Why short breaks improve focus

“You start performing poorly on a task because you’ve stopped paying attention to it,’ he said. ‘But you are always paying attention to something. Attention is not the problem.”

Welcome to WE TALK Science — a series curated by WE TAKE FIVE to shine light on the science and applied benefits of taking breaks. This week we are featuring a scientific article called Brief and rare mental ‘breaks’ keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements, published by Atsunori Ariga and Alejandro Lleras in Cognition journal back in 2011; DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.007

Short breaks improve focus

A study in the journal Cognition takes a new look at the nature of attention showing that even short breaks can dramatically improve one’s ability to focus for prolonged periods of time.

The study zeroes in on a phenomenon known as “vigilance decrement,” which some researchers believe is caused by a drop in one’s “attentional resources,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Alejandro Lleras, who led the new study. “For 40 or 50 years, most papers published on the vigilance decrement treated attention as a limited resource that would get used up over time, and I believe that to be wrong. You start performing poorly on a task because you’ve stopped paying attention to it,” he said. “But you are always paying attention to something. Attention is not the problem.”

Lleras also noticed that this phenomenon occurs, for example, when the brain gradually stops registering a sight, sound or feeling if that stimulus does not change over time.

“Most people are not aware of the sensation of clothing touching their skin. The body becomes “habituated” to the feeling and the stimulus no longer registers in any meaningful way in the brain.”

“Constant stimulation is registered by our brains as unimportant, to the point that the brain erases it from our awareness,” Lleras said. “So I thought, well, if there’s some kind of analogy about the ways the brain fundamentally processes information, things that are true for sensations ought to be true for thoughts. If sustained attention to a sensation makes that sensation vanish from our awareness, sustained attention to a thought should also lead to that thought’s disappearance from our mind!”

The Study

“Lleras and postdoctoral fellow Atsunori Ariga tested participants’ ability to focus on a repetitive computerized task for about an hour under various conditions. The 84 study subjects were divided into four groups:

• The control group performed the 50-minute task without breaks or diversions.
• The “switch” group and the “no-switch” group memorized four digits prior to performing the task, and were told to respond if they saw one of the digits on the screen during the task. Only the switch group was actually presented with the digits (twice) during the 50-minute experiment. Both groups were tested on their memory of the digits at the end of the task.
• The “digit-ignored” group was shown the same digits presented to the switch group during the task, but was told to ignore them.

As expected, most participants’ performance declined significantly over the course of the task. But most critically, Lleras said, those in the switch group saw no drop in their performance over time. Simply having them take two brief breaks from their main task (to respond to the digits) allowed them to stay focused during the entire experiment.

“It was amazing that performance seemed to be unimpaired by time, while for the other groups performance was so clearly dropping off,” Lleras said.”

This study suggests that the brain is built to detect and respond to change, Lleras said, and that prolonged attention to any repetitive task decreases performance.

“We propose that deactivating and reactivating your goals allows you to stay focused,” he said. “From a practical standpoint, our research suggests that, when faced with long tasks (such as studying before a final exam or doing your taxes), it is best to impose brief breaks on yourself. Brief mental breaks will actually help you stay focused on your task!”

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Journal Reference:

1. Atsunori Ariga, Alejandro Lleras. Brief and rare mental ‘breaks’ keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements. Cognition, 2011; DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.007