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The brain in your pocket: Evidence that Smartphones are used to supplant thinking
... Some of the reported impacts of excessive smartphone use on human cognitive functions are summarized in Table 1. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] ...
... 9 Analytical thinking has been supplanted by smartphones. 17 Excessive media multitasking was linked to a poor mindset, worse academic accomplishment, and inferior executive function skills. 18 Research on the relationship between mobile devices and cognitive functions has mostly focused on the impact of shifts in attentional orientation brought on by excessive use of smartphones. ...
... Some of the reported impacts of excessive smartphone use on human cognitive functions are summarized in Table 1. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] ...
... 9 Analytical thinking has been supplanted by smartphones. 17 Excessive media multitasking was linked to a poor mindset, worse academic accomplishment, and inferior executive function skills. 18 Research on the relationship between mobile devices and cognitive functions has mostly focused on the impact of shifts in attentional orientation brought on by excessive use of smartphones. ...
... Regarding personality traits, extraversion (Smetaniuk, 2014) was anticipated to be positively related to technoference. Negative correlations were supposed to be found with emotional stability , agreeableness (Toda et al., 2016), conscientiousness (Lachmann et al., 2017;Philips, 2018) and intellect (Barr et al., 2015). ...
... Built upon the fact that some authors (McDaniel & Coyne, 2016;Sansevere & Ward, 2021) identify phubbing with technoference or treat it as one of its manifestations, the obtained high correlation of technology interference with phubbing seems to be fully justified. Moderate or low negative correlations were found for technoference and all measured personality traits, which is mostly in line with studies showing the relationship between problematic phone use and low agreeableness (Toda et al., 2016), high neuroticism and low performance in cognitive tasks (Barr et al., 2015). ...
The Distraction in Social Relations and Use of Parent Technology questionnaire (DISRUPT) is a short 4-item measure by McDaniel (2021) used to assess technology interference during the parent–child common time. The paper describes the development of the Polish version of the DISRUPT. The study sample consisted of 649 participants aged 18–35 (Mage = 30.23, SD = 3.87), divided randomly into two groups: one for EFA and the other for CFA. EFA using the maximum likelihood method revealed a unidimensional structure of the tool; the single-factor model was also well-fitted in CFA. High reliability ( = .90) and construct validity were obtained. The Polish questionnaire version is a promising tool for screening parental digital behaviors.
... In this sense, previously Pennycook et al. (2015b) analyzed the everyday consequences of the subjects' analytic thinking style (related to religion, moral judgments or even smartphone technologies). These authors proposed that the ability to think analytically has an effect on religiosity, paranormal concepts, moral values, creativity or the use of smartphones (for research on these topics, see for example Barr et al., 2015). See also Pennycook (2018b), for a review about different investigations showing that analytical thinking was a good predictor of key psychological outcomes in different areas of everyday life (such as conspiratorial beliefs, religious and paranormal beliefs, human morality, creativity, etc.). ...
... The results showed that all of them were significantly correlated with the three aforementioned domains. For other studies on these topics, see for example Barr et al., (2015); Pennycook et al. (2015b);Šrol (2022). See also Sanz Blasco & Carro de Francisco (2019), for a theoretical review. ...
... There is a vast amount of scientific literature covering the effects of digital technology on mental processes, such as memory, attention, or thinking (Anderson & Subrahmanyam, 2017;Barr et al., 2015;Hoskins, 2009;Uncapher & Wagner, 2018). (Baddeley et al., 1969;Kahneman, 1973;Sweller, 1994) The vast amount of information available on the Internet overwhelms human cognitive capacity (infoxication). ...
... Scientific literature draws a complex scenario where the interrelations between technology usage and thinking and reasoning seem to follow diverse directions. For instance, Barr et al. (2015) conducted three studies aiming to shed light in this regard. The authors found that those participants who were less willing to engage in effortful thinking tended to rely on technology more frequently than those who were pleased to undertake complex and demanding tasks. ...
The ever-evolving digital technology is transforming us in unexpected ways. In the last few decades, almost any dimension of human life is being affected by these devices, from a global perspective (e.g., we can video chat immediately with someone being thousands of kilometers away) to the individual cognitive
sphere. For instance, we no longer memorize telephone numbers or instructions to get to a given place; we just trust these artifacts and let them perform more and more actions we used to do by ourselves in the past. This new reality poses profound implications for human nature, particularly for cognitive architecture. There is a growing body of scientific literature highlighting the effects of digital technology over cognitive processes, such as attention, memory, or motivation.
However, there is little evidence regarding to what extent technology is related with thinking and reasoning. Is the use of technology enhancing the way we think and reason, and thus making us smarter? Or is it the opposite, and they are taking
away from us the cognitive effort we used to conduct ourselves, and thus making us cognitive lazier and brainless. Throughout this chapter, three goals are aimed, namely, (a) depicting the state of the art of the studies regarding the relationship between digital technology and cognition, especially possible changes in the way
we think and reason; (b) reflecting about the future envisioned concerning how technology should be aligned with social needs (rather than social needs being deceived to meet the interests of giant companies behind technology design). In doing so, the normative way of thinking and reasoning will be discussed, that is,
what is considered the right way to deploy them. Finally, (c) drawing some lines of action to raise awareness. Instead of waiting for a better technological design, specific actions at an individual level to take back control over technology can
already be conducted. Social change is happening, it depends on us whether it will be the social change we wish, desire, and deserve, or not.
... Gibson's perspective is also consistent with one of social psychology's most fundamental tenets: People do not always know how the environment influences their cognition and behavior (Ross, 1977). Indeed, people may use digital devices with little conscious awareness, and research suggests that people may not have complete and accurate insight into how the digital environment influences them (Barr et al., 2015;Bastick, 2021;Bayer et al., 2016;Epstein & Robertson, 2015;Fisher et al., 2015;Ward, 2021). Identifying the degree to which people are aware of the digital environment's freeing and constraining influences on the self is not a focus of our article. ...
... The idea that people will have the cognitive resources to resist dark patterns and other manipulative features of the digital environment is inconsistent with evidence that people are "cognitive misers" who will outsource the effort of thinking when the opportunity presents itself (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). In fact, people who are low on analytic thinking, the most "miserly," are particularly likely to offload thinking to their smartphones (Barr et al., 2015). ...
We evaluate how features of the digital environment free or constrain the self. Based on the current empirical literature, we argue that modern technological features, such as predictive algorithms and tracking tools, pose four potential obstacles to the freedom of the self: lack of privacy and anonymity, (dis)embodiment and entrenchment of social hierarchy, changes to memory and cognition, and behavioral reinforcement coupled with reduced randomness. Comparing these constraints on the self to the freedom promised by earlier digital environments suggests that digital reality can be designed in more freeing ways. We describe how people reassert personal agency in the face of the digital environment’s constraints and provide avenues for future research regarding technology’s influence on the self.
... Smartphones have been argued to be a constant source of distraction that interferes with one's task performance (Throuvala et al., 2021;Wajcman & Rose, 2011). Furthermore, there is research evidence demonstrating that smartphones are used to supplant thinking and induce cognitive miserliness (Barr et al., 2015). From phone books and calendars to gaming devices and internet portals, the integration of a diverse array of applications within a single smartphone supplements a limitless range of cognitive activities. ...
... More importantly, by repeatedly administering our measures over a week, the daily diary approach allowed us to examine within-person associations between objective smartphone use and cognitive failures and rule out personality and environmental variables that are stable over time as confounding variables (Almeida et al., 2002). Taken together, based on the previous studies that have suggested smartphones as a source of distraction and a supplanter for thinking (Barr et al., 2015;Throuvala et al., 2021), we hypothesized that higher levels of smartphone screen time and checking would each uniquely predict a higher incidence of daily cognitive failures at the within-person level. ...
While smartphones have brought many benefits and conveniences to users, there is continuing debate regarding their potential negative consequences on everyday cognition such as daily cognitive failures. A few cross‐sectional studies have found positive associations between smartphone use and cognitive failures. However, several research gaps remain, such as the use of cross‐sectional designs, confounds related to stable individual differences, the lack of validity in self‐report measures of smartphone use, memory biases in retrospective self‐reports, and the lack of differentiation between smartphone checking and smartphone screen time. To simultaneously address the aforementioned shortcomings, the current study examined the within‐person associations between various objective indicators of smartphone use and daily cognitive failures using a 7‐day daily diary study. Multilevel modelling revealed that smartphone checking, but not total smartphone screen time, predicted a greater occurrence of daily cognitive failures at the within‐person level. Surprisingly, we also found negative within‐person associations between smartphone screen time for social‐ and tools‐related applications and daily cognitive failures, suggesting that some types of smartphone use may temporarily benefit one's cognitive functioning. This finding demonstrates the importance of studying the specific functions of smartphone use and their differential cognitive consequences, as well as highlights the complex relations between smartphone use and cognition.
... This sort of multifunctionality has not been seen before in human history. The effects smartphones have on memory and cognition is now a lively debated topic (Barr, Pennycook, Stolz & Fugelsang 2015;Wilmer, Sherman & Chein 2017). ...
Human biological memory systems have adapted to use technological artifacts to overcome some of the limitations of these systems. For example, when performing a difficult calculation, we use pen and paper to create and store external number symbols; when remembering our appointments, we use a calendar; when remembering what to buy, we use a shopping list. This chapter looks at the history of memory artifacts, describing the evolution from cave paintings to virtual reality. It first characterizes memory artifacts, memory systems, and the two main functions such artifacts have, which are to aid individual users in completing memory tasks and as a cultural inheritance channel (section 2). It then outlines some of our first symbolic practices such as making cave paintings and figurines, and then moves on to outline several key developments in external representational systems and the artifacts that support these such as written language, numeral systems and counting devices, diagrams and maps, measuring devices, libraries and archives, photographs, analogue and digital computational artifacts, the World Wide Web, virtual reality, and smartphones (section 3). After that, it makes some brief points about the cumulative nature of the cultural evolution of memory artifacts and speculates about the possible future of memory artifacts, arguing that it is very difficult to look beyond an epistemological horizon of more than five years (section 4).
