Concentration in daily life and in tests - measured online

Transkript

1 Fakultät Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, Fachrichtung Psychologie, Professur Diagnostik und Intervention Concentration in daily life and in tests - measured online Karl Westhoff, Hagen Flehmig, Anja Scholz Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

2 Overview Meaning of concentration Concentration as a state Concentration as a personality trait Measures of concentration Concentration tests Practice effect in concentration tests Trainability of concentration Concentration in daily life disturbed (CiDL-S) Concentration in daily life undisturbed (CiDL-S) Experienced concentration: disturbed and undisturbed concentration The Online Concentration Test (OCT) Concentration performance: speed and susceptibility to error Experienced concentration and concentration performance Folie 2

3 Meaning of concentration Wide range of ideas about what concentration means in daily life in popular literature regarding concentration tests on the Internet Folie 3

4 Meaning of concentration Concentration is your ability to direct your actions purposefully and to control your performance of those actions. A person is concentrated when they purposefully do what they set out to do and only what they set out to do. Folie 4

5 Meaning of concentration Attention relates to perception, concentration relates to work attention & perception vs. concentration & work Folie 5

6 Meaning of concentration Concentration is a basic precondition for purposeful action, i.e. for intelligent action. Concentration and memory are the prerequisites for intelligence and creativity. Folie 6

7 Concentration as a state Concentration is experienced as a state influenced by 6 groups of conditions/variables: organism variables environmental variables cognitive variables concentration social variables emotional variables motivational variables and by the interaction of these variables Folie 7

8 Concentration as a personality trait People differ systematically regarding their ability to concentrate. A personality trait must... remain constant over time (stability) Concentration remain comparable over time (generality) be characteristic of all humans (universality) Time (years) Folie 8

9 Measures of concentration All concentration tests measure: 1. The speed of concentrated work (e.g. the number of items processed per unit of time) All concentration tests that last 20 minutes or longer can also measure: 2. Susceptibility to concentration errors (percental error rate; E%) Folie 9

10 Concentration tests Concentration tests demand the purposeful processing of cognitively quite easy tasks; they do not require any: particular perceptual or attentional capabilities, particular memory performance or learning efficiency, particular knowledge or skills, acts of intelligence or creativity. Folie 10

11 Practice effect in concentration tests Repeated performance of concentration tests leads to greater practice benefit regarding the speed of concentrated work and also to somewhat fewer concentration errors. These practice benefits last for weeks and months, but disappear again with time (?) if practice is not repeated. Folie 11

12 Trainability of concentration Repeated performance of concentration tests leads to spectacular but trivial learning effects. However, experiments have demonstrated no (!) transfer effects from strike-through concentration tests to arithmetical concentration tests or vice versa. There is no form of concentration training that has proven transfer effects. Folie 12

13 Concentration in daily life disturbed (CiDL-S) 1. My mind tends to wander. 2. When working, I do something different to what I wanted to do. 3. I repeatedly have to work my way back into something from scratch. 4. I do a bit here and a bit there, and just don t seem to get to the point. 5. When working, I ask myself what it was that I wanted to do. 6. When working, I do other things in between. 7. Although I m interested in something, I find myself doing something different to what I originally wanted to do. Folie 13

14 Concentration in daily life disturbed (continued) 08. I read things with my eyes, but I don t actually registering the contents. 09. I lose track of what I m doing. 10. I don t listen properly in conversations. 11. I can t work on something for a longer period of time without doing other things in between. 12. I miss out on this and that during discussions. 13. My thoughts tend to stray even while I m doing something that interests me. 14. When working on something interesting, I do something else. Folie 14

15 Concentration in daily life undisturbed (CiDL-S) 1. When I m interested in something, the results are good. 2. When something fascinates me, I can work on it until late at night. 3. When something fascinates me, the work seems to do itself. 4. I work properly on things that interest me. 5. I m good at working my way into things. 6. When I m working, I can switch off from other things. 7. When I m busy with something, I don t notice anything that is going on around me. Folie 15

16 Disturbed Concentration and Flow (CiDL-S) Collected data up to :00Uhr CET - total: N = female: 66% - male: 34% Table 1: CiDL-S Rating Rating Scale Items Minimum Maximum 1 = (almost) never 2 = seldom 3 = sometimes 4 = a good many times 5 = (almost) ever Disturbed Concentration Flow Notes. Rating = level choosen by the subject; Items = sum of all questions; Minimum = theoretical minimum score; Maximum = theoretical maximum score. Folie 16

