Distraction Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

- by
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- Psychology, Distraction

Undisputedly, traffic crashes constitute a public health concern whose impact and importance have been increasing during the past few decades. Specifically, road safety data have systematically shown how cyclists are highly vulnerable to suffering traffic crashes and severe injuries derived from them. Furthermore, although the empirical evidence is still very limited in this regard, in addition to other human factors involved in cycling crashes, distractions while cycling appear to be a major contributor to the road risk of cyclists. The main objectives of this study were, first, to explore the prevalence and trends of cycling distractions within an international sample of bike users, and second, to determine the influence of such distractions on road crashes suffered by cyclists, simultaneously considering the explanatory role of risky behaviors (errors and traffic violations) as potentially mediating variables between cycling distractions and traffic crashes. For this cross-sectio...

- by Francisco Alonso
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- Psychology, Road Traffic Crashes, Risky Driving Behaviors, Urban Cycling

Background. Undisputedly, traffic crashes constitute a public health concern whose impact and importance have been increasing during the past few decades. Specifically, road safety data have systematically shown how cyclists are highly vulnerable to suffering traffic crashes and severe injuries derived from them. Furthermore, although the empirical evidence is still very limited in this regard, in addition to other human factors involved in cycling crashes, distractions while cycling appear to be a major contributor to the road risk of cyclists. Objectives. The main objectives of this study were, first, to explore the prevalence and trends of cycling distractions within an international sample of bike users, and second, to determine the influence of such distractions on road crashes suffered by cyclists, simultaneously considering the explanatory role of risky behaviors (errors and traffic violations) as potentially mediating variables between cycling distractions and traffic crashes. Methods. For this cross-sectional study, we analyzed the data obtained from 1,064 cyclists-61.2% male and 38.8% female-from 20 different countries, who answered an on-line questionnaire on cycling-related features, habits, behaviors and accidents. Results. The prevalence of different cycling distractions oscillated between 34.7% and 83.6%. The most common distractions were those related to the behavior of other users, physical elements of the road, weather conditions and phone calls. Age trends and differences were also found, thus establishing a positive association between age and distractibility during cycling. Furthermore, the effect of distractions on traffic crashes of cyclists was significant when tested together with age, risk perception and risky behaviors on the road. Conclusion. The results of this study support the hypotheses that distractions have a major prevalence among bike users, and that they play a significant role in the prediction of the traffic crash rates of cyclists, through the mediation of risky behaviors.

- by Sergio A Useche
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- Psychology, Road Traffic Crashes, Risky Driving Behaviors, Urban Cycling

An experiment (N=123) examined how individuals cognitively process online news stories depicting African-American characters with stereotype-consistent and -inconsistent attributes and whether distracting online advertisements interfere with story processing. Two cognitive control functions, updating and inhibition, were predicted to moderate the effects of distracting ads. Recall of characters’ attributes and overall characters’ description were included in the study as dependent measures. Findings indicated that distracting online ads hinder recall of information about and descriptions of story characters. Inhibition and updating affect dependent measures and moderate the effects of distracting online ads on characters’ descriptions.

Citation: Limniou, M. The Effect of Digital Device Usage on Student Academic Performance: A Case Study.

- by Education Sciences and +1
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- Student Engagement, Social Cognitive Theory, Academic Performance, Multitasking

This essay is about a phenomenon that, paradoxically, both disrupts mind wandering and accounts for its spontaneity: distraction. It is more about one of the mechanisms underlying mind wandering than its phenomenological content. However, following acknowledgements that mind wandering has positive and negative consequences for task fulfilment (Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013), this essay attempts to recuperate distraction, configuring it in terms of ‘drag’ in order to analyse it as more than merely bad or failed listening. Dragging the listener back onto her body, distraction emphasises an indeterminacy that, although covered over by the traction generated by regular and consistent listening, is always already embodied within the materiality of musical sound. This essay is about the impact of distraction upon the listener in the audience and the extent to which distraction forces her to recalibrate her activity as a hybrid of ‘listening despite distraction’ and ‘distracted listening’; a separate essay would be required to consider the quite different ways in which performers deal with distraction.