... Longer screen time has been associated with shorter sleep and poor sleep quality and efficiency [3]. Several studies have studied the effects of smartphone use on various aspects of cognition [1,6,11]. In the face of all this evidence, the HCI community has been developing interventions for the regulation of technology use, overuse, and misuse, resulting in various interventions targeting smartphone usage behavior. ...
Digital mindfulness applications and tools are increasingly developed to improve the wellbeing of technology users. In this study, we present Chai, an Android live wallpaper application designed to reduce absent-minded smartphone usage. The wallpaper is designed as a tree whose leaves undergo color change and fall off based on the frequency of smartphone use. We also present the result of an initial pilot study conducted using the application. The participants reported increased awareness of their smartphone use behavior and found the wallpaper and the other features of the application to be persuasive at varying degrees.
... Por ejemplo, para recordar un número de teléfono no es necesario memorizarlo, la persona puede acceder fácilmente a ese dato si lo escribe en un papel (Hamilton & Yao, 2018). Así, las TIC también pueden ensamblarse con los sistemas cognitivos poniendo a disposición una basta cantidad de información (Barr et al., 2015). La dificultad aparece cuando las personas no pueden distinguir entre lo que ellos saben y lo que está almacenado en las TIC. ...
This article analyzes the effects of ICT use, access and attitudes towards ICT on the accuracy of reading self-concept, using data collected by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2018.The sample included 275,355 students (50.67% female) belonging to 52 countries. The analysis focuses on the nonlinear effects of ICT-related variables on self-concept bias, using nonlinear regressions and gradient-boosted decision trees (GBDT). The results indicate that ICT use has a quadratic relationship with respect to self-concept bias, in which very high or low levels of ICT use are related to higher self-concept inaccuracy. Additionally, attitudes toward ICTs present mixed relationships with the accuracy of reading self-concept. Finally, machine learning that uses gradient decision trees confirms some results produced by the linear regressions, whereas contradicts others. Further research needs to analyze this discrepancy.
Key words: Reading self-concept, metacognition, information and communication technologies (ICT), Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), Machine Learning.
... For instance, Oechssler et al. (2009) showed how cognitive reflection reduced incidences of several behavioral biases. As a result, individuals engaging in cognitive reflection demonstrate improved performance on decision-making (Campitelli & Labollita, 2010;Frederick, 2005;Hoppe & Kusterer, 2011;Toplak et al., 2011Toplak et al., , 2014 and reasoning (Lesage et al., 2013;Toplak et al., 2011Toplak et al., , 2014 tasks, enhanced scientific understanding (Shtulman & McCallum, 2014), and creativity on complex tasks (Barr et al., 2015). ...
Servant leadership's unique focus on care and concern for multiple stakeholders has caught the attention of academic and practitioners alike. Its theoretical novelty, however, remains underutilized as a means to contribute unique insights to the leadership literature. We draw on servant leadership's moral foundation—utilitarian consequentialism—and social learning theory to identify cognitive mechanisms (follower other‐orientation and cognitive reflection) through which servant leadership affects employee behavior benefiting two stakeholder groups: a community nonprofit organization and the employing organization. Furthermore, we evaluate the degree to which an employee's moral identity internalization acts as a boundary condition of servant leadership's effects. Data were collected from 274 employee‐supervisor dyads across three waves with objective cognitive reflection scores and objective measures of workplace charitable giving and employee performance. Results supported all hypothesized predictions even after accounting for three alternative mediators. In particular, servant leadership had a positive indirect effect on workplace charitable giving through follower other‐orientation; it also had a positive indirect effect on objective follower financial performance through other‐orientation and cognitive reflection. Both indirect effects were significant at low levels of moral identity internalization but not at high levels. We discuss the implications of these findings and delineate directions for future research.
... A recent meta-analysis concluded that cognitive intelligence and numerical ability had direct and indirect (through numeracy skills) effects on cognitive reflection (Otero et al., 2022). Interestingly, people with less reflective orientation attribute more supernatural causation to uncanny experiences (Bouvet & Bonnefon, 2015), adopt more religious and paranormal beliefs (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012;Pennycook et al., 2015;Shenhav et al., 2012;Stagnaro et al., 2018, see however Sanchez et al., 2017, endorse more stereotypes (Blanchar & Sparkman, 2020), conspiracy beliefs (Pisl et al., 2021;Yelkbuz et al., 2022), fake news (Pennycook & Rand, 2019a), misperceptions about Covid-19 (Kantorowicz-Reznichenko et al., 2022;Newton et al., 2023) and disinformation (Erlich et al., 2023), follow more unreliable accounts on Twitter (Mosleh et al., 2021) and tend to rely more heavily on their smartphones as information sources (Barr et al., 2015b). Individuals with low scores on the CRT are more socially conservative (Noori, 2016;Stagnaro et al., 2018), while individuals with more reflective orientation are less politically apathic and adopt more heterodox political positions and behaviour (Pennycook & Rand, 2019b). ...
The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a widely used measure of individual propensity to rely on analytic thinking. This measure is consistently related to decision-making tasks, beliefs and real-life decision outcomes and also inversely related to conformist and mindless decision making. Drawing from previous studies showing that food choices are related to cognitive style, we hypothesised that an analytic cognitive style would be inversely related to meat consumption and beliefs supporting meat eating. In two highly powered studies (total N = 7,283), we investigated the relationship between the CRT and meat consumption and associated beliefs, controlling for relevant demographics. Our results showed that a higher CRT score predicted self-identification as vegetarian, exclusion of meat and fish from diet and lower belief that meat consumption is normal and necessary for health (study 1). This link remained when need for cognition and self-esteem were introduced as concurrent predictors (study 2). Despite a small observed effect size, these results confirm the relevance of the CRT for investigating consequential decision making and habits.
... The simultaneous use of media technology, including smartphones, is associated with higher levels of distractibility (Ophir et al., 2009) and a less precise coding of information in the working memory (Uncapher et al., 2016). Smartphone use has also been negatively linked to inferior performance on numeracy, problem-solving, and verbal intelligence tests (Barr et al., 2015), and a diminished tolerance for delayed gratification (Hadar et al., 2015). While smartphone usage implicates various domains of cognition, one domain that has received growing interest is executive functions: a multifaceted construct of higher-order cognitive processes responsible for controlling and regulating thoughts and actions to achieve a goal (Miyake et al., 2000). ...
The negative consequences of smartphone usage have seen frequent discourse in popular media. While existing studies seek to resolve these debates in relation to executive functions, findings are still limited and mixed. This is partly due to the lack of conceptual clarity about smartphone usage, the use of self-reported measures, and problems related to task impurity. Addressing these limitations, the current study utilizes a latent variable approach to examine various types of smartphone usage, including objectively measured data-logged screen time and screen-checking, and nine executive function tasks in 260 young adults through a multi-session study. Our structural equation models showed no evidence that self-reported normative smartphone usage, objective screen time, and objective screen-checking are associated with deficits in latent factors of inhibitory control, task-switching, and working memory capacity. Only self-reported problematic smartphone usage was associated with deficits in latent factor task-switching. These findings shed light on the boundary conditions of the link between smartphone usage and executive functions and suggest that smartphone usage in moderation may not have inherent harms on cognitive functions.
... These confirm that these negative impacts are weakly associated with using electronic devices. In the line with our findings, more frequent smartphone use is linked to a cognitive style that is less analytical and to cognitive decline [19]. Smartphone addiction is on the rise, and it is linked to higher levels of stress and lower academic achievement [20]. ...
... Several studies have associated the use of smartphones with reduced attentive and mnemonic capabilities [9], increased impulsivity, and deficits in inhibitory control [10,11], as well as worse performance in reasoning tasks [12]. Problematic smartphone use can supplant thought processes and induce cognitive avarice [13]. In fact, people who use smartphones do not devote mental efforts to carrying out cognitive activities, as there are several applications that integrate a wide range of them [14]. ...
and misleading information that can impact people’s judgments and worldviews. This happens
especially in a phase of life such as preadolescence when children are particularly sensitive to external
conditioning. Critical thinking can be seen as the first line of defense against misleading information.
However, little is known about the consequences of media use on the critical thinking skills of tweens.
In this study, we evaluated the effects of problematic smartphone use on the various stages of critical
thinking, comparing high and low tween smartphone users. The results confirm the main hypothesis,
namely, that problematic smartphone use is related to the ability to think critically. There was a
significant difference between high and low users in the third phase of critical thinking: evaluation
of sources.
... The same may be true of cognitive tools: Homo sapiens have experienced more than a 5% reduction in brain mass throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene (Stibel, 2021) and that loss of brain mass has been linked to an increased use of cognitive tools (DeSilva et al., 2021). Modern technology, such as the internet and cell phones, have been shown to supplant thinking more broadly (Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, & Fugelsang, 2015;Sparrow, Liu, & Wegner, 2011). Cognitive tools enable thought to move to and from the brain by offloading cognition from biological wetware to artificial hardware. ...
Social robots have limited social competences. This leads us to view them as depictions of social agents rather than actual social agents. However, people also have limited social competences. We argue that all social interaction involves the depiction of social roles and that they originate in, and are defined by, their function in accounting for failures of social competence.
... The same may be true of cognitive tools: Homo sapiens have experienced more than a 5% reduction in brain mass throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene (Stibel, 2021) and that loss of brain mass has been linked to an increased use of cognitive tools (DeSilva et al., 2021). Modern technology, such as the internet and cell phones, have been shown to supplant thinking more broadly (Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, & Fugelsang, 2015;Sparrow, Liu, & Wegner, 2011). Cognitive tools enable thought to move to and from the brain by offloading cognition from biological wetware to artificial hardware. ...
