Doing a task over and over again can literally be mind-numbing and your performance on that task will drop. The solution? Take a brief break and pay attention to something else. A new psychological study has shown that brief interruptions would keep people's performance on a task from dropping。
University of Illinois professor Lleras and fellow researcher Atsunori Ariga divided 84 study participants into groups and tested their ability to focus on a repetitive task, which lasted 40 minutes and entailed pressing a key when a longer line was replaced by a shorter one on a computer screen。
Some participants memorized four digits before the task, and their memory was tested after the task. Of these, some were presented with the digits during the task, and asked to decide if the numbers belonged to the memorized set. Others performed only the visual line task, and others were told to ignore numbers that appeared as they performed the visual task。
While most participants' performances on the visual task declined over time, the performance by the group that was asked to respond to the digits while in the midst of the task did not. "Constant stimulation is registered by our brains as unimportant, to the point that the brain erases it from our awareness," Lleras explained。
反复做同一件事会让大脑麻痹，导致办事不力。解决办法？休息一小会儿，关注一些其他的事情。一项心理学研究表明，短暂的干扰活动能让人们在继续从事之前所作的工作时，表现依旧出色。
伊利诺伊大学教授雷拉斯和同事艾特斯诺里对84个受试者分组测试他们在重复性工作上的注意力：当电脑屏幕中的长线被短线取代时按下按钮，测试时长为40分钟。
研究人员要求一些受试者在测试之前记忆4个数字，并在测试后就相关记忆进行检测。其中，一些受试者在测试过程中便与数字再次碰面，并被问及这些数字是不是之前所记忆的数字。而另外一些则只需做看屏幕按按钮的重复性工作，还有一些人则干脆被告知忽略在测试中出现的数字。
研究人员发现，大部分测试者随着重复性工作的延续表现情况下降，而在测试过程中被要求对数字做出反应的小组人群表现依旧良好。“持久同样的刺激被大脑认定为不重要元素，以至于大脑干脆把它从我们意识中抹去了，”雷拉斯解释道。
