Your IQ may drop 10 points when distracted by email and phone calls

[DW Simpson]

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/busin...est/full_list/

5. So that's why they call it a CrackBerry.

A study by the University of London's Institute of Psychiatry, commissioned by Hewlett-Packard, finds that "an average worker's functioning IQ falls 10 points when distracted by ringing telephones and incoming e-mails ... more than double the four-point drop seen following studies on the impact of smoking marijuana."

[Maxprime]

I don't see how emails & phone calls are a distraction.

[tommie frazier]

i'm dumber now for having viewed these posts. I can feel it.

[r. mutt]

Eighty volunteers were asked to carry out problem solving tasks, firstly in a quiet environment and then while being bombarded with new emails and phone calls. Although they were told not to respond to any messages, researchers found that their attention was significantly disturbed.

Alarmingly, the average IQ was reduced by 10 points - double the amount seen in studies involving cannabis users. But not everyone was affected by to the same extent - men were twice as distracted as women.

Well, of course. You never know when it might be a link to some good pictures.

[DW Simpson]

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002733.html#002733

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7298

http://www.willpate.org/archives/200...-us-dumber.php

http://southerlybuster.blogspot.com/...infomania.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect

Stroop effect

In psychology, the Stroop effect is a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task. When a word such as blue, green, red, etc. is printed in a color differing from the color expressed by the word's semantic meaning (e.g. the word "red" printed in blue ink), a delay occurs in the processing of the word's color, leading to slower test reaction times and an increase in mistakes. The effect is named after its discoverer, John Ridley Stroop, and was first noted in an article Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1935.

In his experiment, Stroop administered several variations of two main tests. Stroop referred to his tests as RCN, to stand for "Reading Colour Names", where participants were required to repeat the written meaning of words with differing coloured fonts, and NCW, to stand for "Naming Coloured Words", in which participants were asked to verbally identify the color of each printed color name. Additionally Stroop tested his participants at different stages of practice with each task, to account for the effects of association.

Stroop identified a large increase on the time taken by participants to complete the NCW (Naming Colored Words) tasks, an effect still pronounced despite continued practice at each task. This interference is thought to have been caused by the automatization of reading, where the mind automatically determines the semantic meaning of the word, and then must override this first impression with the identification of the color of the word, a process which is not automatized.

Since its development the Stroop task, a measure of the effect of interference on performance of a colour identification task, has utilised the Stroop effect to investigate aspects of such varied psychological disorders as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Anorexia. EEG and fMRI studies of the stroop effect have revealed selective activation of the Anterior Cinguate Cortex during a stroop task, a prefrontal structure in the brain which is hypothesized to be responsible for conflict monitoring. J. Ridley Stroop's original word colour identification test has additionally been modified to include numeric, emotionally stimulating, and auditory variables.

[r. mutt]

Originally Posted by D.W. Simpson Webmaster

<all that Stroop stuff>

That was pretty cool stuff, I'm glad I read it. Thanks!