- by Anthony Gritten
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- Musicology, Psychology of Music, Auditory Perception, Music Psychology

Football penalty kicks are having increasing influence in today’s professional game. Despite this, little scientific evidence currently exists to ascertain the mechanisms behind performance failure in this task and/or the efficacy of training designed to improve penalty shooting. In a football penalty kick it has been reported that the majority of kickers do not look to the area they wish to place the ball; preferring to focus on the ‘keeper and predict anticipatory movements before shooting. Such a strategy seems counterproductive and contradictory to current research findings regarding visually guided aiming. Coordination of eye and limb movements has been shown to be essential for the production of accurate motor responses. A disruption to this coordination not only seems to negatively affect performance, but subsequent motor responses seem to follow direction of gaze. Thus, where the eyes lead actions tend to follow. In study 1, ten participants were asked to kick a standard sized football to alternate corners of a goal, whilst looking centrally and whilst looking where they intended to hit. This disruption of eye-limb coordination brought about a 15% reduction in kicking accuracy. When participants were asked to fixate centrally, their shots hit more centrally (17cm) than when they were allowed to look where they intended to hit. These results were in spite of no significant differences between the number of missed shots, preparation time and ball speed data across conditions. We concluded that centrally focused fixations dragged resultant motor actions inwards towards more central target locations. Put simply, where the eyes looked shots tended to follow. The second study sought to test the predictions of attentional control theory (ACT) in a sporting environment in order to establish how anxiety affects performance in penalty kicks. Fourteen experienced footballers took penalty kicks under low- and high-threat counterbalanced conditions while wearing a gaze registration system. Fixations to target locations (goalkeeper and goal area) were determined using frame-by-frame analysis. When anxious, footballers made faster first fixations and fixated for significantly longer toward the goalkeeper. This disruption in gaze behaviour brought about significant reductions in shooting accuracy, with shots becoming significantly centralized and within the goalkeeper’s reach. These findings support the predictions of ACT, as anxious participants were more likely to focus on the “threatening” goalkeeper, owing to an increased influence of the stimulus-driven attentional control system. A further prediction of ACT is that when anxious, performers are more likely to be distracted, particularly if the distracter is threat related. When facing penalty kicks in football (soccer), goalkeepers frequently incorporate strategies that are designed to distract the kicker. However, no direct empirical evidence exists to ascertain what effect such visual distractions have on the attentional control, and performance, of footballers. In the third study, eighteen experienced footballers took five penalty kicks under counterbalanced conditions of threat (low vs. high) and goalkeeper movement (stationary vs. waving arms) while wearing eye-tracking equipment. Results suggested that participants were more distracted by a moving goalkeeper than a stationary one and struggled to disengage from a moving goalkeeper under situations of high threat. Significantly more penalties were saved on trials when the goalkeeper was moving and shots were also generally hit closer to the goalkeeper (centrally) on these trials. The results provide partial support for the predictions of attentional control theory and implications for kickers and goalkeepers are discussed. The previous studies showed that anxiety can disrupt visual attention, visuomotor control and subsequent shot location in penalty kicks. However, optimal visual attention has been trained in other far aiming skills, improving performance and resistance to pressure. In study 4, we therefore asked a team of ten university soccer players to follow a quiet eye (QE; Vickers, 1996) training program, designed to align gaze with aiming intention to optimal scoring zones, over a seven week period. Performance and gaze parameters were compared to a placebo group (ten players) who received no instruction, but practiced the same number of penalty kicks over the same time frame. Results from a retention test indicated that the QE trained group had more effective visual attentional control; were significantly more accurate; and had 50% fewer shots saved by the goalkeeper than the placebo group. Both groups then competed in a penalty shootout to explore the influence of anxiety on attentional control and shooting accuracy. Under the pressure of the shootout the QE trained group failed to maintain their accuracy advantage, despite maintaining more distal aiming fixations of longer duration. The results therefore provide only partial support for the effectiveness of brief QE training interventions for experienced performers. This series of studies are the first to explore the gaze behaviour of football penalty takers in a quest to uncover and understand anxiety’s negative influence on attentional control and performance. They are also the first to explore the efficacy of goalkeeper distractions and training in improving performance from both the goalkeeper’s and kicker’s perspective. The results of these studies conclude that when anxious, penalty takers show an attentional bias toward the ‘threatening’ goalkeeper that can be increased and utilised by a goalkeeper employing distraction techniques and that penalty takers do benefit, to some extent, from a gaze-based pre-shot routine

- by Greg Wood
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- Cognitive Psychology, Sport Psychology, Sports & Exercise Pychology, Decision Making

Citation: Limniou, M. The Effect of Digital Device Usage on Student Academic Performance: A Case Study.

