Why Do Students Choose Hyper Attention

One of Turkle’s arguments is that students tend to choose hyper attention over deep attention as their default. I agree with this idea; some students choose hyper attention, which makes it difficult for them to multitask and focus. As my ECE teacher told the class, students do better if they read the textbook before they come and refresh their memory in class because information is easier to absorb when students are doing just one thing instead of doing multiple things at once. During one of the math sections, I was busy copying down all the algebraic equations on the board, but I discovered that I could not process the method and algorithm in solving the problem even though I copied it all down. I felt as though I was just transferring the information on the board to my paper. At the end of class, when I have to take a quiz, I

As Turkle described in her article, multitasking is hard to achieve and “when you choose hyper attention – you won’t be able to focus even when you want to” (29). Some people, like me, cannot multitask. When they try to multitask, they are simply going into hyper attention instead deep attention. As my experience in math section shows, when students try to do something and multitask at the same time, the information that students take in is very superficial. People might think that they are able to remember or process what happens, but the truth is that information only registers on a very basic level and there are no deep processes in the brain to think thoroughly about the detail. Thus, it is difficult for them to recall the details afterward. Similarly, Turkle mentions that Steiker observed that “students taking notes with computers suffered from more than inattention” because “they seemed compelled to type out the full record of what was said in class”