facets and PM with attentional and interoceptive abilities. Additional studies are needed to explore this hypothesis.


Author(s):  
A. Seetharaman ◽  
Nitin Patwa ◽  
Simon Lai Koek Wai ◽  
Ahammed Shamir

The evolution of the Internet has revolutionised the sourcing and procurement processes in organisations in every industry. The focus of this paper is to analyse the perception of business users on the factors which impact the usage of eprocurement systems in the biomedical industry. There are four factors identified in this research: i.e. control and compliance, cost savings, process automation, and improvements and transparency. The benefit of achieving process automation is the first biggest factor, followed by the need for control and compliance, and transparency, being the second and third factors respectively. The fourth factor, cost savings, is ignored because the users perceived that cost savings will not be realised in the short term, and the returns from the investment could be a couple of years after the eprocurement system has been fully operational. The research also concludes that the ability to perform business analytics and to strengthen the supply chain are the most important factors in measuring the success in the adoption of e-procurement systems


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayli Lañas-Navarro ◽  
Jose Ipanaque-Calderon Sr ◽  
Fiorela E Solano

BACKGROUND Research on the use of the Internet in the medical field is experiencing many advances, including mobile applications, social networks, telemedicine. Its implementation in medical care and comprehensive patient management is a much discussed topic at present. OBJECTIVE This narrative review aims to understand the impact of the internet and social networks on the management of diabetes, both for patients and medical staff. METHODS The bibliographic search was carried out in the databases Pubmed, Virtual Health Library (VHL) and Lilacs between 2018 to 2020. RESULTS Multiple mobile applications have been created for the help and control of diabetic patients, as well as the implementation of online courses, improving the knowledge of health personnel applying them in the field of telemedicine. CONCLUSIONS The use of the Internet and social networks brings many benefits for both the diabetic patient and the health personnel, offering advantages for both.


Author(s):  
Patrícia Rossini ◽  
Jennifer Stromer-Galley

Political conversation is at the heart of democratic societies, and it is an important precursor of political engagement. As society has become intertwined with the communication infrastructure of the Internet, we need to understand its uses and the implications of those uses for democracy. This chapter provides an overview of the core topics of scholarly concern around online citizen deliberation, focusing on three key areas of research: the standards of quality of communication and the normative stance on citizen deliberation online; the impact and importance of digital platforms in structuring political talk; and the differences between formal and informal political talk spaces. After providing a critical review of these three major areas of research, we outline directions for future research on online citizen deliberation.


2003 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-93
Author(s):  
James Otto ◽  
Mohammad Najdawi ◽  
William Wagner

With the extensive growth of the Internet and electronic commerce, the issue of how users behave when confronted with long download times is important. This paper investigates Web switching behavior. The paper describes experiments where users were subjected to artificially delayed Web page download times to study the impact of Web site wait times on switching behavior. Two hypotheses were tested. First, that longer wait times will result in increased switching behavior. The implication being that users become frustrated with long waiting times and choose to go elsewhere. Second, that users who switch will benefit, in terms of decreased download times, from their decision to switch.


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