- by Maria Limniou
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- Psychology, Higher Education, Student Engagement, Social Cognitive Theory

The aim of this investigation was to explore student behaviour when students brought their own digital devices into a lecture theatre. A total of 361 undergraduate psychology students from the University of Liverpool who used at least one digital device during lecture time fully completed an online questionnaire (159 first-, 124 second- and 78 third-year psychology students) during the 2018–2019 academic year. Although all the three years of undergraduate students brought laptops and/or smartphones into a lecture theatre, there was no significant difference in academic performance over the years of studies. The findings have linked student multitasking processes in a lecture theatre to Social Cognitive Theory principles (reciprocal interactions between behaviours, learning environment, and individuals). There was a significant difference between the three years regarding the use of applications and student characteristics after controlling for the different types of devices. Student...

- by Maria Limniou
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- Psychology, Higher Education, Student Engagement, Social Cognitive Theory

Students on business courses at a large London university engaged in a number of activities
while they were studying, doing research, and coursework. Almost all students divided their
attention between studying and other activities such as listening to music, watching TV or
socializing on computers or mobile devices. Men tended to engage both in more activities,
and in more distracting activities. Men were also less accurate in predicting their final marks
and they tended to base their predictions on personality traits or providence, while womens’
more accurate predictions were based either on their past results, or on strategies to achieve
desired marks.

- by Dag Bennett
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- Learning and Teaching, Self-regulation, Predictive Analytics, Distraction

This meta-analysis compared the educational impact of the method of notetaking in the college classroom – hand written or using electronic device. The findings involved 14 studies combining 3,075 participants demonstrated that using electronic notetaking methods reduced measured outcomes (average r = −.142). Using the Binomial Effect Size Display, results indicated a decline of 25% of students scoring below the mean when electronic devices when compared to using handwritten notetaking. The study considers explanations for the decline and makes recommendations about the use of technology for notetaking in the classroom as well as paths for practical and pedagogical implications.

- by Luke LeFebvre
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- Psychology, Instructional Technology, Classroom Management, Handwriting
- by Dan Hassoun
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- Critical Theory, Walter Benjamin, Social Media, Critical Media Studies
- by Rolhensha Henry
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- Social Media, Mobile Phones, University Students, Distraction

Media multitasking has become a contested practice in many college classrooms. Students increasingly split their attentions between lecture and personal media, while educators largely view the new screens as fostering disengaged and distracted forms of conduct. Together, teachers and students have developed a series of strategies governing the proper practice of multitasking during lecture. Using interviews and ethnographic field observations, I examine how these strategies of media use operate within one undergraduate classroom. Drawing from this case study, I argue that multitasking reveals a complex series of negotiations between teachers, students, and their co-present environment. Examining these negotiations provides not only a snapshot of how media attention is practiced within the classroom, but also suggests ways for instructors to respond to the rise of new technologies within their own classes.

- by Dan Hassoun
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- Ethnography, Higher Education, Attention, Cell Phones

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

In this essay we discuss distraction as a key aesthetic vector – both witting and unwitting – of contemporary concert music, and moreover one that places the tangibility of the latter in a persistent feedback relation with broader... more

- by Eldritch Priest
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- Music, Aesthetics, Sound studies, Attention
- by Pierre Thiffault
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- Road safety, Fatigue, Safety Culture, Distraction

There is a widespread view that well-learned skills are automated, and that attention to the performance of these skills is damaging because it disrupts the automatic processes involved in their execution. This idea serves as the basis for an account of choking in high pressure situations. On this view, choking is the result of self-focused attention induced by anxiety. Recent research in sports psychology has produced a significant body of experimental evidence widely interpreted as supporting this account of choking in certain kinds of complex sensorimotor skills. We argue against this interpretation, pointing to problems with both the empirical evidence and the underlying theory. The experimental research fails to provide direct support for the central claims of the self-focus approach, contains inconsistencies, and suffers from problems of ecological validity. In addition, qualitative studies of choking have yielded contrary results. We further argue that in their current forms the self-focus and rival distraction approaches lack the theoretical resources to provide a good theory of choking, and we argue for an expanded approach. Some of the elements that should be in an expanded approach include accounts of the features of pressure situations that influence the psychological response, the processes of situation appraisal, and the ways that attentional control can be overwhelmed, leading to distraction in some cases, and in others, perhaps, to damaging attention to skill execution. We also suggest that choking may sometimes involve performance-impairing mechanisms other than distraction or self-focus.

