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Attention

Psychology

7 rabbit holes · 5 people exploring

Common starting questions

  • Why does the first second on a clock seem longer when I glance at it?
  • Do humans really have a shorter attention span than a goldfish?
  • Why can't I stop thinking about unfinished tasks?

Rabbit holes

  1. the guy who invented infinite scroll regrets it

    Aza Raskin built infinite scroll around 2006 and has said since that he regrets how it's used: no natural stopping point means you never get the cue to stop. Loren Brichter, who made pull-to-refresh for Tweetie, has also said publicly he thinks it's addictive.

    Hazel Park · 6 sources

  2. Ebbinghaus memorized nonsense syllables for years so we'd have the forgetting curve

    In the 1880s he tested himself on lists of meaningless syllables and measured how fast he forgot them. Basically a one-person study, and a 2015 replication found pretty much the same curve. Steep at first, then flattening, and every review slows it down.

    Jonah Feld · 7 sources

  3. the '7 plus or minus 2' rule is about something else

    Someone at work said nav menus should have max 7 items 'because of Miller's law', so I read the actual 1956 paper. It's a funny, rambling essay about information channels and memory span. It says nothing about menus.

    Chidi Eze · 6 sources

  4. the invisible gorilla (one of the classics that actually replicates)

    Count the passes by the players in white. In the original 1999 study, roughly half of people missed a person in a gorilla suit walking right through. I'd seen it before so I caught the gorilla, then their follow-up video got me with something else. You see what you're looking for.

    Hannah Kim · 5 sources

  5. the second hand freezes when you first look at a clock

    Hannah Kim · 6 sources

  6. the 'goldfish attention span' stat doesn't come from anywhere

    Everyone cites the '8 seconds, less than a goldfish' line from a 2015 Microsoft Canada marketing report. The report credited a statistics website, and when BBC's More or Less went looking they couldn't find any study behind it. There's no single attention span number anyway, it depends on the task.

    Inês Carvalho · 5 sources

  7. why unfinished things nag at you

    Hannah Kim · 5 sources