Academic Delays and the Problem of Multitasking

By Mitchell Liester and Ana Flores

Academic performance dropped significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and students are not bouncing back. A study conducted by the Northwest Evaluation Association looked at test scores of students in grades 3-8 at 6.7 million U.S. public schools and found that current students are advancing slower than students prior to COVID. These students need 4.1 additional months of reading instruction and 4.5 months of math instruction on average to catch up to pre-pandemic levels of achievement.

Online learning increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: Julia Cameron/Pexels

One factor that may have contributed to students’ academic deficits during the pandemic was a shift from in-person to online learning. To rapidly adapt to COVID shutdowns, many schools across the country transitioned from classroom teaching to online platforms in an effort to help students continue learning. This strategy was believed to provide a comparable learning experience, but current results show that it was not. But why?

Another factor potentially influencing students’ decline in academic performance is what Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter calls “absent mindedness.” Absent mindedness is a type of forgetting that results from lapses in attention, often from “divided attention” that make it difficult for one to fully process information.

Despite the popularly held belief that we can multitask and perform multiple tasks succinctly and to satisfaction, several studies have shown that we exhibit poor memory and performance when our attention is divided. When asked to perform two tasks simultaneously, people often exhibit poor memory due to insufficient attention when presented with information. This phenomenon is famously illustrated by the Invisible Gorilla Experiment.

The Invisible Gorilla Experiment

The Invisible Gorilla Experiment is a study that was carried out by psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons at Harvard University in 1999. These researchers created a video showing two teams of three people. One team wore white shirts and the other donned black shirts. During the video, each team passed a basketball back and forth exclusively within their own team. Study participants were asked to watch the video and count how many times the basketball was passed between members of the white team while ignoring passes between members of the black team. Simultaneously, a man dressed in a gorilla suit walks into the middle of the scene, turns to face the camera, and thumps his chest with his hands 3 times, then walks off the scene about 9 seconds later.

After the video ended, most viewers were able to report fairly accurately how many passes took place between the members of the white team. However, when asked if they saw anything unusual during the video, nearly half reported they did not. When asked if they saw a gorilla, many responded with confusion or surprise. When the tape was rewound and shown again, the participants were shocked to have missed the gorilla.

Because their attention was focused on counting the number of ball passes, many were not aware of seeing the gorilla and information about the gorilla did not get encoded in their memory. This experiment illustrates that when our attention is focused on one task, we often fail to recognize other information in our environment or encode it in our memory.

Cell Phones and Learning

Have you ever had something similar happen while you are playing a game on your cell phone? A study carried out at the University of California San Diego found that college students spent significantly more time on screens and phones during the pandemic. But does screen time impact learning?

At Ohio University, scientists asked students to watch a video lecture to evaluate what they had learned. The researchers found that students who were not using their cell phones wrote down 62% more information, took more detailed notes, were able to recall more detailed information from the lecture, and scored a full letter grade and a half higher on a multiple choice test than students who were actively using their cell phones during the lecture.

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Children's use of cell phones may impair academic success.

Source: Antoni Shkraba/Pexels

Further evidence for the negative impact of cell phone use on academic success was provided by a study at the New York Institute of Technology and California State University. Investigators in this study found that students who physically had their cell phones removed from them during class had significantly higher levels of comprehension in the course.

During the pandemic, an increase in online learning and a lack of teacher oversight contributed to higher levels of cellphone use during classes. This was likely a significant factor in impaired learning due to divided attention, which is causing long-lasting learning delays. How much divided attention played a role in impaired learning remains to be determined.

Summary

Although these studies do not prove students were distracted by their cell phones while studying online during the COVID pandemic, they do suggest potential factors that may contribute to impaired learning. These studies also suggest that moving forward, online learning may be more challenging for students who use their cell phones during classes or who are distracted by activities going on around them, wherever they are studying.

Perhaps the Invisible Gorilla study can teach us how to help our students learn more effectively in the future, and encourage teachers and schools to foster an engaging learning environment free of distractions.

Ana Flores

Source: Ana Flores/Used with permission

Ana Flores is a UC Berkeley graduate with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and public health. She currently works as a research associate and focuses on mental health, developmental psychology, and treatment innovation. Ana aims to pursue a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is passionate about exploring new scientific frontiers in mental health research, particularly for adolescents and young adults. Outside of her personal interests, she enjoys reading, drawing, cooking, and figure skating, which helps her stay balanced and inspired.