- by John Sutton and +2
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- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Sport Psychology

When facing penalty kicks in football (soccer), goalkeepers frequently incorporate strategies that are designed to distract the kicker. However, no direct empirical evidence exists to ascertain what effect such visual distractions have on the attentional control, and performance, of footballers. Eighteen experienced footballers took five penalty kicks under counterbalanced conditions of threat (low vs. high) and goalkeeper movement (stationary vs. waving arms) while wearing eye-tracking equipment. Results suggested that participants were more distracted by a moving goalkeeper than a stationary one and struggled to disengage from a moving goalkeeper under situations of high threat. Significantly more penalties were saved on trials when the goalkeeper was moving and shots were also generally hit closer to the goalkeeper (centrally) on these trials. The results provide partial support for the predictions of attentional control theory and implications for kickers and goalkeepers are discussed.

- by Greg Wood
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- Cognitive Psychology, Sport Psychology, Sports & Exercise Pychology, Eye tracking

Distraction is ubiquitous within contemporary Western life, as any study of digital culture and urban society shows. It occupies a complex place, inspiring fear and excitement in equal measure. It is central to all modes of hearing, including musicking; in fact, it is essential. What distracts hearing is the sheer sound of sound: its sonic presence.
In this essay I extrapolate a broadly Heideggerian phenomenology of sonic distraction, based on the four assumptions above. It is an extrapolation rather than a reconstruction, as I am unaware of studies configuring distraction as the centre of Heideggerian phenomenology. I begin unpacking the multiple sensory modalities of being implied in Heidegger’s assertion that “the clearing, the open region, is not only free for brightness and darkness but also for resonance and echo, for sound and the diminishing of sound.” After all, if it is true that “To let unconcealment show itself […] is perhaps the most succinct formulation of the task of Heidegger’s thinking,” then we must unpack all modalities of unconcealment together in order to let being resound and come into presence. In this essay I focus on a single modality: the sonic – the sound of Dasein’s being-towards-death.

- by Anthony Gritten
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- Music, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Phenomenology

Distraction is frequently blamed for interfering with the ergonomic production of capital, for encouraging substandard performance. Indeed, it is frequently configured as an impediment to time keeping, a thorn in the side of consciousness, a drag on intentional action, and a brake on decision making. Reality, however, is complex. While distraction can interfere with timing, anxiety, memory, error, and fatigue, it can also be exploited under controlled conditions to enhance performance by helping the performer to maintain an open cognitive and physical responsiveness to the world and a pragmatic mode of engagement with the task at hand. Indeed, distraction ensures that the performer is in close contact cognitively and socially with the full phenomenological plenitude of sound, thereby contributing to performance’s transformative value as a way of accumulating social capital in everyday life.

- by Anthony Gritten
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- Performance Studies, Performativity, Attention (Psychology), Attention

We examined the effect of background music on reading comprehension. Because the emotional consequences of music listening are affected by changes in tempo and intensity, we manipulated these variables to create four repeated-measures conditions: slow/low, slow/high, fast/low, fast/high. Tempo and intensity manipulations were selected to be psychologically equivalent in magnitude (pilot study 1). In each condition, 25 participants were given four minutes to read a passage, followed by three minutes to answer six multiple-choice questions. Baseline performance was established by having control participants complete the reading task in silence (pilot study 2). A significant tempo by intensity interaction was observed, with comprehension in the fast/high condition falling significantly below baseline. These findings reveal that listening to background instrumental music is most likely to disrupt reading comprehension when the music is fast and loud.

