Distracted to Learn? | Psych Central News - 6 views
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It was as if those who were denied the same degree of distraction during testing as they experienced during learning suffered a disadvantage.
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In the end it didn’t seem to matter what the distraction was during recall as long as subjects had had a distraction during learning. Everybody who had been distracted in both learning and recall performed better than those who were distracted while learning but undistracted during recall.
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There just had to be the same degree of distraction at both times.
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Surprising new research may rewrite learning theory as Brown University scientists contend that distractions do not necessarily impede the learning process of a motor task. Investigators discovered that if attention was as divided during recall of a motor task as it was during learning the task, people performed as if there were no distractions at either stage. Thus, the real issue is that inconsistent distraction can impair our recollection of the task. As long as our attention is as divided when we have to recall a motor skill as it was when we learned it, we'll do just fine, say the researchers.