Brain Science: Bursts—Creating Brief Training for Short Attention Spans

In 1935, Will and Ariel Durant began writing an epic 11-volumehistory of Western civilization covering 2,000 years of war, culture, art, philosophy,and religion. Unfortunately, by the time they finished the effort 40 yearslater, the world had changed. People had new ways to entertain themselves andthey had little patience for a 10,000 page masterpiece. As a result, one of thegreat achievements of the 20^th century has faded into obscurity.

Forty more years have now gone by, and the preference forshort bursts of experience has grown even more acute. Novels, pop songs, andnewscasts have grown ever shorter in order to meet the needs of busy audiences.

A similar pressure is being felt in the training industry. Traditionally,training was delivered in instructor-led workshops that lasted from two hoursto two weeks. (Indeed, research suggests that the majority of training is stilldelivered in this way). But today’s audience has little tolerance for thisthese behemoth sessions and companies are asking whether these extendedsessions are delivering an effective return on the investment.

Creating shorter training

There is a growing movement toward replacing tortuous trainingmarathons with brief learning experiences that are delivered, as needed, whereneeded, via the internet. These brief training experiences have been referredto in a variety of ways including micro-training, short-form training,as-needed training, and my favorite: “burst training.” I like the term bursttraining because it correctly suggests that the learner is receiving a quickjolt of knowledge.

The ideal burst training can be defined as “Ten minutes oftraining, within five minutes of its need, to an audience of one.” In the nextfew months, we are going to look carefully at brief training experiences and wewill examine what can and cannot be taught this way, the best training mediafor bursts, the special power of “video bursts,” and most importantly, howusing bursts affects retention and transfer.

Before launching into these topics, we need to answer animportant question.

Is our attention span really less than a goldfish?

A few months ago, Microsoft Canada published a report describing an experiment that issupposed to provide insights into people’s attention spans. The document wasoriginally written to give marketers insight into how to advertise to theirdigital consumers. But the article has exploded within the learning literature,so it is important to spend time examining their methods and conclusions.

In their experiment, 2,000 people filled out surveys andplayed games designed to measure their digital lifestyle and attention. Theresearchers also measured the brainwaves (EEGs) of 112 people while they performedvarious digital tasks.

They concluded that:

• digital lifestyles are changing the human brain,decreasing the ability for prolonged focus, and increasing its appetite formore stimuli;
• increased media consumption and digital lifestyles reducethe ability for consumers to focus for extended periods of time; and
• addictive technology behaviors are evident,particularly for younger Canadians; and
• the human attention span is becoming much shorter andit is now less than that of a goldfish (Figure 1).

Figure 1: According to Microsoft Canada, the human attention spanis less than that of a goldfish

These are some pretty dramatic claims. Let’s take a criticallook at each of them.

Digital lifestyles are changing the brain, decreasing the abilityfor prolonged focus, and increasing its appetite for more stimuli.

In fact, these researchers provide no evidence that “brainsare changing.” And even if there were evidence of neural change, these authorscertainly provide no evidence that digital lifestyles are producing thatchange.

But what about the brain scans? Don’t they prove anything?

Please don’t be impressed by their use of the EEG data, it isnearly meaningless. In fact, an EEG is a clinical tool that is typically usedto diagnose epileptic seizures and to determine whether or not a person isbrain dead (Figure 2). Indeed, the EEG provides such low spatial resolutionthat it is incapable of identifying which specific areas of the brain areactive (you need an fMRI for this). An EEG is quick and easy, butit is incapable of providing a meaningful measure of “attention.”

Figure 2: The EEG hookup looks sophisticated but provides littleinsight into specific brain activity

Increased media consumption and digital lifestyles reduce theability for consumers to focus for extended periods of time

In this assertion, the authors have clearly confused “causation”with “correlation.” The only thing that their data shows is that individualswho are more digitally active also spent less time attending to the taskswithin the experiment. It does not prove that the digital activity causes a reducedattention span. In fact, it is possible that the authors reversed the causality andthat an inability to focus causes increased media consumption. Or it is alsopossible that some third unknown factor causes both increased media consumptionand reduced focusing.

Addictive technology behaviors are evident, particularly foryounger Canadians

Their use of the words “addictive technology behaviors” is aclassic example of using language in a way that is both inflammatory andmisleading. In psychology, “addiction” is a technical term referring to asituation in which a person ingests a substance or compulsively engages in anact that is pleasurable but which can interfere with ordinary liferesponsibilities. The authors make it sound as though they have discovered ahidden pathology among Canadian youth. In fact, all they “discovered” is that amajority of Canadian youth check their phone while watching TV and before theygo to bed. There is no evidence that these actions are interfering with liferesponsibilities.

The human attention span is becoming much shorter and it is nowless than that of a goldfish

The most dramatic conclusion, and the one that got Microsoftall of the press attention, is that technology has somehow made us less focusedthan the average goldfish. It’s here that the article most egregiously straysfrom their data. In fact, the UK-based fact-checking site, Ministryof Truth, has traced its long history and discovered that thisclaim is no more than an urban myth which is based on no real scientificevidence.

A report card for Microsoft Canada

As a university professor I have graded a lot of term papers,and if the authors of this experiment were taking my marketing class, theirreport would earn them an A+. They included lots of hot-button topics(gamification, brain imagery, addiction) and then they then gave their articlethe veneer of authority (by adding brain images and fancy statistics). And itworked. The results were then picked up by every news organization who thenfurther diluted it and convinced a noncritical world that digital devices weremaking their kids dumber than goldfish.

On the other hand, if the Microsoft authors were taking mysophomore-level research design class, their report would earn them a C-. Theyviolated cardinal rules of research, reported inadequate statistics, andclaimed outrageous conclusions that were not justified by their data. Shame onthem.

Should we move forward with burst training?

As we will see in the coming months, there are many validreasons that we should consider moving from traditional training marathons tomore concise and strategic burst training. And I put the stress on the word “valid.”If corporate training is ever going to develop and improve, we need to beguided by real data and not by the hype and hyperbole of marketers.

Digging deeper

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