I’VE never thought of myself as particularly distractable, but today the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. While wondering how to start this article I have: 1) opened an email alert telling me I have spam; 2) stared at a colleague’s new haircut; and 3) watched a cloud shaped like a cow turn into a sad face, and wondered if it meant anything. Getting down to work is proving to be rather a struggle.
Wandering attention is an occupational hazard for the average office worker; research suggests that interruptions can take up to 2 hours out of the working day (Â鶹´«Ã½, 28 June 2006, p 46). Of the many things that disrupt our flow, visual distractions, like email notifications, flashing telephone message lights or people walking past the window, are among the most difficult to ignore. In the office these kinds of distractions are annoying, but for pilots, air traffic controllers and truck drivers – occupations where there are many visual distractions – they can be downright dangerous. A study of drivers by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last year showed that .
Clearly some people are better at concentrating through these kinds of distractions than others, but until recently there was no easy way to quantify someone’s visual distractability, or to reliably compare different people, and so no way to tell whether someone would make an excellent air traffic controller, or would be better suited to another role. Thanks to a simple computer test devised by psychologist Nilli Lavie and…