- by Bill Thompson
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- Music, Music Education, Education, Reading

Ambience is often described as a "feeling or mood associated with a particular place, person, or thing." 1 In this sense of the word, ambience has a close affinity with Martin Heidegger's ([1927] 1993) notion of Stimmung-"mood" or "attunement"-and, in particular, with the concept of "atmosphere" as analyzed by Gernot Böhme and others. Atmospheres are what Böhme calls "quasi-objective" phenomena, having both an objective and a subjective side. With explicit reference to Heidegger, Böhme thus defines atmosphere as a "tuned space" and as a set of "undefined, spatially distributed moods" (2001, 47). And at the same time, atmospheres have a "thinglike" (Dinghaftes) character in the sense that every specific atmosphere is "articulated" by things and relations between things "according to their properties" (Böhme 1995, 33). In other words, atmosphere and hence also ambience in this "atmospheric" sense are basically concerned with the complex and subtle ways different things are related in space and the discreet emotions and affections produced in the experience of such relations.

- by Ulrik Schmidt
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- Aesthetics, New Media, Design, Digital Media

Metropolises are common contexts of unevenness and disproportions. In architectural and social theory, writings on the ‘great cities’ introduce a similar imbalance in the definition of the metropolitan psychological condition. The human body, naturally aroused by the subtlest sound or movement, is forced to a blasé mind-set in the midst of the ever-shifting metropolis. This resistance against over stimulation and involuntary body proximity is achieved through intellectual distance; a mental interval between the individual and the crowd, between the individual and the metropolis and between the individual and his own subjectivity. Beyond the blasé is the alienated mind, studied with Georg Simmel’s highly synchronized money metropolis. The research then looks at three modern metropolises, Paris, Berlin and New York through products of their civilization process, namely boulevards, crowds, monuments, exhibitions, neurasthenia, electricity, skyscrapers, or amusements. One finds metropolitan vertigo in instances of subjective asynchronism with the rational modern metropolis.

- by Olivier Jacques
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- Aesthetics, Architecture, Electrophysiology, Walter Benjamin

Mobile technology has quickly become ingrained in society due to the ﬂexibility of anywhere/anytime usage. However, factors associated with and that impact mobility, mobile users, and mobile use of products and services are still poorly understood. For example, even though distractions are ever present during everyday use of mobile devices, the nature and extent to which user perceptions and performance are affected by their presence is unknown. An empirical study was undertaken to investigate the impact of distractions and conﬁrmation of pre-trial expectations on usability and its subsequent effect on consumers’ behavioral intention toward using a mobile device for wireless data services. Distractions were simulated in this study in the form of either user motion or environmental noise (i.e. background auditory and visual stimuli). A Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis conﬁrmed the impacts of distractions on efﬁciency and effectiveness, and in turn the users’ satisfaction and behavioral intention to use a mobile device for wireless data services. Support was also obtained for a mediating effect of post-trial conﬁrmation of expectations between perceived performance and satisfaction. Implications of these ﬁndings for theory, practice, and future research are outlined.

- by Constantinos Coursaris
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- Usability, Adoption, Customer Satisfaction, Mobile

Mindfulness - the nonjudgmental awareness of the present experience - is thought to facilitate affective adaptation through increased exposure to emotions and faster extinction of habitual responses. To test this framework, the amplification of the Late Positive Potential (LPP) by negative relative to neutral images was analyzed across stimulus repetitions while 37 novices performed an open monitoring mindfulness exercise. Compared to two active control conditions where attention was either diverted to a distracting task or the stimuli were attended without mindfulness instructions, open monitoring enhanced the initial LPP response to negative stimuli, indicating increased emotional exposure. Across successive repetitions, mindfulness reduced and ultimately removed the affective LPP amplification, suggesting extinction of habitual emotional reactions. This effect arose from reduced negative as well enlarged neutral LPPs. Unlike stimuli from control conditions, the images previously viewed with mindfulness instructions did not elicit affective LPP amplification during subsequent re-exposure, suggesting reconsolidation of stimulus meaning.

