Divided Attention In The Classroom

As a student I have many opportunities to observe attention. Whether I am observing myself slowly lose my ability to focus on my instructors or observing a fellow student staring blankly into space while the instruction continues to give their lecture. While it would be nice to be able to give 100% of my attention to my instructors’ lectures, it is impossible to do so because attention is limited in both time and capacity. There is also an observable difference in students that engage in selective attention and divided attention. Student that are looking at the instructor and not having their attention distracted are using selective attention to focus on the message from the instructor and not on everything else. Other students can be seen glancing at the instructor, then looking at their cell phone, then looking around the room, and then back to the instructor. …show more content…
If divided attention in the class room is similar to divided attention while driving and texting (Strayer and Johnston, 2001), then it’s plausible that distractions during a lecture lead to worse performance in the class. While I cannot speak for all students, I find that after a lecture where I was not using selective attention to focus only on the instructor’s message, I have a harder time recalling and remembering the important details of the lecture. This is most likely explained by the understanding that texting, looking at other objects in the class room, and talking to a peer uses up cognitive resources that would otherwise be used to remember the details of the