Clark and Fischer (C&F) discuss how people interact with social robots in the context of a general analysis of interaction with characters. I suggest that a consideration of aesthetic illusion would add nuance to this analysis. In addition, I illustrate how people's experiences with other depictions of characters require adjustments to C&F's claims.
... The same may be true of cognitive tools: Homo sapiens have experienced more than a 5% reduction in brain mass throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene (Stibel, 2021) and that loss of brain mass has been linked to an increased use of cognitive tools (DeSilva et al., 2021). Modern technology, such as the internet and cell phones, have been shown to supplant thinking more broadly (Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, & Fugelsang, 2015;Sparrow, Liu, & Wegner, 2011). Cognitive tools enable thought to move to and from the brain by offloading cognition from biological wetware to artificial hardware. ...
While we applaud the careful breakdown by Clark and Fischer of the representation of social robots held by the human user, we emphasise that a neurocognitive perspective is crucial to fully capture how people perceive and construe social robots at the behavioural and brain levels.
... The same may be true of cognitive tools: H. sapiens have experienced more than a five percent reduction in brain mass throughout the Late late Pleistocene and Holocene (Stibel, 2021) and that loss of brain mass has been linked to an increased utilization of cognitive tools (DeSilva et al., 2021). Modern technology, such as the internet and cell phones, have been shown to supplant thinking more broadly (Barr et al., 2015;Sparrow et al., 2011). Cognitive tools enable thought to move to and from the brain by offloading cognition from biological wetware to artificial hardware. ...
Clark and Fischer argue that humans treat social artifacts as depictions. In contrast, theories of distributed cognition suggest that there is no clear line separating artifacts from agents, and artifacts can possess agency. The difference is likely a result of cultural framing. As technology and artificial intelligence grow more sophisticated, the distinction between depiction and agency will blur.
... This result indicates that smartphone separation impairs self-control. This is consistent with previous studies that found that smartphone separation triggers severe anxiety (Hartanto and Yang, 2016) and affects executive function and higher-order cognitive processes such as mental shifting (Hartanto and Yang, 2016), effortful reasoning (Barr et al., 2015), and working memory capacity (Ward et al., 2017). ...
Different interacting contexts influence the decision-making process, as revealed by the computational modeling. Through four studies, we investigated how smartphone addiction and anxiety influenced impulsive behaviors, along with the underlying psychological mechanisms and dynamic decision-making processes. In the first and second studies, we found no significant correlation between smartphone addiction and impulsive behavior. However, in the third study, we found that smartphone separation increased impulsive decision-making and purchases, and state anxiety, but not trait anxiety, mediated this effect. We explored the dynamic decision-making process using a multi-attribute drift diffusion model (DDM). The results showed that anxiety triggered by smartphone separation changed the trade-offs between decision weights for the fundamental components of the dynamic choice process. In the fourth study, we investigated why smartphone addiction led to increased anxiety and found that extended-self was a mediating factor. Our findings show that smartphone addiction was not correlated with impulsive behaviors, but was correlated with state anxiety in the context of smartphone separation. Further, this study shows how emotional states triggered by different interacting contexts affect the dynamic decision-making process and consumer behaviors.
... Over one billion videos are watched on video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok (Chaffey 2022). This rapid change in people's interaction with technology has led cognitive psychology researchers to focus on the effects of social media on high-level cognitive processes such as memory, attention, and executive functions (Ophir et al. 2009, Alloway and Alloway 2012, Alloway and Alloway 2015, Barr et al. 2015. However, social media use seems to affect cognitive processes differently. ...
The use of social media continues to increase in modern cultures in recent years. This new context leads to creating a virtual self, which somewhat differs from the real self. Further, social relations are set and maintained predominantly in this new context. There is no doubt that social media does not only affect individuals' social relations but also their cognitive skills by pulling them into new situations that they are unfamiliar with. In this new context, content coded in social media can be remembered in real life, and content coded in real life can be remembered in social media. This new context, where mostly real-life stories are shared, is likely to strongly affect the autobiographical memory processes of individuals. Past research suggests that social media affects autobiographical memory processes both directly (phenomenological characteristics, functions) and indirectly through cognitive processes (eg, attention, working memory, transitive memory). Studies about its indirect effects indicate that people with limited attention and working memory capacity have difficulty processing the high number of stimuli offered by social media. Given that the long-term memory capacity is not limited, it is plausible to expect that some of the contents are encoded into the memory; however, problems may occur in the storage and retrieval processes. Studies about the direct effect of social media show that the phenomenological characteristics (number of details, accuracy, emotional content) and functions (self, social, directing, therapeutic) of events experienced or shared on social media differ from real-life events. This theoretical review discusses the effects of social media use on cognitive processes related to memory processes and more specifically on the phenomenological and functional characteristics of autobiographical memory. To recognize and prevent potential psychological issues that may emerge in relation to this new setting, it appears essential to comprehend how social media affects autobiographical memory, which is essential for self-perception.
... Alexa or Siri to make a shopping list, or sets a reminder on their phone, they have engaged in cognitive offloading: the use of an external mechanism to record thoughts and memories to reduce cognitive load. Cognitive offloading can affect how we think (Barr et al., 2015;Dror & Harnad, 2008), is employed from an early age (e.g., Armitage et al., 2020), and has obvious benefits: one can remember more information with less effort. Unfortunately, there are also costs associated with offloading. ...
We examined potentially selective offloading decisions when the external store has a limited capacity and how the surprising unavailability of offloaded information influences subsequent offloading decision‐making and memory. In three experiments, learners were presented with to‐be‐remembered words paired with point values counting towards their scores if recalled and were allowed to offload some words. Experiment 1 included only positively valued words, Experiment 2 included some negatively valued words, and Experiment 3 included only positively valued words but some extremely high‐value words. Learners selectively offloaded high‐value words (an ideal strategy if the external store is more reliable than memory) but were also selective in their memory for not‐offloaded words. However, when offloaded words were surprisingly unavailable, learners frequently forgot high‐value words, illustrating the potential dangers of offloading. Thus, offloading decisions should depend on the reliability of the external store, memory abilities, and the variability of the value of to‐be‐remembered information. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
... Moreover, not only were participants who initially used the Internet more likely to rely on the Internet than they would have been otherwise, but they spent significantly less time trying to think of the answers before conducting their searches, and they reported significantly depressed levels of Need for Cognition (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984). This finding suggests that relying on the Internet has the potential to exacerbate cognitive miserliness (see related evidence, see e.g., Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, & Fugelsang, 2015;Wang, Wu, Luo, Zhang, & Dong, 2017). ...
Digital technologies have changed the everyday use of human memory. When information is saved or made readily available online, there is less need to encode or maintain access to that information within the biological structures of memory. People increasingly depend on the Internet and various digital devices to learn and remember, but the implications and consequences of this dependence remain largely unknown. The present chapter provides an overview of research to date on memory in the digital age. It focuses in particular on issues related to transactive memory, cognitive offloading, photo taking, social media use, and learning in the classroom.
... In the research The Brain in Your Pocket: Evidence that smartphones are used to supplant thinking (Barr et al., 2015), it has been explored what might be the consequence for human cognition the fact of having the basis of human information at the fingertips instantaneously. The authors sought to understand if individuals less likely to engage in rational efforts could compensate for such lack by relying on the Internet through their smartphones. ...
... Smartphones can be utilised for a wide variety of cognitive tasks for us, as well as to satiate many of our affective impulses. They can be used as phonebooks, appointment calendars, internet portals, tip calculators, maps, gaming devices, and much more [18]. ...
Background/purpose: Mobile phones, sometimes known as cell phones since they operate on a cellular network design, have grown significantly in size and technology over the years. Researchers at Bell Labs in the US started experimenting with the idea of a cellular phone network in the 1970s. The plan was to create a network of hexagonal cells that would each have a base station and cover the entire nation. These base stations would use radio frequencies to transmit and receive messages from mobile phones. The purpose of a telephone is to transmit and receive human voice. The most common type of communication in use today is the telephone. It is a device that is affordable, simple to use, and allows users a one-on-one level of contact that is not possible through any other medium. Today, there are billions of telephones in use around the globe. Objective: This study focuses on examining how each gadget is utilised and how that affects the online reputation of airline companies. Design/Methodology/Approach: Multiple academic sources and publications were accessed to get the data for this research study. Findings/Result: In the first ten years of the twenty-first century, mobile phones altered the way we communicate. Since 2005, both developing and developed countries have seen a reduction in the use of landlines as a result of mobile communication, which also enables connectivity in even the most distant regions of the globe. Intelligent and adaptable automation is necessary due to rising client demands and heightened international competitiveness. Mobile robotics, an interaction technology, has a lot of industry potential because it addresses this. Originality/Value: The outcome offers a concise rundown of several technological mobile manufacturing firms and new expertise building industries in the viable race. Paper type: A Research Case study paper - emphases on establishments in a production, usages and growth of mobile companies in change of technology.
... This may be regarded as a positive implication of smartphone usage, particularly because self-regulatory behaviors have also been positively associated with learning, development, and performance in sport [22][23][24][25][26][27]. However, the literature also exposes the potential for smartphones to promote addictive and problematic behaviours [28][29][30], disrupt attention and executive function [1,2,31,32], cause anxiety [1,33,34], induce mental health concerns [35][36][37], and cause deficits in task performance [33,38]. The mere presence of a smartphone is distracting enough to thwart self-regulation capacity for some individuals and cause detriments to attention and performance [32]. ...
In the original version of the book, the following updates have been made: In Chapter 84, citations of Figures 2, 3 and 4 have been correctly placed under the section heading 3. The book and the chapter have been updated with the changes.
