Juggling the many tasks in today's technological era can hurt learning, performance and short-term memory, especially in older people, according a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Study participants were asked to look at a scene, and were then interrupted for several seconds by an image of a person's face. They were asked to identify the person's gender and approximate age, and then returned to answer questions about the earlier scene. Older subjects found it more difficult to reestablish contact with the scene, the researchers found.
Although the study did not specifically examine the effect of interruptions from cell phones or other devices, the results provide a “clear extrapolation” to the impact of a stream of incoming rings and buzzes, according to Dr. Adam Gazzaley, a neurologist at the University of California at San Francisco.
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