Selective Attention

February 20th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt

Want to see why it’s more difficult to multi-task than you think? Take a look at this video. It’s silly, but it shows how limited our attention is. Our brains aren’t video cameras that record everything within hearing and seeing distance; instead, we focus selectively on parts of the landscape. Other events–like all of those changes in the video–escape our notice.

This lesson is important for students who think they can follow a law school class while texting, reading for the next class, or (horrors) reviewing another professor’s law review submission. If their attention is focused on one of those activities, they will miss much of what happens in the classroom.

The phenomenon, however, also has implications for professors.

Why Don’t They Pay Attention?

First, we have to ask why students are focusing on other work while sitting in our classrooms. The students evidently believe that the alternative activity offers more value than paying close attention to the classroom discussion. Why is that?

In some classes, students are simply tired of Socratic discussion–or bored by the professor’s lecture. Listening to another student analyze a case is a tedious way to learn. Once the novelty of first year has worn off, students begin to tune out from the discussion. They resume attention only when the professor sums up the case holding or signals a key point.

It’s up to us to help students learn for a full 50, 60, or 75 classroom minutes. If they’re not paying full attention, we’re not doing our work. I attended law school long before laptops or the internet, but I devoted plenty of class time to reading cases for another class or bluebooking a law review article. More often, I just skipped class to focus on one of the latter activities. My professors were smart, well meaning people, but their classes provided relatively little value for the time they consumed.

Can They Follow the Ball?

Some professors inadvertently reduce learning by trying to do too much in class. Even if students devote their full attention to class, the phenomenon of selective attention means that they can’t absorb too many points at once. Unless we focus and pace our classes, students will miss some of the knowledge we’re trying to impart.

The traditional Socratic method can contribute to doing too much in the classroom. With that method, students have to switch their attention among the professor and one or more classmates. Just switching attention absorbs mental energy, leaving less room to think about difficult concepts. The student also has to remember a classmate’s answer and then interpret the professor’s response to the answer. Did the professor mean that the classmate was right, wrong, or somewhere in the middle? While pondering that issue, the student will miss the next exchange entirely–much as viewers miss all of the furniture switches in the video linked above.

The Socratic method has its place, but consider supplementing it with small group discussions. In a small group, students can concentrate more readily on an exchange of ideas. They can also work to shape those ideas into a group consensus. When the full class reconvenes, the professor can ask one group to report its results and then solicit additional (or conflicting) insights from other groups.

Other pedagogic methods can also combat the phenomenon of selective attention. The bottom line is that humans have a limited ability to process information. We can achieve great thoughts, but we need help assembling those thoughts in small doses.