... This obvious answer is an intuitive or lure answer, and providing the correct answer requires respondents to overcome the temptation to give the initial intuitive answer. Since CRT correlates with many other measures (Toplak & Stanovich, 2002), it is used in many studies in different strings of research such as moral judgments and values (Baron et al., 2015;Paxton et al., 2012;Royzman et al., 2015), attitudes towards science (Kahan et al., 2012;Shtulman & McCallum, 2014), altruism (Arechar et al., 2017) and smartphone use (Barr et al., 2015), to name a few. ...
This study investigates whether and how analytical thinking, overclaiming, and social approval are associated with the intention of sharing fake news on social media. To randomize each respondent to a group and treatment and to test of several hypotheses simultaneously, two by two factorial design was used. An online survey ( N = 1160) on Iranian social media revealed that overclaiming and social approval are positively related to sharing fake news on social media. Surprisingly, analytical thinking yielded no significance. We believe that in order to show more knowledge users tend to share information with high social approval irrespective of their credibility. Although CRT proved no relation with sharing, significant differences among male and female users were found. The proven relation between sharing more and overclaiming more reveals a marketing opportunity. Gamification of communication which provides a vehicle for users to overclaim their knowledge to their peers on social media might be a suitable strategy on social media to spread the message.
... It is also worth noting that evidence is accumulating suggesting technology use has an impact on memory and cognitive development, as people appear to outsource not only their memory and information storage but also their thinking to digital devices [5]. Critical thinking and the ability to participate positively and competently in the digital environment have thus become more important than ever for positive digital transitions. ...
Higher education institutions are facing increasing challenges in adapting to changing capabilities brought on by technology improvements, increasing technological interconnection, worldwide market expansion, mobility and migration, and workplace diversity. The paper deciphers significant initiatives at the European Union level with regard to digital readiness as well as summarizes the state of play for Romania's higher education sector in the context of current challenges posed by the development of digital skills. The results fill in the knowledge gap by systematically analysing the country's performance indicators that chart the progress toward green and digital transition.
... Internet behavior affects cognition as it encourages superficial processing of information, increases individuals' self-beliefs about their knowledge, and transforms how individuals remember their personal lives and social interactions [33]. For example, accessing information on the internet creates habituation, even when individuals are looking for answers to straightforward questions that they did not need the internet for to begin with [36]. ...
Digitalization is a critical area for entrepreneurs. However, the context of poverty is still under researched. To address this gap, our study will present a multi-level perspective, including individual- and firm-level concepts such as digital literacy and absorptive capacity as well as ecosystem views on how digitalization intersects with poverty entrepreneurship. This is followed by a discussion of future research avenues.
... What human-performed tasks and functions will be needed and sought-after in this future? To what extent will humans offload thinking to devices and systems (e.g., Barr et al. 2015)? Where, as individuals, will we find our 'competitive advantage' in the new world of work? ...
This chapter focuses on the role and value of not knowing for creativity, learning and development. More specifically, it proposes a typology of states that are conducive, in different ways, for creative learning, including certain knowing, uncertain not knowing, uncertain knowing, and certain not knowing. They are discussed, in turn, in relation to four associated experiences: trust, anxiety, curiosity and wonder, respectively. Towards the end, two models are proposed that specify how and when these experiences contribute to the process of creative learning. The first is focused on macro stages, the second on micro processes. While the former starts from uncertain not knowing, goes through the interplay between uncertain knowing and certain not knowing, and ends in certain knowledge, the processual model reveals the intricate relations between these experiences in each and every instance of creative learning. The developmental and educational implications of revaluing not knowing as a generate state are discussed in the end.KeywordsUncertaintyKnowledgeAnxietyTrustCuriosityWonderCreative learning
... Internet behavior affects cognition as it encourages superficial processing of information, increases individuals' self-beliefs about their knowledge, and transforms how individuals remember their personal lives and social interactions [33]. For example, accessing information on the internet creates habituation, even when individuals are looking for answers to straightforward questions that they did not need the internet for to begin with [36]. ...
... Nevertheless, past research is also restricted in several aspects. For example, many studies have focused on well-being, satisfaction with life, loneliness, and depression, but not other constructs, such as fundamental cognitive abilities and skills (e.g., intelligence, information processing, spatial perception, etc.; for exceptions, see Barr et al., 2015;Minear et al., 2013;Takeuchi et al., 2018;Walsh et al., 2020). ...
In adolescence, smartphone use in general and social media use in particular has often been associated with negative effects, such as higher anxiety levels and body dissatisfaction. Other outcomes – such as fundamental cognitive abilities and skills (e.g., intelligence, information processing, spatial perception) – have rarely been the focus of research. Here, we analysed data from a large sample of adolescents (12–16 years; N > 12,000) who performed a series of psychometric tests ranging from intelligence, spatial perception, and information processing, to practical numeracy, and compared their test results with their social media usage (average active and passive time per day, problematic social media use). We additionally applied a random-forest model approach, useful for designs with many predictors and expected small effect sizes. Almost all associations did not outperform known age- and sex-differences on social media use; that is, effect sizes were small-to-tiny and had low importance in the random-forest analyses compared to dominant demographic effects. Negative effects of social media use may have been overstated in past research, at least in samples with adolescents.
... Furthermore, according to the dual-process theories in social, personality, and cognitive psychology, when the audiences use media to obtain news and think about information, generally, they are more likely to use the intuitive system [62,63], and they are not willing to distinguish news critically, but rely on their own intuition [64]. If there is no contradiction between news and the basic cognition of (some or all) respondents, they will use their intuitive system to think about the news and information; otherwise, they will use the rational system. ...
A study of the relationships between the image of a country and media use is one of the most appropriate methods to gain knowledge on various stakeholders’ different perceptions of the country’s sustainability. Through an online survey of China’s post-90s generation, this paper first studies the respondents’ domestic image of China (including social, political, economic, and cultural images), second, their media use behaviors, and third, the relationships between their perceptions of China’s image and their behaviors. Based on the CFA model, with 16 items obtained from the survey data, the results of the empirical analysis indicated that China’s domestic image, as well as its political, economic, and cultural images, were generally neutral for the respondents, while they tended to disagree with the social image. Furthermore, neither traditional media use time nor new media use time of the respondents had any statistically significant influence on their perceptions of China’s image, where the latter was significantly more than the former. However, the type of media contact had a significant influence on their perceptions of political image and on their perception of some items concerning economic and cultural images.
... Hasil ini mengisyaratkan bahwa peningkatan harga diri kognitif setelah menggunakan Google tidak hanya dari umpan balik positif yang datang dari memberikan jawaban benar. Sebaliknya, penggunaan Google memberi orang perasaan bahwa internet telah menjadi bagian dari perangkat kognitif mereka [2], [6], [7]. Dalam sebuah penelitian yang mencoba mengeksploitasi bagaimana internet dapat mengubah cara orang menangani informasi. ...
Riding on the wings of digital technology and the internet, the way knowledge is recorded, distributed, communicated, and constructed has fundamentally reshaped how education is conducted. This innovation has changed our notion of education in that now education is not confined to its physical form and location, but can take place virtually anytime and anywhere across geographical and time difference barriers. A variety of emerging technologies, for example, simulations, augmented/virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI), and learning analytics, are developing rapidly and promise another transformation of teaching and learning to a whole new level. Yet, while we are enjoying the benefits brought by these technologies in modernizing education, it is important for us to keep in mind that technology is not a panacea for solving all the problems in education, as we have seen a number of empty promises in the past. To avoid being overly naive or blindsided, it is important for us to critically examine possible hidden tradeoffs behind the promises of technology-based education so that we can maximize the positive effects of educational technology on student learning. This chapter will discuss seven possible tradeoffs and cautions for employing technology-based learning from cognitive, social, and pedagogical perspectives.KeywordsTechnology-based learningTradeoffs and cautionsDigital educationProblem-solving
Excessive credit card use has been a serious concern across the world since the introduction of the payment method. In South Korea, credit card companies and the government collaborated on a behavioral intervention, the transaction reminder service, to help consumers better manage their credit. Credit card transactions trigger text message confirmations sent to users’ mobile phones, increasing the salience and memory of expenses and resulting in more controlled spending. Experimenting in an institutional setting in which one group receives reminders and the other does not, the authors combined difference-in-differences methodology with inverse probability treatment weighting to assimilate random assignment. The empirical findings show that this intervention counterintuitively brings an overall increase in spending. This increase is substantial among those who had been light to medium spenders before the implementation, whereas historically high spenders experience little to no change after receiving the transaction reminders. The results are consistent with a theory that users reallocate the mental effort of remembering their past spending (mental recordkeeping) to digital devices, leading to higher spending due to poor recall. These findings attest to the value of evaluating a policy before scaling it broadly.
Reconhecendo os efeitos significativos das Novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (NTICs), o trabalho relata a experiência de um grupo de reflexão sobre a seguinte questão: a utilização de tecnologias de modo massivo e pervasivo na vida e, consequentemente, na saúde, merece conceito próprio para destaque analítico e sociopolítico? Por meio da sistematização de experiências de Holliday (2006), o grupo propõe o conceito de Determinantes Digitais da Saúde (DDS) por entender a necessidade de evidenciar com mais força a ação das NTICs na produção da saúde — tanto do ponto de vista epistemológico, quanto do sociopolítico. Com a sugestão do conceito de DDS, exortamos a comunidade acadêmica a um debate mais específico sobre as consequências das NTICs na vida contemporânea para a orientação de ações capazes de mitigar os efeitos negativos e potencializar os benefícios das novas tecnologias na saúde.
Internet search engines boast material features (e.g., Google’s knowledge panels, Featured Snippets) that increase the speed with which users find answers to search queries—while reducing their effort—to create a seamless media experience. Yet, the ability to instantaneously retrieve answers through seamless digital search may come at a metacognitive cost. This experiment examines the effect of digital search fluency on internal (in the “brain”) knowledge confidence. In a question-answering task, participants report higher ratings of internal knowledge confidence accompanying immediate access to Featured Snippets than those with delayed or no access to Featured Snippets. The effects of immediate information access on knowledge confidence not only occur for specific topics for which relevant information has been retrieved but also for topics irrelevant to the retrieved information. When people have immediate access to explanations through features that enhance access to information, external retrieval fluency may serve as a heuristic for internal knowledge confidence. Search engines that contribute to the immediate retrieval of external information may inadvertently strain Internet users’ ability to distinguish between mind and machine as the source of their knowledge.
