Hitting a Moving Target—What is Normal?

“We have an epidemic of attention deficit disorder—or at least, we have an epidemic of diagnoses of that condition. And the culprit most often named? The use of computers,” wrote Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Robert J. Sawyer in the March 20 (2009) issue of the Ottawa Citizen entitled, All Screens Are Not Equal. “But is there really something wrong with huge numbers of young people today?” he goes on to pose. “Has computer use rotted their brains?”

“Or is it—perhaps—that there’s something wrong with how we’re defining normal?” taunts Sawyer.

He goes on to say that our psychological tests for measuring attention were developed between the 1950s and the 1990s, during a time that the kind of screen that dominated society was the passive screen of TV and the phenomenon of the “couch potato”. Today’s dominant screen is the computer screen, whose interactivity has very little in common with the passive screen of TV. In fact, asserts Sawyer, the computer is “far from being harmful.” Rather, it is “a key to survival in the new world.”

Psychologists have demonstrated that playing video games, for instance, exercise the mind and improve memory and alertness. Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent with the Telegraph, reported that such play also reverses cognitive decline, “making the brain more agile” and improving an elderly person’s ability to juggle multiple tasks. So much so that a growing market of computer games is being marketed for the elderly (e.g., Nintendo DS portable games). The December 11 2008 issue of the Washington Post reported that past studies “have shown that playing video games [have] many positive benefits, ranging from improved problem-solving abilities in young people to improved operating skills in surgeons.”

The December 2008 issue of Psychology and Aging reports findings of researchers Chandramallika Basak, Art Kramer and other researchers who tested the cognitive abilities in people in their 60s and 70s before and after playing the real-time strategy video game “Rise of Nations”, which rewards the complex task of creating a society (which includes building cities, employing people and expanding territory). You guessed it; those who played the game displayed enhanced cognitive abilities, memory, and alertness. “When we look at improvements in cognition,” says Basak, “it’s not just one thing that it is affecting, it is all integrative.” The benefits remained for weeks after and transferred to everyday tasks: things like “scheduling, planning, working memory, multi-tasking, and dealing with ambiguity,” which, according to Kramer, are harder for older people to do.

Sawyer was referring to a changing—evolving—paradigm in society. It is an evolution that embraces technology as part of who and what we are and will be. And that scares people. Change usually scares people. It takes us out of our “comfort zones” and strips us of our carefully constructed masks. It puts us out there, where that part of us that neatly hides beneath our conformity is exposed: the part of us that is different, unique, and in many cases, unrealized. Change liberates our creative souls; it gives us a chance to be and express who we really are.

I found the commentary by online readers on Sawyer’s article fascinating. Commentary was a mix of enthusiastic agreement, cynical skepticism and barely masked fear. The major concerns were that playing video games and computer use are isolating and mitigate other health benefits provided by their use. I found one comment particularly interesting that responded to Sawyer’s assertion that kids are “creating videos, building websites, and publishing thousands of words of text each day…doing high-quality work…doing things on their own that it used to take large teams to accomplish.” The comment suggested that this was a bad thing, because it was ultimately anti-social and that scientific studies had proven that multi-tasking “actually harms the brain’s ability to learn.”

Is it not a bit hypocritical to point this “moral” finger at kid’s creative use of computers when we as adults (many of us at any rate) spend our work time AND play time in front of computers ourselves? Basak suggests that playing strategy-based games such as chess or online interactive video games with other people provides the same benefits without sacrificing social interaction.

And, while several studies have shown that workers required to multi-task in the workplace can be less productive than those with fewer tasks to perform, other studies have shown that the ability to multi-task can be highly beneficial. For instance, a recent study by Kleider, Parrott and King of Georgia State University demonstrated that multi-tasking policemen were less likely to shoot an innocent person. “In cognitive psychology, operation span—or working memory—is an overarching cognitive mechanism that indicates the ability to multi-task…People with a higher capacity are able to keep more things ‘in play’ at one time,” said Kleider.

I think it quite apt that Sawyer’s article in the Ottawa Citizen precedes his book tour for the first book of his new series on the World Wide Web. It’s entitled “Wake”.

So, what IS normal?


Recommended Reading:
Basak, C., W.R. Boot, M. Voss, and A. Kramer. 2008. Can training in a real-time strategy videogame attenuate cognitive decline in older adults? Psychology and Aging 23: 765-777.

Boot, Walter, Arthur Kramer, Daniel J. Simons, Monica Fabiani, and Gabriele Gratton. 2008. The effects of video game playing on attention, memory, and executive control. Acta Psychologica 129: 387-398.


De Lisi, R. & J.L. Wolford. 2002. Improving children’s mental rotation accuracy with computer game playing. The Journal of Genetic Psychology 163:272-282.

Green, C.S. & D. Bavelier. 2003. Action video game modifies visual selective attention. Nature 423:534-537.

Kleider, H., D. Parrott, & T. King. 2009. Shooting Behavior: How Working Memory and Negative Emotionality Influence Police Officer Shoot Decisions. Applied Cognitive Psychology (in press).

Kramer, A.F., & S.L. Willis. 2002. Enhancing the cognitive vitality of older adults. Current Directions in Psychological Science 11: 173-177.

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.