17 CiDL-S Disturbed Concentration and Flow p <.05 p <.05 (n = 246) (n = 226) (n = 221) (n = 351) (n = 294) (n = 274) (n =79) Age grouped Folie 17

18 Retest-Reliability of CiDL-S Retest-reliability of the CiDL-S scales (n = 233) Disturbed concentration: 14 items Flow: 7 items Retest interval - Average: 9 days - Range: one minute to 171 days Folie 18

19 Disturbed Concentration and Flow N = female: 66% - male: 34% Folie 19

20 The Online-Concentration-Test (OCT) Keys A S D Keys L Ö Ä Task: press the key on the side with the higher value Instructions: work as fast and as accurately as possible Folie 20

21 The Online-Concentration-Test (OCT) Tasten A S D Tasten L Ö Ä Task: press the key on the side with the higher value Instructions: work as fast and as accurately as possible Folie 21

22 The Online-Concentration-Test (OCT) Tasten A S D Tasten L Ö Ä Task: press the key on the side with the higher value Instructions: work as fast and as accurately as possible Folie 22

23 The Online-Concentration-Test (OCT) Tasten A S D Tasten L Ö Ä Task: press the key on the side with the higher value Instructions: work as fast and as accurately as possible Folie 23

24 The Online-Concentration-Test (OCT) Gender: - female OCT = 60% - male OCT = 40% Occupations (examples): - Builders - Schoolchildren - Apprentices - Winegrowers - Office cleaners - Police - Administration clerks - Construction mechanics - Plumbers - Community service workers - Industrial engineers - Social service volunteers - Teachers - Secretaries -... Folie 24

25 The Online-Concentration-Test (OCT) Table 2 N = 3089 Times of administration OCT-S OCT-L Notes. Data of subjects with more than 15 % errors were discarded. Folie 25

26 Concentration: Mean Reaction Time n = 170 n = 29 n = 295 n = 304 n = 315 n = 390 n = 315 n = 112 n = 10 Mean Reaction Time [ms] n = 291 n = 274 n = 267 n = 350 n = 238 Folie 26

27 Concentration: Error Percentage 5 n = 295 n = 170 n = 29 n = 10 4 n = 304 n = 315 n = 390 n = 315 Error Percentage [%] 3 2 n = 291 n = 274 n = 267 n = 350 n = 112 n = 238 OCT - Short (5 min) 1 OCT - Long (20 min) (p <.05) Folie 27

28 OCT Retest-Reliability Table 2: OCT-Short Retest-Reliability RTM EP RTM EP -.64 Notes. RTM = Mean Reaction Time; EP = Error %; Correlation Spearman rho (n = 148). Tabelle 6: OCT-Long Retest-Reliability RTM EP RTM EP -.69 Notes. RTM = Mean Reaction Time; EP = Error %; Correlation Spearman rho (n = 107). Folie 28

29 Concentration, self rated and performance Table 3: Correlations between CIDL-S and OCT Disturbed Concentration Flow OCT-Short RTM E% OCT-Long RTM E% Notes. n = 507; OCT = Online-Concentration-Test; EP = Error %; Correlations = Spearman Rho. Folie 29

30 Discussion Experienced concentration and concentration performance can be reliably and validly measured online, and are comparable to lab research results No correlation of subjective concentration and concentration performance However: in chronic pain patients subjective concentration correlates with percentage of concentration errors (Berg et al. 2009) Disturbed concentration items are mostly forgotten intentions! Folie 30

31 Thank you for listening with such intense concentration! Folie 31

32 Literature Berg, A., Oster, K., Janig, H., Likar, R., Pipam, W., Scholz, A. & Westhoff,K. (2009). Objective measurement of chronic pain by a complex concentration test. Review of Psychology, 16, Flehmig, H. C., Steinborn, M. B., Langner, R., Scholz, A., & Westhoff, K. (2007). Assessing intraindividual variability in sustained attention: Reliability, relation to speed and accuracy, and practice effects. Psychology Science, 49, Kaschel, R. (2009). Ginkgo biloba: specificity of neuropsychological improvement a selective review in search of differential effects. Human Psychopharmacology, 24, Salthouse, T. A., Berish, D. E. & Siedlecki, K. L. (2004). Construct validity and age sensitivity of prospective memory. Memory and Cognition, 32, Steinborn, M. B., Flehmig, H. C., Westhoff, K., & Langner, R. (2009). Differential effects of prolonged work on performance measures in self-paced speed tests. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 5, Westhoff, K. & Hagemeister, C. (2005). Konzentrationsdiagnostik. Lengerich: Pabst. Folie 32