Staying Electronically Connected Taxes the Brain

Switching your attention between different tasks, such driving and looking at your phone, is hard for the brain. And forget the idea of multitasking, human brains can only process one stream of information at a time. Switching between streams makes thinking about either one harder; add to that the cost of the switching itself. Terri Gross interviewed Matt Richtel about his New York Times series “Your Brain on Computers” on her show, Fresh Air.

Further, the more you switch between tasks, the harder it is to distinguish important and unimportant information. we seem to be training our brains that any thing that demands our attention will get it, this is the main symptom of ADD. The New York Times provides a test to see how well you do on multitasking. I landed in the category of of being able to focus and screen out distractions, which I would expect from someone who earned a doctorate degree and who needs to pay attention when meeting with clients. On the other hand, what if a mugger was approaching and I didn’t switch my attention?

Richtel also uses the same food metaphor familiar to those who have attended my “Facebook Ate My Teenager” talk. Food is necessary for survival, just as technology is necessary to survive in modern America. However, too much is harmful. He added that some technology is like eating the computer equivalent of Twinkies. He gave up his Twitter account because it was subtracting from the enjoyment of his son, for him Twitter is a Twinkie. He urges parents to put away the screens when we are nurturing our children.

We feel compelled to check our e-mail, Richtel says, both because it provides an enjoyable little squirt of dopamine and because we get a pleasant e-mail on a variable, unpredictable schedule, just like with playing a slot machines or fishing. I would add that we also check it because we are social creatures. Staying in the social loop is important to humans, and e-mail is one of the ways we share. Facebook is a great example of our need for interaction.

The study of technology on the brain continues apace. Richtel series will continue, and he set up a cliff hanger in his interview with Terri Gross.

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Outsider shows us what social creatures we are

An NPR story takes a tender look through the eyes of Lisa Daxter, an adult with autism. Lisa, taking a role much like an anthropologist from Mars, points out just how social we “neurotypicals” are. We clump together into social groups, we mimic each others expressions and behaviors, and we accomplish more together than we could ever do alone. To help her fit in, Lisa makes lists of topics neurotypicals don’t like to talk about. Being social smooths the interactions at work and helps her make friends.

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Younger Kids Get ADHD Lable More Often

NPR reports two studies (here and here) showing that younger kids in a classroom are more often (60% of the cases) diagnosed with ADHD when compared to their older classmates. The researchers looked at birth dates and school cut off dates to compare kids who can be up to a year apart in age, but placed in the same grade. Both studies conclude that teachers, usually the first to suggest the need for an ADHD evaluation, are evaluating kids to each other even when the younger ones are less mature due to their age, not to attention problems or hyperactivity.

This is similar to Malcolm Gladwell’s finding that, “a hugely disproportionate number of professional hockey and soccer players are born in January, February and March (his blog).” His findings are, in short, that older kids in the same grade show more promise only because of their physical maturity, not inborn talent; nonetheless, they are given more practice, praise and coaching because of their skills.

Since a misdiagnosis of ADHD can lead to a mental health diagnosis, special placement with in a school system and psychotropic medications, parents and teachers should note the child’s age, not the school grade. Those making the diagnosis should also attend to this.

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Inexpensive Drug Testing Kits

Gary Stanoff, MFT, referred me to a website that offers drug testing kits and a breathalyzer for less cost than at local drug stores.

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Back from vacation

I’ve been back for a week. It was a wonderful time away, and just long enough. Several times during the last two days, I caught myself longing to get back to work; I started to thing about clients and what would be helpful to them. It is good to be back

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Be Creative! Or Not.

The suggestion to be creative, much like the command, “Be spontaneous,” just kills the process. A sidebar in this week’s Newsweek, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman point out Mark Runco’s research that a general instruction to “be creative” dries up the creative juices. Instead, a more specific challenge generates twice as many creative responses.