The link between civilization and technology has long been a hotspot of research around the world. Mobile phone addiction has become a common social phenomenon with advances in society and technology, wreaking havoc on people's emotional health, physical fitness, and personal connections. Considering the positive effects of mindfulness, this study used the diary method to explore the relationship between mindfulness and mobile phone addiction based on the mindfulness reperceiving model. We conducted a 14-day diary study among 198 Chinese youth participants. The results showed that there was a circular argument relationship between mindfulness and mobile phone addiction: mindfulness of the previous day could significantly negatively predict mobile phone addiction of the following day, and vice versa. These results, based on the mindfulness reperceiving model, effectively extend theories and profoundly reveal the circular argument relationship between mindfulness and mobile phone addiction. Besides, it also provides new thought for the mechanism of the interrelationship between mindfulness and mobile phone addiction, as an important theoretical support for the intervention of mobile phone addiction from the perspective of mindfulness.
Finding meaning in life (MIL) is one of the central motivations of human life. MIL significantly contributes to the optimal growth of human potential and overall well-being. Baumeister (1991) proposed that four needs: purpose, values, efficacy, and self-worth; shape individuals' quest for MIL. Scholars have suggested that social belongingness and social connection play a significant role in creating MIL. Moreover, social groups play an essential role in satisfying the four needs of MIL. The relationship between humans and technology, such as smartphones, has become intimate. Smartphones have become an integral and inseparable part of humans' life. Smartphones have provided abundant opportunities for constant social connection with family, friends, and diverse social groups. However, the inclusion of smartphones in individuals' lives is 'Janus-faced.' Smartphones provide ample opportunities to build and maintain significant social relationships both in the real and virtual worlds. On the contrary, smartphones tend to overly gratify individuals' pleasure-seeking behaviour and make them addicted to their usage. The study attempts to analyze the intricate relationship between four needs for MIL and perceived smartphone usage. The study considers two aspects of perceived smartphone usage: positive smartphone usage (PSU) and smartphone addiction (SA). A sample of 509 adult participants from India's capital and national capital region responded to questionnaires related to four needs of MIL, PSU, and SA. Data retrieved from this phase was analyzed using product-moment correlation and multiple regression. The analysis of data yielded the following results: (i) purpose was positively associated with PSU, (ii) lower order values were negatively associated with PSU and positively associated with SA; (iii) efficacy was positively associated with PSU and negatively associated with SA; (iv) self-worth was positively associated with both PSU and SA. The results suggested that individuals searching for MIL use their smartphones to build social capital, which provides them mental security, easy access to information , the scope for emotional sharing, and a better image in society. Secondly, the results suggest that helping individuals enhance their efficacy beliefs helps them experience better control of their habits linked with smartphone addiction. Thus, results imply that making people aware of the importance of MIL could help individuals use their smartphones effectively and help curb the disadvantages of smartphone addiction.
Introduction: The modern educational environment involves the use of various electronic devices generating physical hazards. In addition to the widespread use of these devices, other physical factors of the school environment also affect schoolchildren’s health. However, the impact of the combined exposure to physical factors of various nature on the regulatory systems of the body has been studied insufficiently so far. However, the influence of a complex of physical factors of various nature on the regulatory systems of the body has not been sufficiently studied. Objective: To evaluate the features of the immune and neuroendocrine status of schoolchildren exposed to heterogeneous physical factors of a non-ionizing nature at school and to analyze the relationship between the studied physical factors and changes in the parameters of regulatory systems. Materials and methods: The exposed group included 144 students of a gymnasium from the city of Perm and the unexposed (reference) group consisted of 114 schoolchildren from the town of Kungur, Perm Region. We measured physical factors of the school environment, including noise, artificial illumination, electromagnetic radiation, and air ion concentrations affecting elementary, secondary, and high school students from both groups and compared the results with respective permissible levels. The indicators of immune (CD-phenotyping, phagocytic activity of leukocytes, concentrations of immunoglobulins and cytokines) and neuroendocrine (TSH, free T4, and cortisol) systems were established and compared. Mathematical models were calculated and analyzed in order to find the links between the exposure to physical factors under study and the parameters of the immune and neuroendocrine systems. Results: The indoor air study showed differences in the number and charge of air ions between the gymnasium with its numerous e-learning tools and the school of comparison. The study of the immune and neuroendocrine systems in the exposed group revealed age-related changes in the expression of lymphocyte subpopulations, moderate changes in humoral and phagocytic parameters, an imbalance in the expression of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines and hormones. The construction of logistic regression models allowed us to establish the link between the parameters of electromagnetic radiation in the school environment and changes in the immune status of students (CD19+ and CD3+CD8+ lymphocytes). Conclusion: The study demonstrated a number of changes in the regulatory systems of schoolchildren associated with the impact of physical factors of the school environment.
El proyecto de Investigación que se presenta a continuación apunta esencialmente a una revisión sistemática respecto al uso de los Smartphone en el desarrollo de la plasticidad cerebral de los niños con edades comprendidas entre 0 y 6 años. Esta revisión estará compuesta de tres grandes categorías de contenido: Intelectuales, actitudinales y conductuales, cada una de las cuales está conformado por un número determinado de Habilidades, las cuales serán expresadas según las distintas revisiones sistemáticas, incluyendo literatura gris, las que darán base y fundamentos teóricos y prácticos que permitirían la deducción de nuevas investigaciones.
This research investigated the relationship between smartphone addiction (SA) and autism quotient, considering the indirect effect of theory of mind (ToM). This research successfully recruited 399 smartphone users to complete self-reported measures for SA, ToM, and autism quotient. Initial results with Pearson's correlation revealed a significant negative relationship between excessive smartphone use and ToM. A significant negative correlation was observed between ToM and the gauged autism quotient. However, the measured SA did not correlate significantly with the autism quotient. From the path analysis, the measured SA did not predict autism quotient and ToM significantly, whereas the measured ToM significantly predicted autism quotient. The negative relationship supports that individuals with established ToM are less likely to develop characteristics of autism. The estimated indirect effect was not significant, implying that ToM did not mediate the direct effect of SA on autism quotient. Implications and limitations are further discussed in this manuscript.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the issues that relate to the under representation of women in leadership roles in high-tech companies. This is a broad issue that covers the development and education of young woman in the field of technology, the issues that related to difficulties in selection, promotion, and finally, retention issues. To help structure the chapter the authors use Schneider's Attraction-Selection-Attrition Theory introduced in the seminal article “The People Make the Place” to examine the facets of this issue. The authors conclude with recommendations to improve representation of women in STEM technology.
With more than 60% of the world’s population online, how does our rapidly evolving digital world impact creative processes and outcomes? On the one hand, there is the promise of the shared knowledge and ideas of humanity, readily available at our fingertips, providing numerous starting points from which to develop new ideas. On the other hand, we may be overwhelmed by the volume of information, struggle to find and identify quality information to form the basis of a creative thinking process, and instead fall back on common, accepted ideas. Throughout this article, we place creators and creating in the ubiquitous situated context of searching the World Wide Web (i.e., the Web) and consider the implications for a range of everyday creative thinking processes. Research in this area is surprisingly limited, and a number of suggestions are made to take this area forward as the Web becomes an ever-expanding part of our cognitive ecology.
The transfer of knowledge and inventions from universities to society has a twofold objective: the business community should be advanced by innovations, and society should benefit. Economic success is relatively easy to measure (e.g., increased sales), but social benefits are not. Thus, we presented a matrix of 10 principles for the assessment of the social value of technologies. With this understanding, technology transfer processes can be designed to lead to products and services that are more valuable in a holistic sense. The application of these 10 principles is explained by considering the examples of three distinct technologies and markets: smartphones, genetically modified agricultural crops, and artificial intelligence.
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution rapidly changes how people live, work, and connect, and as the realities of the Anthropocene and a planet irrevocably marked by human activity come to impact all aspects of existence on Earth, our species faces great uncertainty. Social, economic, and environmental challenges, primarily of our own doing, pose grave risks with no certainties as to their resolution. In a world awash with rapid transformation, higher education has not kept pace with emergent needs. In order that higher education may help us survive, it must undergo evolution and transformation to suit the uncertainty of the Anthropocene. This chapter offers several preliminary recommendations for this endeavour. The higher education of tomorrow should be more flexible, creative, focused on critical skills, leverage constructivist pedagogical tactics, and be supported by earlier education that can help prepare students for a transformed higher education and the challenges of this epoch.KeywordsUncertaintyEducationCreativityInnovation
This study directly tests the effect of the "Big Five" personality traits on smartphone ownership and use. Although researchers have tested the impact of personality the use of on communication technology, this is the first study that specifically examines smartphone use. Logistic regression and hierarchical linear regression were used to analyze results from a sample of 312 participants. We found that extraverted individuals were more likely to own a smartphone. Also, extraverts reported a greater importance on the texting function of smartphones. More agreeable individuals place greater importance on using the smartphone to make calls and less importance on texting.
