The Distracted Mind

Android App Analysis and Review: The Distracted Mind, Developed by ShiningBrand. Listed in Education Category. Current Version Is 1.0, Updated On 27/03/2019 . According to users reviews on Google Play: The Distracted Mind. Achieved Over 36 Installs. The Distracted Mind Currently Has 1 Reviews, Average Rating 5.0 Stars

Explore the daily challenges we face with the highly engaging but extremely distracting high-tech world we now inhabit

In Part I, we will take you on a tour through new insights into why our “interference dilemma” exists in the first place and why it has become so relevant to us now. We describe how the very essence of what has evolved furthest in our brains to make us human—our ability to set high-level goals for ourselves—collides headfirst with our brain’s fundamental limitations in cognitive control: attention, working memory, and goal management. This collision results in our extreme sensitivity to goal interference from both distractions by irrelevant information and interruptions by attempted multitasking. This noise degrades our perceptions, influences our language, hinders effective decision making, and derails our ability to capture and recall detailed memories of life events. The negative impact is even greater for those of us with undeveloped or impaired cognitive control, such as children, teens, and older adults as well as many clinical populations. We further discuss why we engage in high-interference-inducing behaviors from an evolutionary perspective, such that we are merely acting in an optimal manner to satisfy our innate drive as information-seeking creatures.

In Part II, we will share a careful assessment of our real-world behaviors and demonstrate how the collision described in Part I has been intensified by our constant immersion with the rich landscape of modern information technology. People do not sit and enjoy a meal with friends and family without checking their phones constantly. We no longer stand idle in waiting lines, immersed in thought or interacting with those next to us. Instead, we stare face down into virtual worlds beckoning us through our smartphones. We find ourselves dividing our limited attention across complex demands that often deserve sustained, singular focus and deeper thought. We will share our views of why we behave in such a manner, even if we are aware of its detrimental effects. Building a new model inspired by optimal foraging theory we explain how our high-tech world perpetuates this behavior by offering us greater accessibility to feed our instinctive drive for information as well as influencing powerful internal factors, such as boredom and anxiety. We are most certainly ancient brains in a high-tech world.


Finally, in Part III we offer our perspectives on how we can change our brains to make them more resilient, as well as how we can change our behavior via strategies to allow us to thrive in all areas of our lives. We first explore the full landscape of potential approaches available to us—from the low-tech to the high-tech—that harness our brain’s plasticity to strengthen our Distracted Mind. This in-depth examination includes traditional education, cognitive training, video games, pharmaceuticals, physical exercise, meditation, nature exposure, neurofeedback, and brain stimulation, illustrating how in these fascinating times the same technologies that aggravate the Distracted Mind can be flipped around to offer remediation. We then share advice on what we can do from a strategic perspective to modify our behavior, without abandoning modern technology, such that we minimize the negative consequences of having a Distracted Mind. Using the optimal foraging model introduced earlier in the book as a framework to approach behavioral change, all of the strategies we offer are practical and backed by solid science.

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