- by Helen Uusberg and +1
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- Mindfulness, Electroencephalography, Event-Related Potentials, Distraction

The need for creativity has been steadily on the rise over the last two centuries spurred by the Industrial Revolution and it continues even more so today. From stay-at-home mothers, to Walmart greeters, to a CEO in a Fortune 500 company, to the janitorial staff in that very same company—everyone is feeling the need to be creative. We as a society are constantly looking for new ideas that benefit us in some way: doing more with less, delivering more value or meaning, or changing the world—or one individual life—for the better in some way. But where do these big ideas come from? Is it only a select few that call themselves a “Creative”? Or is this an innate ability that we all have inside us?

- by Justin Lee
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- Creativity studies, Creativity, Metacognition and its development, Mindfulness

Music and Letters, 93/2 (May 2012), 276-280

- by Anthony Gritten
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- Music History, Aesthetics, Music Technology, Psychology of Music

This report for a national govt. funded study (141 pages) examines in-car distractions using video recordings from naturally occurring (real-life) journeys. In-car distractions can seriously impair driving and potentially contribute to accidents. In-car distractions include mobile phones, entertainment systems, interaction with passengers, and most recently satellite navigation systems. This study investigates such distractions by providing micro-detailed descriptions and analyses of their occurrence and impact on driving activities, such as looking towards the road ahead or
handling the steering wheel. The study uses naturally occurring data, in-car video recordings of driving in real-world driving situations. The study examines in detail how different forms of in-car distractions develop in situ in real time, and relative to driving activities and to one another.

- by Maurice Nevile
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- Communication, Conversation Analysis, Gesture, Social Interaction

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s series Fleabag (BBC/Amazon Prime, 2016-‘19) has been praised for its revitalization of direct address. Whereas this device is often used to foster intimacy between character and audience, I argue that Fleabag problematizes this. I examine the nature of Fleabag’s address through the lens of habits of constant connectivity in online attention economies in conjunction with gendered norms of self-representation on social media, and their impact on the nature and modes of human attention. Through a textual and cinematic analysis with attention to editing, camera, mode of address, and acting, I claim that Fleabag’s attention-seeking performance enforces an intimacy that is gradually revealed to serve as a distraction, and that this is reinforced by the show’s entire aesthetic. By foregrounding these issues, and through its aesthetic of distraction, Fleabag investigates the relational implications of multi-tasking lives and probes the boundaries of contemporary attention.

- by inge van de ven
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- Gender Studies, Television Studies, Attention, Metafiction
- by Anne Ulrich
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- Media Studies, Rhetoric, Television Studies, Media Rhetoric

This research focuses on a paradoxical attempt in designing. It is about a practical inference on distraction through experiments. It aims to emerge architectures of 'un-thought' by obscuring the boundaries of architectural task. Here, distraction, disguised as text, meets the architect as the sole input of the design. This is an unbounded, non-structured text that leads to the imaginary. The text triggers hidden connections of non-conscious and 'un-thought'. Throughout the process, the architect becomes the distracted-being. Distracted creativity therefore reconstructs the architect and the architectural space that they create, together. The main product of the various experiments in this research is a booklet. It summarises and describes my adventurous pursuit of a role for the architect as a distracted being, and in doing so it also seeks to expose the limitations of the metamorphosis of written text into architectural space. Traces of these non-conscious elements – various sketches, drawings and writings – are embedded in the booklet. Then the final outputs of the experiment are the self-portraits, which are the depictions of the wild realms of Improbable Architectures.

- by Bihter Almaç
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- The Self, Self-Portraits, Distraction, Unconsciousness

Game immersion can be explained in a briefly way as a cognitive state where a person who is playing a video game is being completely part of the game and becomes isolated from the real environment . In this paper we are going to investigate whether immersion in games can vary in case a game is played having the in-game sound effects and having a crowd noise in the background. We conducted a between participants experiment with 30 participants who played a simple 2-d platform game in order to measure the level of immersion for the two conditions mentioned above. The p value was found to be insignificant (Mann-Whitney test W=195, p = 0.512). From the experiment results we conclude that the initial hypothesis of players being less immersed with the crowd noise condition can not be supported and discuss over the possible interpretations of the experiment's outcome.

- by Stefanos Symeonidis
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- Game studies, Video Games, Attention, Engagement
- by Miloš Vec
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- Teaching and Learning, Mobile Learning, Digital Media, Didactics

This paper discusses how walking the city can serve as a methodology for urban literary studies.

