Messages, status updates, emails, news… At all hours we are exposed to a constant bombardment of information that adds to the stimuli of the analog world to take us away from whatever we are doing and attract our attention.
On WhatsApp alone we send an average of 145 messages a day, according to a recent study carried out at Bar-Ilan University. And 30.2% of people review them in less than a minute while 50.3% read them at some point during the next five minutes. So it’s no wonder our resistance to interference is plummeting. And it’s not good news.
What is resistance to interference?
Resistance to interference is a particularly valuable cognitive ability that lies at the heart of our intellectual activity, although we are often not fully aware of its importance and even underestimate it.
Basically, it is the ability to ignore or overcome distractions, stimuli or irrelevant data while we focus on a task or solve a problem. In fact, it is what allows us to block out the useless and stay focused on what we are doing, making it an essential pillar of attention, working memory and thinking.
What happens when we are unable to ignore irrelevant stimuli?
Losing resistance to interference causes a series of problems that prevent us from functioning adaptively in everyday life:
1. Difficulties concentrating. If you are not able to ignore irrelevant stimuli in the environment, your attention will wander and you will have a hard time concentrating on more complex or time-consuming tasks.
2. Memory failures. Concentration problems inevitably lead to forgetfulness and memory lapses. If you don’t pay attention, you can’t retain the information and, therefore, you won’t be able to retrieve that data when you need it.
3. Disintegrated thinking. If you cannot concentrate or retain information properly, you will have a hard time thinking clearly. In fact, resistance to interference creates a kind of brain fog since your mind is everywhere but where you need it to be.
In the long run, these problems end up generating other difficulties that will reduce your well-being and quality of life. When you are unable to filter and block irrelevant stimuli, you have a harder time understanding information and are likely to overlook important details.
This can generate considerable cognitive overload, which manifests itself as a feeling of fatigue or intellectual exhaustion. You may feel overwhelmed and the simple act of thinking may take a lot of effort.
This state of mental fog will end up pushing you to make bad decisions since you will not pay enough attention to the decisive factors. It may also make you fall into a state of apathy and demotivation, generated precisely by the overload of stimuli to which you are subjecting your brain.
In fact, a study carried out at the Leibniz Research Center for Working Environment and Human Factors found that, indeed, brain activity suffers both from interruptions (stimuli that interfere with a task but to which we must respond) and from distractions (the stimuli that we can ignore, but to which we end up paying attention).
Both situations have a negative impact on our performance, particularly on tasks that require the intervention of short-term memory, because they force our brain to continually reorganize its resources to respond to stimuli coming from everywhere. In practice, it’s as if your brain is constantly putting out fires here and there.
If you spend a large part of the day in that mental state, it is difficult for you to have academic success, manage to carry out a professional project or even enjoy daily life since your mind is trapped in a network of stimuli that are inconsequential to your life goals or that prevent you from enjoying the present moment.
How to know your level of resistance to interference?
Nowadays, if you are a person who can concentrate on your tasks for at least an hour, without being distracted by external stimuli, you have an acceptable level of resistance to interference.
However, there are different tests to measure our resistance to interference, one of the best known and most used is the Stroop test. Also called the Colors and Words Test, it evaluates the ability to inhibit an automatic response and choose the correct information.
Analyzes selective attention, inhibitory control and the ability to stop the interference generated by automatisms. It is a very simple test, the core of which consists of reading words that designate a color – but written in a different color than the one they express – so you have to inhibit the automatic reading response to be able to correctly designate the color with which the words are written. That is, you have to say the color of the word, not read it. For example, the first answer would be “blue,” not red, and so on.
This test not only analyzes the errors made, which are classified as a failure in resistance to interference, but also the time it takes to complete it because the more difficult it is for us to repress automatic responses, the more likely it is that we will succumb to the irrelevant stimuli in everyday life.
How to develop resistance to interference?
Resistance to interference is a skill that evolves throughout childhood and is fully developed in youth, as proven by a study carried out at the University of Granada. However, today’s world poses many obstacles in the form of distractions, so to develop this capacity we need to take a more proactive and conscious approach.
If we do not do this and succumb to all the stimuli that attract our attention, we will end up losing the ability to concentrate. The good news is that we can develop resistance to interference with very simple exercises:
• Mindfulness meditation. There is nothing like meditation to develop resistance to interference because you will not only have to ignore external stimuli but also the intrusions of your own thinking. Therefore, it acts as a double shield against interruptions.
• Organization techniques. Using personal productivity tools, such as the Pomodoro technique, will help you plan better. You will learn to prioritize and be able to focus your attention on the most relevant tasks for increasingly longer periods of time.
• Technological hygiene. Technology is probably the biggest disruptive element you face in your daily life. Therefore, it is advisable to establish strict rules of use, such as keeping your phone on silent when you want to concentrate or blocking message pop-ups on your computer.
In this way you will be able to recover attention, one of the most underestimated skills, but also the most important for cognitive functioning. As you manage to concentrate for longer periods of time, you will also develop the ability to ignore all irrelevant stimuli and maintain focus. In the long run, you’ll make more progress, make fewer mistakes, get better results and get much less exhausted, so it’s a habit change that’s really worth it.
References:
Knight, S. (2023) How Many Text Messages Are Sent a Day? En: SellCell.
Zickerick, B. et. Al. (2020) Differential Effects of Interruptions and Distractions on Working Memory Processes in an ERP Study. Front. Hum. Neurosci.; 14: 10.3389.
Rosenfeld, A. et. Al. (2018) WhatsApp usage patterns and prediction of demographic characteristics without access to message content. Demographic Research; 39(1): 647-670.
Gómez, C. J. et. Al. (2003) Resistencia a la interferencia durante la recuperación: un estudio evolutivo. Tesis de Diploma: Universidad de Granada.
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