Slides from my talk at Presentation Camp London, held at the Salmon Centre in Bermondsey on Sun 17th Jan, 2010. This presentation was adapted from my TCUK09 talk on about half an hour's notice as I hadn't planned to present anything at PCL1! Interesting experience :)

1. Why your attention sucks
(mind-hacks to avert
Death By PowerPoint)
Chris Atherton
School of Psychology,
University of Central Lancashire

2. your brain is lazy,
shallow, and easily
distracted.

3. (but ultimately,
also hackable)

4. So, what do you do?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephangeyer/3020487807/sizes/o/

5. thinking
perception
attention
memory

6. University of Central
Lancashire

8. Preston

9. Where is the
educational merit ...
• ... in row after row of bullet points?
• Students are expected to sit there for
two hours
• I get antsy if I don’t check Twitter for
10 minutes

10. education as endurance event
http://www.flickr.com/photos/infomatique/1800877044/

12. http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html

13. “why can’t education be
like that?”

14. modern psychology
http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/webimages/gallery_1850_gents.gif

15. Gestalt grouping
principles

16. continuity

17. similarity

18. proximity

19. 9-dot problem

20. 3
2 4
1
start here

21. there is no box!

22. we group objects faster
based on proximity ...

23. ... than we do based on
colour or shape
(Quinlan & Wilton, 1998)

24. for what/where
decisions, the brain
hacks itself!

25. what/where pathways
where?
visual
cortex
what?

26. farming out tasks to
separate pathways buys
more processing power

27. “attentionomics”

29. the “magic number 7”
(± 2)
(Miller, 1956)

30. magic number 4 ?
(Cowan, 2001)

31. subitization

32. subitization

33. subitization

34. max. working
memory load:
4-5 things

35. working memory
capacity is limited
— but hackable.

36. cognitive load
= amount of work
needed to understand
or learn something

37. intrinsic cognitive load:
how inherently difficult
something is

38. C
B
D B C
A
A
F
E

39. extraneous cognitive load:
extra work imposed by
the thinking/learning
environment

40. A has a reciprocal relationship
with B and with C.
B C B has a reciprocal relationship
with A but only receives incoming
information from C
A
C has a reciprocal relationship
with A but not with B, to which it
feeds forward.

41. good communication
is all about reducing
extraneous load

42. the hack: farm out
work to the brain’s
different pathways

43. visual/auditory pathways
visual
cortex
auditory
cortex

44. we LOVE audiovisual stimulation!
http://moviescreenshots.blogspot.com/

45. so why isn’t this any good?

46. does
pictures
does language
(spoken or written)

47. Death by PowerPoint:
bored
overloaded

48. ... our research

49. study 1
(in the lab)

50. identical spoken
presentations
about advertising

54. multiple choice
questions

55. 9. If an advertising campaign has 60 Gross
Rating Points (GRPs), the advert could
reach: traditional
(a) 60% of the target audience once,
or 15% of the audience four times
(b) 30% of the target audience once,
or 15% of the audience two times
sparse text
(c) 30% of the audience twice,
and 40% of the audience four times
(d) 60% of the audience once,
and 10% of the audience four times
sparse text, graphics

56. ... no difference
between groups

57. Essay answer
performance

58. What do you remember about the main part of the
presentation? Please be useful to a product but
How advertising can
write as much as you can ...
that there is a fine line between successful and
negative advertising. Identified key factors
affecting the success of advertising, such as
exposure and an adverts relation to the
product.
Frequency of exposure can have a detrimental
effect on the success of an advert. Consumers
should be made aware of a product but not
bombarded. Advertisers must concern
themselves with selecting suitable mediums to
reach desired audiences at the right frequency
of risk the advert not affecting the consumer

59. number of themes written about * = significant difference

60. In other words, slides that look like this:
help students learn better than slides that look like this:

61. study 2
(in the lecture theatre)

62. Again, students either saw slides like this ...
... or slides like this:

63. multiple-choice
performance
= same

64. Essay answer
performance

65. significant (p < .05)
no. of themes written about
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
traditional sparse
slides slides

66. either ...
(a) sparse slides challenge
our attention less

67. and/or ...
(b) sparse visuals make
it easier to absorb stuff

68. less is more!
max. working
memory load:
4-5 things

69. split the load
pictures
words

70. make the brain’s native
skills work for you

71. your brain is lazy,
shallow, and easily
distracted.

72. (but ultimately,
also hackable)

73. finiteattentionspan.wordpress.com
Twitter: @finiteattention