Much research in the last 2 decades has demonstrated that humans deviate from normative models of decision making and rational judgment. In 4 studies involving 954 participants, the authors explored the extent to which measures of cognitive ability and thinking dispositions can predict discrepancies from normative responding on a variety of tasks from the heuristics and biases literature including the selection task, belief bias in the syllogistic reasoning, argument evaluation, base-rate use, covariation detection, hypothesis testing, outcome bias, if-only thinking, knowledge calibration, hindsight bias, and on false consensus paradigm. Significant relationships involving cognitive ability were interpreted as indicating algorithmic level limitations on the computation of the normative response. Relationships with thinking dispositions were interpreted as indicating that styles of epistemic regulation can predict individual differences in performance of these tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A sample of 349 college students completed an argument evaluation test (AET) in which they evaluated arguments concerning real-life situations. A separate regression analysis was conducted for each student predicting his or her evaluations of argument quality from an objective indicator of argument quality and the strength of his or her prior beliefs about the target propositions. The beta weight for objective argument quality was interpreted in this analysis as an indicator of the ability to evaluate objective argument quality independent of prior belief. Individual differences in this index were reliably linked to individual differences in cognitive ability and actively open-minded thinking dispositions. Further, actively openminded thinking predicted variance in AET performance even after individual differences in cognitive ability had been partialled out. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
While individual differences in the willingness and ability to engage analytic processing have long informed research in reasoning and decision making, the implications of such differences have not yet had a strong influence in other domains of psychological research. We claim that analytic thinking is not limited to problems that have a normative basis and, as an extension of this, predict that individual differences in analytic thinking will be influential in determining beliefs and values. Along with assessments of cognitive ability and style, religious beliefs, and moral values, participants judged the wrongness of acts considered disgusting and conventionally immoral, but that do not violate care- or fairness-based moral principles. Differences in willingness to engage analytic thinking predicted reduced judgements of wrongness, independent of demographics, political ideology, religiosity, and moral values. Further, we show that those who were higher in cognitive ability were less likely to indicate that purity, patriotism, and respect for traditions and authority are important to their moral thinking. These findings are consistent with a “Reflectionist” view that assumes a role for analytic thought in determining substantive, deeply-held human beliefs and values.
A divide exists in the creativity literature as to whether relatively more or less executive processing is beneficial to creative thinking. To explore this issue, we employ an individual differences perspective informed by dual-process theories (DPTs) in which it is assumed that people vary in the extent to which they rely on autonomous (Type 1) or controlled processing (Type 2). We find that those more willing and/or able to engage Type 2 processing are more likely to successfully make creative connections in tasks requiring the unification of disparate elements and the novelty of generated items, but not in some other indices of creativity, namely, cognitive flexibility and fluency. Implications for the role of executive processing in creative thinking are discussed in the context of DPTs. We situate the ability to make remote connections alongside other advanced higher order thinking capabilities that are unique to humans.
By 2025, when most of today's psychology undergraduates will be in their mid-30s, more than 5 billion people on our planet will be using ultra-broadband, sensor-rich smartphones far beyond the abilities of today's iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries. Although smartphones were not designed for psychological research, they can collect vast amounts of ecologically valid data, easily and quickly, from large global samples. If participants download the right "psych apps," smartphones can record where they are, what they are doing, and what they can see and hear and can run interactive surveys, tests, and experiments through touch screens and wireless connections to nearby screens, headsets, biosensors, and other peripherals. This article reviews previous behavioral research using mobile electronic devices, outlines what smartphones can do now and will be able to do in the near future, explains how a smartphone study could work practically given current technology (e.g., in studying ovulatory cycle effects on women's sexuality), discusses some limitations and challenges of smartphone research, and compares smartphones to other research methods. Smartphone research will require new skills in app development and data analysis and will raise tough new ethical issues, but smartphones could transform psychology even more profoundly than PCs and brain imaging did.
© The Author(s) 2012.
Dual-process and dual-system theories in both cognitive and social psychology have been subjected to a number of recently published criticisms. However, they have been attacked as a category, incorrectly assuming there is a generic version that applies to all. We identify and respond to 5 main lines of argument made by such critics. We agree that some of these arguments have force against some of the theories in the literature but believe them to be overstated. We argue that the dual-processing distinction is supported by much recent evidence in cognitive science. Our preferred theoretical approach is one in which rapid autonomous processes (Type 1) are assumed to yield default responses unless intervened on by distinctive higher order reasoning processes (Type 2). What defines the difference is that Type 2 processing supports hypothetical thinking and load heavily on working memory.
© The Author(s) 2013.
We used a mathematical modeling approach, based on a sample of 2,019 participants, to better understand what the cognitive reflection test (CRT; Frederick In Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19, 25-42, 2005) measures. This test, which is typically completed in less than 10 min, contains three problems and aims to measure the ability or disposition to resist reporting the response that first comes to mind. However, since the test contains three mathematically based problems, it is possible that the test only measures mathematical abilities, and not cognitive reflection. We found that the models that included an inhibition parameter (i.e., the probability of inhibiting an intuitive response), as well as a mathematical parameter (i.e., the probability of using an adequate mathematical procedure), fitted the data better than a model that only included a mathematical parameter. We also found that the inhibition parameter in males is best explained by both rational thinking ability and the disposition toward actively open-minded thinking, whereas in females this parameter was better explained by rational thinking only. With these findings, this study contributes to the understanding of the processes involved in solving the CRT, and will be particularly useful for researchers who are considering using this test in their research.
Although widely studied in other domains, relatively little is known about the metacognitive processes that monitor and control behaviour during reasoning and decision-making. In this paper, we examined the conditions under which two fluency cues are used to monitor initial reasoning: answer fluency, or the speed with which the initial, intuitive answer is produced (Thompson, Prowse Turner, & Pennycook, 2011), and perceptual fluency, or the ease with which problems can be read (Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre, 2007). The first two experiments demonstrated that answer fluency reliably predicted Feeling of Rightness (FOR) judgments to conditional inferences and base rate problems, which subsequently predicted the amount of deliberate processing as measured by thinking time and answer changes; answer fluency also predicted retrospective confidence judgments (Experiment 3b). Moreover, the effect of answer fluency on reasoning was independent from the effect of perceptual fluency, establishing that these are empirically independent constructs. In five experiments with a variety of reasoning problems similar to those of Alter et al. (2007), we found no effect of perceptual fluency on FOR, retrospective confidence or accuracy; however, we did observe that participants spent more time thinking about hard to read stimuli, although this additional time did not result in answer changes. In our final two experiments, we found that perceptual disfluency increased accuracy on the CRT (Frederick, 2005), but only amongst participants of high cognitive ability. As Alter et al.'s samples were gathered from prestigious universities, collectively, the data to this point suggest that perceptual fluency prompts additional processing in general, but this processing may results in higher accuracy only for the most cognitively able.
An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting (i.e., unbelieving) supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagement (attendance at religious services, praying, etc.), conventional religious beliefs (heaven, miracles, etc.) and paranormal beliefs (extrasensory perception, levitation, etc.) with performance measures of cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. An analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both religious and paranormal beliefs when controlling for cognitive ability as well as religious engagement, sex, age, political ideology, and education. Participants more willing to engage in analytic reasoning were less likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. Further, an association between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement was mediated by religious beliefs, suggesting that an analytic cognitive style negatively affects religious engagement via lower acceptance of conventional religious beliefs. Results for types of God belief indicate that the association between an analytic cognitive style and God beliefs is more nuanced than mere acceptance and rejection, but also includes adopting less conventional God beliefs, such as Pantheism or Deism. Our data are consistent with the idea that two people who share the same cognitive ability, education, political ideology, sex, age and level of religious engagement can acquire very different sets of beliefs about the world if they differ in their propensity to think analytically.
Distinctions have been proposed between systems of reasoning for centuries.
This article distills properties shared by many of these distinctions
and characterizes the resulting systems in light of recent findings
and theoretical developments. One system is associative because its
computations reflect similarity structure and relations of temporal
contiguity. The other is "rule based" because it operates on symbolic
structures that have logical content and variables and because its
computations have the properties that are normally assigned to rules.
The systems serve complementary functions and can simultaneously
generate different solutions to a reasoning problem. The rule-based
system can suppress the associative system but not completely inhibit
it. The article reviews evidence in favor of the distinction and
its characterization.
The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005) is designed to measure the tendency to override a prepotent response alternative that is incorrect and to engage in further reflection that leads to the correct response. In this study, we showed that the CRT is a more potent predictor of performance on a wide sample of tasks from the heuristics-and-biases literature than measures of cognitive ability, thinking dispositions, and executive functioning. Although the CRT has a substantial correlation with cognitive ability, a series of regression analyses indicated that the CRT was a unique predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks. It accounted for substantial additional variance after the other measures of individual differences had been statistically controlled. We conjecture that this is because neither intelligence tests nor measures of executive functioning assess the tendency toward miserly processing in the way that the CRT does. We argue that the CRT is a particularly potent measure of the tendency toward miserly processing because it is a performance measure rather than a self-report measure.
Little is known about the influence of electronic media use on the academic and social lives of university students. Using time-diary and survey data, we explore the use of various types of electronic media among first-year students. Time-diary results suggest that the majority of students use electronic media to multitask. Robust regression results indicate a negative relationship between the use of various types of electronic media and first-semester grades. In addition, we find a positive association between social-networking-site use, cellular-phone communication, and face-to-face social interaction.
This article reports the development, validation, and correlates of a self-report measure of boredom proneness. The 28-item Boredom Proneness (BP) Scale demonstrates satisfactory levels of internal consistency (coefficient alpha = .79) and test-retest reliability (r = .83) over a 1-week interval. Evidence of validity for the BP is supported by correlations with other boredom measures and from a set of studies evaluating interest and attention in the classroom. Other hypothesized relationships with boredom were tested, with significant positive associations found with depression, hopelessness, perceived effort, loneliness, and amotivational orientation. Additional findings indicate boredom proneness to be negatively related to life satisfaction and autonomy orientation. The relationship of boredom to other affective states is discussed, and directions for future research are outlined.
