Reduction of environmental distraction to facilitate cognitive performance

Frontiers in Psychology

Annelies Vredeveldt¹ 

关键词: distraction;    cognitive load;    modality-specific interference;    eye-closure;    eyewitness memory;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00860

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Different mechanisms have been proposed to explain the eye-closure effect, which can be divided into two broad categories: general versus modality-specific. The general-distraction explanation is based on Glenberg's (1997) embodied cognition account of memory, which holds that environmental monitoring and cognitive tasks such as memory retrieval compete for cognitive resources. Disengaging from the environment (e.g., through eye-closure) allows us to reallocate cognitive resources to the task at hand, thus improving performance, but at the potential cost of poorer monitoring of the current environment. The general-distraction explanation of the eye-closure effect is supported by findings that, in some studies, eye-closure improved recall of both visual and auditory information (e.g., Perfect et al., 2008, Experiments 4 and 5; Vredeveldt and Penrod, 2013, free recall). It is also supported by the finding that eye-closure can reduce the cross-modal memory impairment caused by auditory distraction (Perfect et al., 2011). The modality-specific explanation, on the other hand, holds that distractions in the environment only interfere with concurrent tasks in the same modality, consistent with Baddeley and Hitch's (1974) working memory model (see also Baddeley and Andrade, 2000). This explanation is supported by findings that, in some studies, eye-closure improved recall only for visual details (e.g., Perfect et al., 2008, Experiment 2; Vredeveldt et al., 2012; Vredeveldt and Penrod, 2013, cued recall). Further, recall of visual details is most disrupted by visual distraction, whereas recall of auditory details is most disrupted by auditory distraction (Vredeveldt et al., 2011). All in all, it seems likely that both general and modality-specific processes are involved in the effect of environmental distraction on cognitive performance.

【 授权许可】

CC BY