This is so much like the therapy I conduct. I ask questions, not to get facts in response, but to generate new ideas. Clients and I have a pretty good sense of what the problems are. What we don’t yet have a sense of (and are striving to clarify) is what life might be like if the problem were diminished, taken care of, put aside, etc.

We find this new vision through questions. For example: How might you life be different if you didn’t listen to Depression in first thing in the morning? If you were to stand with yourself and not against yourself, what might be the first difference you notice? The first effect is to nurture hope, the second is to move to change, and the third is to start living those new visions.

I ask questions instead of make statements because questions allow clients more freedom to go where they want to go than a declaration from me does. I tend to ask questions in the subjunctive mood (might, could be, if…were, etc) to add in a sense of speculation and to undermine the sensation of realism that problems cloak themselves in.

     Newsweek: Forget Brainstorming

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Video Game Promotes Happiness

SuperMe is a new, on-line collection of video games designed, in the words of Alice Taylor, commissioning editor for UK’s Channel 4, “It’s about resilience: how to feel good when life chucks you lemons. How to be better at thinking positively. How to cope with (and learn to love) failure.”

I watched the promotional video, which talks about how the games are aimed at promoting happiness, and played one game. The game was fun, but I’m not too sure of the link between it and happiness. My skills in aiming a ball to hit a target allowed the regular categories of winning and losing, much like any video game. What did you think of the concept and the ability to promote happiness or resilience? Tell us in the comments.

     SuperMe via BoingBoing.net.

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Study links TV to ADD, again.

NPR is reporting another study linking watching TV and playing video games to difficulty in paying attention in school. Apart from the usual critique that correlation is not sufficient to claim causation, this study does not add much to parenting as we practice it. Most parents agree that too much TV or video games is not good for kids.

What caught me is a quote in the article from Dimitri Christakis, who said, “I think that the concern is that the pacing of the program, whether its video games or TV is overstimulating and contributes to attention problems.

He’s got it backwards. It isn’t the fast pace of the games, it is the slow pace of whatever is competing for attention. We have all been in meetings where the flow of information is like molasses on a cold day, for example, when the boss is addressing another employee, not you directly. For a few minutes there, you have to force yourself to not look at your phone. There is so much you could accomplish in those few miutes: you could check e-mail, update your Facebook status, or send a text to someone else in the same meeting making fun of the boss.

And if you remember your school days, teachers can be really boring. It is all too easy to understand why kids are not paying attention in school. Our task might be to teach our kids how to focus attention on what is appropriate at that time, much like we have learned to focus on the boss and not our smart phones.

     More Screen Time Means More Attention Problems In Kids

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Tom and Jerry Play Cat and Mouse Games

Have you ever had a child lie or sneak? Don’t these actions beg for you to do something about them, like watch them more, call the mother of friends to verify their stories, or set more rules around showing you what their homework assignments are?

In short bursts, these can be effective strategies to let your child know that the lying or sneaking is not acceptable behavior. But they need an end date almost without any consideration of more of the same behavior. Check up on your child for three days and be done with it for that episode. Here is why.

What you will end up doing is training your child to be better at lying, better at sneaking, and better at making up explanations that work on you. What your child will train you to do is to be craftier in your spying ways. You will both become more devious. You will be more Cattier and your child will be more Mousier. This is an arms race neither of you want.

In addition, your child will grow dependent on your supervision. Your child will be invited to grow down, not grow up. The rule in your child’s head will be, “If mom doesn’t say no, then it is okay.” or “If dad doesn’t find out, I’m free to do it.” This is not the thinking any parent wants to foster in their child.

So what to do. In my experience, what helps is to make your increased supervision stand for a limited amount of time. I also think it helps to limit the cause of your vigilance on the specific behavior your child did, not the lack of trust it caused in you. “Since you lied to me about where you were last night, I will, for this week, call all the parents of the friends you will be visiting, and I’m going to call Coach Mack to make sure you are at practice.” Trust is too hard to win back and too ambiguous of a concept to accurately help.

How have you handled this issue? What are your thoughts on my take?

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