Critics of intelligence tests-writers such as Robert Sternberg, Howard Gardner, and Daniel Goleman-have argued in recent years that these tests neglect important qualities such as emotion, empathy, and interpersonal skills. However, such critiques imply that though intelligence tests may miss certain key noncognitive areas, they encompass most of what is important in the cognitive domain. In this book, Keith E. Stanovich challenges this widely held assumption. Stanovich shows that IQ tests (or their proxies, such as the SAT) are radically incomplete as measures of cognitive functioning. They fail to assess traits that most people associate with "good thinking," skills such as judgment and decision making. Such cognitive skills are crucial to real-world behavior, affecting the way we plan, evaluate critical evidence, judge risks and probabilities, and make effective decisions. IQ tests fail to assess these skills of rational thought, even though they are measurable cognitive processes. Rational thought is just as important as intelligence, Stanovich argues, and it should be valued as highly as the abilities currently measured on intelligence tests.
Many decisions are based on beliefs concerning the likelihood of uncertain events such as the outcome of an election, the guilt of a defendant, or the future value of the dollar. Occasionally, beliefs concerning uncertain events are expressed in numerical form as odds or subjective probabilities. In general, the heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors. The subjective assessment of probability resembles the subjective assessment of physical quantities such as distance or size. These judgments are all based on data of limited validity, which are processed according to heuristic rules. However, the reliance on this rule leads to systematic errors in the estimation of distance. This chapter describes three heuristics that are employed in making judgments under uncertainty. The first is representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event belongs to a class or event. The second is the availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development, and the third is adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available.
This chapter reviews selected psychological research on human decision making. The classical, rational theory of choice holds that decisions reflect consistent, stable preferences, which are unaffected by logically immaterial changes in context, presentation, or description. In contrast, empirical research has found preferences to be sensitive to logically irrelevant changes in the context of decision, in how options are described, and in how preferences are elicited. Decisions are also swayed by affect and by decisional conflict and are often driven by the reasons that are most accessible at the moment of choice, leading to preference reversals when, for example, different reasons are made accessible. More broadly, decision makers tend to adopt a local" perspective: They accept decisions as described and focus on the most salient attributes, even when a more global" perspective, less influenced by local context and frame, might yield decisions that are less biased by temporary and irrelevant concerns. Future directions and implications for theory and practice are discussed.
College students are more likely to use their cell phones for leisure than for school or work. Because leisure is important for health and well-being, and cell phone use has been associated with mental and physical health, the relationship between cell phone use and leisure should be better understood. This research classified college students into distinct groups based on their cell phone use and personality traits, and then compared each group’s leisure experiences. Methods: A random sample of students (N = 454) completed validated surveys assessing personality (Big 5) and dimensions of the leisure experience (boredom, challenge, distress, awareness). Cell phone use and demographics were also assessed. Results: A cluster analysis produced a valid, three-group solution: a “High Use” group characterized primarily by cell phone use (over 10 h/day), and two Low Use groups (3 h/day) characterized by divergent personalities (extroverted and introverted). ANOVA compared each group’s leisure experiences and found the “Low Use Extrovert” had significantly less boredom, greater preference for challenge, and greater awareness of opportunities and benefits than the other groups (p < .01). The “High Use” group experienced significantly more leisure distress than the other groups (p < .05). Implications for health and well-being are discussed.
When historian Charles Weiner found pages of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's notes, he saw it as a "record" of Feynman's work. Feynman himself, however, insisted that the notes were not a record but the work itself. In Supersizing the Mind, Andy Clark argues that our thinking doesn't happen only in our heads but that "certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body and world." The pen and paper of Feynman's thought are just such feedback loops, physical machinery that shape the flow of thought and enlarge the boundaries of mind. Drawing upon recent work in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer systems, and beyond, Supersizing the Mind offers both a tour of the emerging cognitive landscape and a sustained argument in favor of a conception of mind that is extended rather than "brain- bound." The importance of this new perspective is profound. If our minds themselves can include aspects of our social and physical environments, then the kinds of social and physical environments we create can reconfigure our minds and our capacity for thought and reason.
While functional differences between today’s cell phones and traditional computers are becoming less clear, one difference remains plain – cell phones are almost always on-hand and allow users to connect with an array of services and networks at almost any time and any place. The Pew Center’s Internet and American Life Project suggests that college students are the most rapid adopters of cell phone technology and research is emerging which suggests high frequency cell phone use may be influencing their health and behavior. Thus, we investigated the relationships between total cell phone use (N = 496) and texting (N = 490) on Satisfaction with Life (SWL) in a large sample of college students. It was hypothesized that the relationship would be mediated by Academic Performance (GPA) and anxiety. Two separate path models indicated that the cell phone use and texting models had good overall fit. Cell phone use/texting was negatively related to GPA and positively related to anxiety; in turn, GPA was positively related to SWL while anxiety was negatively related to SWL. These findings add to the debate about student cell phone use, and how increased use may negatively impact academic performance, mental health, and subjective well-being or happiness.
The proliferation and ease of access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as Facebook, text messaging, and instant messaging has resulted in ICT users being presented with more real-time streaming data than ever before. Unfortunately, this has also resulted in individuals increasingly engaging in multitasking as an information management strategy. The purpose of this study was to examine how college students multitask with ICTs and to determine the impacts of this multitasking on their college grade point average (GPA). Using web survey data from a large sample of college students at one university (N = 1839), we found that students reported spending a large amount of time using ICTs on a daily basis. Students reported frequently searching for content not related to courses, using Facebook, emailing, talking on their cell phones, and texting while doing schoolwork. Hierarchical (blocked) linear regression analyses revealed that using Facebook and texting while doing schoolwork were negatively associated with overall college GPA. Engaging in Facebook use or texting while trying to complete schoolwork may tax students' capacity for cognitive processing and preclude deeper learning. Our research indicates that the type and purpose of ICT use matters in terms of the educational impacts of multitasking.
Despite Miller's (1969) now-famous clarion call to "give psychology away" to the general public, scientific psychology has done relatively little to combat festering problems of ideological extremism and both inter- and intragroup conflict. After proposing that ideological extremism is a significant contributor to world conflict and that confirmation bias and several related biases are significant contributors to ideological extremism, we raise a crucial scientific question: Can debiasing the general public against such biases promote human welfare by tempering ideological extremism? We review the knowns and unknowns of debiasing techniques against confirmation bias, examine potential barriers to their real-world efficacy, and delineate future directions for research on debiasing. We argue that research on combating extreme confirmation bias should be among psychological science's most pressing priorities.
© 2009 Association for Psychological Science.
Dual-process theories of cognition are to be found everywhere in psychology although the literatures concerned may contain little or no cross referencing to each other. These theories come under many labels, but at least superficially all seem to be making a similar distinction (see Evans 2008; and Frankish and Evans, this volume). One question addressed in this chapter is that of whether we need to have this great multiplicity of theories, or whether there is one grand unifying dual-process theory that can incorporate them all. The literature already contains dual-system theories which purport to integrate many if not all accounts in this way (see Evans 2003; Stanovich, this volume; Evans and Over 1996; Smith and DeCoster 2000; Stanovich 1999) and one objective is here is to assess the adequacy of such accounts. However, I shall argue that such theories fall into two distinct groups from the viewpoint of the cognitive architecture they imply. There is also a third notion (cognitive styles) which can all too readily be confused with such two-process accounts. In previous reviews of this topic (e.g. Evans 2003), I have followed the fashion started by Stanovich (1999) for referring to System 1 and System 2 processes. I shall not do so in this chapter, except when referring specifically to dual-system theories. Instead I will talk of type 1 and 2 processes, a terminology first used over 30 years ago in the literature on reasoning (Wason and Evans 1975). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Discusses 2 areas--the assessment of human potential and conflict about the Vietnam war--in which the belief that human cognition is sacrosanct and that dysfunction must be explained in noncognitive (i.e., motivational) terms may have led to misunderstanding and counterproductive work. Limitations of ascribing conflicts to motivational rather than cognitive factors are analyzed, and the inadequacy of "conscious judgment" for explaining inter- and intrapersonal problems is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This book represents the first major attempt by any author to provide an integrated account of the evidence for bias in human reasoning across a wide range of disparate psychological literatures. The topics discussed involve both deductive and inductive reasoning as well as statistical judgement and inference. In addition, the author proposes a general theoretical approach to the explanations of bias and considers the practical implications for real world decision making.
The theoretical stance of the book is based on a distinction between preconscious heuristic processes which determine the mental representation of (subjectively) 'relevant' features of the problem content, and subsequent analytic reasoning processes which generate inferences and judgements. Phenomena discussed and interpreted within this framework include feature matching biases in propositional reasoning, confirmation bias, biasing and debiasing effects of knowledge on reasoning, and biases in statistical judgement normally attributed to 'availability' and 'representativeness' heuristics.
In the final chapter, the practical consequences of bias for real life decision making are considered, together with various issues concerning the problem of 'debiasing'. The major approaches discussed are those involving education and training on the one hand, and the development of intelligent software and interactive decision aids on the other. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The
Biological
Universe (Dick 1996) analysed the history of the extraterrestrial life debate, documenting how scientists have assessed the chances of life beyond Earth during the 20th century. Here I propose another option – that we may in fact live in a postbiological universe, one that has evolved beyond flesh and blood intelligence to artificial intelligence that is a product of cultural rather than biological evolution. MacGowan & Ordway (1966), Davies (1995) and Shostak (1998), among others, have broached the subject, but the argument has not been given the attention it is due, nor has it been carried to its logical conclusion. This paper argues for the necessity of long-term thinking when contemplating the problem of intelligence in the universe. It provides arguments for a postbiological universe, based on the likely age and lifetimes of technological civilizations and the overriding importance of cultural evolution as an element of cosmic evolution. And it describes the general nature of a postbiological universe and its implications for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a relatively new website that contains the major elements required to conduct research: an integrated participant compensation system; a large participant pool; and a streamlined process of study design, participant recruitment, and data collection. In this article, we describe and evaluate the potential contributions of MTurk to psychology and other social sciences. Findings indicate that (a) MTurk participants are slightly more demographically diverse than are standard Internet samples and are significantly more diverse than typical American college samples; (b) participation is affected by compensation rate and task length, but participants can still be recruited rapidly and inexpensively; (c) realistic compensation rates do not affect data quality; and (d) the data obtained are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. Overall, MTurk can be used to obtain high-quality data inexpensively and rapidly.