- by Ian Fong
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- Walking in literature, Literary studies, The City in Literature and Culture, Walking

Background. Undisputedly, traffic crashes constitute a public health concern whose impact and importance have been increasing during the past few decades. Specifically, road safety data have systematically shown how cyclists are highly vulnerable to suffering traffic crashes and severe injuries derived from them. Furthermore, although the empirical evidence is still very limited in this regard, in addition to other human factors involved in cycling crashes, distractions while cycling appear to be a major contributor to the road risk of cyclists. Objectives. The main objectives of this study were, first, to explore the prevalence and trends of cycling distractions within an international sample of bike users, and second, to determine the influence of such distractions on road crashes suffered by cyclists, simultaneously considering the explanatory role of risky behaviors (errors and traffic violations) as potentially mediating variables between cycling distractions and traffic crashes. Methods. For this cross-sectional study, we analyzed the data obtained from 1,064 cyclists—61.2% male and 38.8% female—from 20 different countries, who answered an on-line questionnaire on cycling-related features, habits, behaviors and accidents. Results. The prevalence of different cycling distractions oscillated between 34.7% and 83.6%. The most common distractions were those related to the behavior of other users, physical elements of the road, weather conditions and phone calls. Age trends and differences were also found, thus establishing a positive association between age and distractibility during cycling. Furthermore, the effect of distractions on traffic crashes of cyclists was significant when tested together with age, risk perception and risky behaviors on the road. Conclusion. The results of this study support the hypotheses that distractions have a major prevalence among bike users, and that they play a significant role in the prediction of the traffic crash rates of cyclists, through the mediation of risky behaviors.

- by Sergio A Useche and +3
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- Road Traffic Crashes, Risky Driving Behaviors, Urban Cycling, Bicycling

- by Sergio A Useche
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- Psychology, Road Traffic Crashes, Risky Driving Behaviors, Urban Cycling

This chapter argues that democratic political attention (PA) has always been embedded in socioeconomic relations and observable through historically shifting communication practices and moralized habits. It considers democratic PA on as collective attention to a common object whose status as political is rhetorically contingent; and as individual cognition. Both forms of PA are the object of second-party and third-party strategies to transform it into distraction for political and commercial ends. It focuses on Greco-Roman origins, its displacement into anti-democratic spectacles of power as well as technologies of self; its rebirth in eighteenth century and then twentieth century American refigurings, which eventually are subsumed by consumer cultural monopolies on collective attention. Finally, it considers contemporary bio-political co-optation as digital post-PA; and as resistant insurgent PA.

- by Jayson Harsin
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- Social Theory, Cognitive Science, Communication, Media Studies
- by Miloš Vec
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- Teaching and Learning, Mobile Learning, Digital Media, Didactics

Distraction is the key reasons for inefficiency in any activity or task. The choice is after realis-ing the effects people evolve or retain. Evolve lead to betterment where as retaining the same leads to waste of time and efforts resulting in poor focus of activity. What happens when a person is distracted ? Actually the person mind shifts the activity on process to activity that tempts or alarms. This become a habit on practise loosing concentration on what to be done. Activity of a human can be in two parts 1. Productive and 2. Non Productive. Productive activity is one with time framed tasks and which result in revenue generation or for a useful cause. Where as non productive activity is for entertainment or fun or like or addiction which will not or will have low impact on an individual knowledge or revenue generation process. The conclusion is that apart from the respondents who are from the age group between 47-55 the respondents from other age group felt anxious and lost due to use of digital gadgets and also female respondents believe that use of digital gadgets may lead to mood improvement. This factors has to be eradicated as this cause harm and may addict them towards continuous usage of digital gadgets in future period of time.

- by IAEME Publication
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- Control, Productivity, Distraction, Focus

As smartphones have become more prevalent in society, so have consequences. Using research from Carr (2010) and Turkle (2015), this study investigated the relationship between smartphones and reflection, mindfulness and hyperactivity. The results showed that smartphone addiction symptoms of withdrawal are significantly related to hyperactivity and negatively related to reflection. Phubbing, which is snubbing others with a smartphone, is negatively related to levels of mindfulness. Social media addiction was not a significant predictor.

- by Beth Bradford
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- Psychology, Communication, Technology, Mindfulness