5.1.2 Attending

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Attending

When Cleveland rapper Colson Baker (aka “Machine Gun Kelly”) tweeted his fans: “Today we flash mob NO MATTER WHAT! 5pm at SouthPark mall in the food court,” hundreds of fans showed up (as did police who had heard about the tweet). What makes such flash mobs possible? The fact that we pay attention to the messages that interest us the most.

Attending, the second step in the listening process, involves devoting attention to the information you’ve received. If you don’t attend to information, you can’t go on to interpret and understand it, or respond to it (Kahneman, 1973). The extent to which you attend to received information is determined largely by its salience—the degree to which it seems especially noticeable and significant. As discussed in Chapter 3, we view information as salient when it’s visually or audibly stimulating, unexpected, or personally important (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). In the Colson Baker case, fans attended to his Twitter post in part because he used caps (visually stimulating), and because it was unexpected (Baker hadn’t made any public appearances in Ohio since he had signed a major record deal). But the main reason they attended to his invite—and showed up at the mall—was because he was important to them: he was a local boy who had made it big. As he noted in a YouTube video after the incident, “It was kind of a chance to show all the kids that we really care about them, and that we’re still here, and we’re still grounded, and we’re gonna be Ohio boys and Cleveland boys until we’re six feet under.”

We have only limited control over salience; whether people communicate in stimulating, unexpected, or important ways is largely determined by them, not us. However, we do control our attention level. To improve your attention, consider trying two things: limiting your multitasking and elevating your attention.

Limiting Multitasking Online One way to improve attention is to limit the amount of time you spend each day multitasking online—that is, using multiple forms of technology at once, each of which feeds you unrelated streams of information (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2012). An example of such multitasking is writing a class paper on your computer while also Facebook chatting with several friends, watching TV, playing an online computer game, and texting family members. Stanford psychologist Clifford Nass has found that habitual multitaskers are extremely confident in their ability to perform at peak levels on the tasks they simultaneously juggle (Glenn, 2010). However, their confidence is misplaced. Multitaskers perform substantially worse on tasks compared with individuals who focus their attention on only one task at a time (Ophir et al., 2012).

Why is limiting multitasking online important for improving attention? Because multitasking erodes your capacity for sustaining focused attention (Jackson, 2008). Cognitive scientists have discovered that our brains adapt to the tasks we regularly perform during our waking hours, an effect known as brain plasticity (Carr, 2010). In simple terms, we “train our brains” to be able to do certain things, through how we live our daily lives. People who spend much of their time, day after day, shifting attention rapidly between multiple forms of technology train their brains to only be able to focus attention in brief bursts. The consequence is that they lose ability to focus attention for long periods of time on just one task ( Jackson, 2008). Not surprisingly, habitual multitaskers have grave difficulty listening, as listening requires extended attention (Carr, 2010). Limiting your multitasking, and spending at least some time each day focused on just one task (such as reading, listening to music, or engaged in prayer or meditation), without technological distractions, helps train your brain to be able to sustain attention. To gauge the degree to which multitasking has impacted your attention, take the Self-Quiz “Multitasking and Attention”.

Elevating Attention The second thing you can try to improve your attention is to elevate it, by following these steps (Marzano & Arredondo, 1996). First, develop awareness of your attention level. During interpersonal interactions, monitor how your attention naturally waxes and wanes. Notice how various factors such as fatigue, stress, or hunger influence your attention. Second, take note of encounters in which you should listen carefully, but that seem to trigger low levels of attention. These might include interactions with parents, teachers, or work managers, or situations such as family get-togethers, classrooms, or work meetings. Third, consider the optimal level of attention required for adequate listening during these encounters. Fourth, compare the level of attention you observed in yourself versus the level of attention that is required, identifying the “attention gap” that needs to be bridged for you to improve your attention.

Finally, and most important, elevate your level of attention to the point necessary to take in the auditory and visual information you’re receiving. You can do this in several ways. Before and during an encounter, boost the salience of the exchange by reminding yourself of how it will impact your life and relationships. Take active control of the factors that may diminish your attention. When possible, avoid important encounters when you are overly stressed, hungry, ill, fatigued, or under the influence of alcohol—such factors substantially impair attention. If you have higher energy levels in the morning or early in the week, try to schedule attention-demanding activities and encounters during those times. If you find your attention wandering, practice mental bracketing, systematically putting aside thoughts that aren’t relevant to the interaction at hand. When irrelevant thoughts arise, let them pass through your conscious awareness and drift away without allowing them to occupy your attention fully.

Elevating Attention

  • Focusing your attention during interpersonal encounters
  • image Identify an important person to whom you find it difficult to listen.
  • image List factors—fatigue, time pressure—that impede your attention when you’re interacting with this person.
  • image Before your next encounter with the individual, address factors you can control.
  • image During the encounter, increase the person’s salience by reminding yourself of his or her importance to you.
  • image As the encounter unfolds, practice mental bracketing to stay focused on your partner’s communication.