© The Author(s) 2011.
The research reported here was an exploratory study that sought to discover the effects of human individual differences on Web search strategy. These differences consisted of (a) study approaches, (b) cognitive and demographic features, and (c) perceptions of and preferred approaches to Web-based information seeking. Sixty-eight master's students used AltaVista to search for information on three assigned search topics graded in terms of complexity. Five hundred seven search queries were factor analyzed to identify relationships between the individual difference variables and Boolean and best-match search strategies. A number of consistent patterns of relationship were found. As task complexity increased, a number of strategic shifts were also observed on the part of searchers possessing particular combinations of characteristics. A second article (published in this issue of JASIST; Ford, Miller, & Moss, 2005) presents a combined analyses of the data including a series of regression analyses. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
College students use information and communication technologies at much higher levels and in different ways than prior generations. They are also more likely to multitask while using information and communication technologies. However, few studies have examined the impacts of multitasking on educational outcomes among students. This study fills a gap in this area by utilizing a large-sample web- based survey of college student technology usage to examine how instant messaging and multitasking affect perceived educational outcomes. Since multitasking can impede the learning process through a form of information overload, we explore possible predictors of academic impairment due to multi- tasking. Results of this study suggest that college students use instant messaging at high levels, they multitask while using instant messaging, and over half report that instant messaging has had a detri- mental effect on their schoolwork. Higher levels of instant messaging and specific types of multitasking activities are associated with students reporting not getting schoolwork done due to instant messaging. We discuss implications of these findings for researchers studying the social impacts of technology and those in higher education administration.
This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: (i) representativeness,
which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process
B; (ii) availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a
class or the plausibility of a particular development; and (iii) adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical
prediction when a relevant value is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead
to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could
improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty.
Dual Process Theories (DPT) of reasoning posit that judgments are mediated by both fast, automatic processes and more deliberate, analytic ones. A critical, but unanswered question concerns the issue of monitoring and control: When do reasoners rely on the first, intuitive output and when do they engage more effortful thinking? We hypothesised that initial, intuitive answers are accompanied by a metacognitive experience, called the Feeling of Rightness (FOR), which can signal when additional analysis is needed. In separate experiments, reasoners completed one of four tasks: conditional reasoning (N=60), a three-term variant of conditional reasoning (N=48), problems used to measure base rate neglect (N=128), or a syllogistic reasoning task (N=64). For each task, participants were instructed to provide an initial, intuitive response to the problem along with an assessment of the rightness of that answer (FOR). They were then allowed as much time as needed to reconsider their initial answer and provide a final answer. In each experiment, we observed a robust relationship between the FOR and two measures of analytic thinking: low FOR was associated with longer rethinking times and an increased probability of answer change. In turn, FOR judgments were consistently predicted by the fluency with which the initial answer was produced, providing a link to the wider literature on metamemory. These data support a model in which a metacognitive judgment about a first, initial model determines the extent of analytic engagement.
The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can "Google" the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.
Student boredom within the school system has been widely studied and shown to be linked to various negative consequences such as diminished academic achievement, school dissatisfaction and truancy. However, little attention has been given to the issue of boredom within higher education and the current study aims to redress this balance. Two hundred and eleven university students completed questionnaires aimed at assessing contributors, moderators and consequences of their boredom. Results reveal that 59% of students find their lectures boring half the time and 30% find most or all of their lectures to be boring. The consequences of being bored included students missing future lectures and there was also a significant association between level of boredom and grade point average. The most important teaching factor contributing to student boredom is the use of PowerPoint slides, whilst the personality trait Boredom Proneness was the most important factor moderating the experience of boredom. Implications for future research and for teaching staff are outlined.
The idea that we might be robots is no longer the stuff of science fiction; decades of research in evolutionary biology and cognitive science have led many esteemed thinkers and scientists to the conclusion that, following the precepts of universal Darwinism, humans are merely the hosts for two replicators (genes and memes) that have no interest in us except as conduits for replication. Accepting and now forcefully responding to this disturbing idea that precludes the possibilities of morality or free will, among other things, Keith Stanovich here provides the tools for the "robot's rebellion," a program of cognitive reform necessary to advance human interests over the limited interest of the replicators. He shows how concepts of rational thinking from cognitive science interact with the logic of evolution to create opportunities for humans to structure their behavior to serve their own ends. These evaluative activities of the brain, he argues, fulfill the need that we have to ascribe significance to human life. Only by recognizing ourselves as robots, argues Stanovich, can we begin to construct a concept of self based on what is truly singular about humans: that they gain control of their lives in a way unique among life forms on Earthâthrough rational self-determination. "Stanovich offers readers a sweeping tour of theory and research, advancing a programme of 'cognitive reform' that puts human interests first. . . . By making the point that cognition is optimized at the level of genes, not of individuals, Stanovich puts a fresh spin on the familiar claim that people are sometimes woefully irrational. . . . With The Robot's Rebellion, he sets himself apart from unreflective thinkers on both sides of the divide by taking evolutionary accounts of cognition seriously, even as he urges us to improve on what evolution has wrought."âValerie M. Chase, Nature
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the intuitive demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words "just ain't in the head", and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We will advocate an externalism about mind, but one that is in no way grounded in the debatable role of external reference in fixing the contents of our mental states. Rather, we advocate an *active externalism*, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes.
Human thinking is often biased by intuitive beliefs. Inhibition of these tempting beliefs is considered a key component of human thinking, but the process is poorly understood. In the present study we clarify the nature of an inhibition failure and the resulting belief bias by probing the accessibility of cued beliefs after people reasoned. Results indicated that even the poorest reasoners showed an impaired memory access to words that were associated with cued beliefs after solving reasoning problems in which the beliefs conflicted with normative considerations (Experiment 1 and 2). The study further established that the impairment was only temporary in nature (Experiment 3) and did not occur when people were explicitly instructed to give mere intuitive judgments (Experiment 4). Findings present solid evidence for the postulation of an inhibition process and imply that belief bias does not result from a failure to recognize the need to inhibit inappropriate beliefs, but from a failure to complete the inhibition process. This indicates that people are far more logical than hitherto believed.
The purpose of this research is to measure cell phone use among high school adolescents and the factors associated with intensive cell phone use (depressive symptoms, social isolation, drug and alcohol use, school failure, and cell phone dependence). We conducted a cross-sectional survey study of 1,328 adolescents aged 13 to 20 years in nine secondary schools of the Community of Madrid between January to April 2007. The mean age of sample participants was 15.7 years. Almost all (96.5%) had their own cell phone (80.5% had one, and 15.9% had two or more). Some 54.8% take it to school and 46.1% keep it on during class; 41.7% use it intensively. The estimated prevalence of cell phone dependence was 20% (26.1% in females, 13% in males). Intensive cell phone use was associated with female sex, rural school location, good family economy, smoking tobacco, excessive alcohol consumption, depression, cell phone dependence, and school failure. More health education is needed to promote correct and effective cell phone use among adolescents. Factors associated with intensive use and dependence should be considered for possible intervention activities.
The aims of this study were: (1) to examine the prevalence of symptoms of problematic cellular phone use (CPU); (2) to examine the associations between the symptoms of problematic CPU, functional impairment caused by CPU and the characteristics of CPU; (3) to establish the optimal cut-off point of the number of symptoms for functional impairment caused by CPU; and (4) to examine the association between problematic CPU and depression in adolescents. A total of 10,191 adolescent students in Southern Taiwan were recruited into this study. Participants' self-reported symptoms of problematic CPU and functional impairments caused by CPU were collected. The associations of symptoms of problematic CPU with functional impairments and with the characteristics of CPU were examined. The cut-off point of the number of symptoms for functional impairment was also determined. The association between problematic CPU and depression was examined by logistic regression analysis. The results indicated that the symptoms of problematic CPU were prevalent in adolescents. The adolescents who had any one of the symptoms of problematic CPU were more likely to report at least one dimension of functional impairment caused by CPU, called more on cellular phones, sent more text messages, or spent more time and higher fees on CPU. Having four or more symptoms of problematic CPU had the highest potential to differentiate between the adolescents with and without functional impairment caused by CPU. Adolescents who had significant depression were more likely to have four or more symptoms of problematic CPU. The results of this study may provide a basis for detecting symptoms of problematic CPU in adolescents.
Quantitative information about risks and benefits may be meaningful only to patients who have some facility with basic probability and numerical concepts, a construct called numeracy.
To assess the relation between numeracy and the ability to make use of typical risk reduction expressions about the benefit of screening mammography.
Randomized, cross-sectional survey.
A simple random sample of 500 female veterans drawn from a New England registry.
One of four questionnaires, which differed only in how the same information on average risk reduction with mammography was presented.
Numeracy was scored as the total number of correct responses to three simple tasks. Participants estimated their risk for death from breast cancer with and without mammography. Accuracy was judged as each woman's ability to adjust her perceived risk in accordance with the risk reduction data presented.
61% of eligible women completed the questionnaire. The median age of these women was 68 years (range, 27 to 88 years), and 96% were high school graduates. Both accuracy in applying risk reduction information and numeracy were poor (one third of respondents thought that 1000 flips of a fair coin would result in < 300 heads). Accuracy was strongly related to numeracy: The accuracy rate was 5.8% (95% CI, 0.8% to 10.7%) for a numeracy score of 0, 8.9% (CI, 2.5% to 15.3%) for a score of 1, 23.7% (CI, 13.9% to 33.5%) for a score of 2, and 40% (CI, 25.1% to 54.9%) for a score of 3.
Regardless of how information was presented, numeracy was strongly related to accurately gauging the benefit of mammography. More effective formats are needed to communicate quantitative information about risks and benefits.