Coffee shops, ambient noise, and productivity

A few weeks ago I heard about a really interesting study on the radio (I suppose this is becoming a bit of a redundant theme in my posts).  Primarily motivated by the experience of many students, some social scientists had undertaken to answer the question: why is it that many people seem to be more productive, creative, or efficient when working in coffee shops than at home, in the library, or in the office?  Personally, I've always thought it was a combination of pretentious hipster fashion with the need for a little caffeine boost, as I've never really been quite as comfortable working in coffee shops as in other places.  But certainly, having been in grad school for over six years now, I have many friends that spend a very large amount of time in coffee shops, and so I was motivated to look deeper.  

As it turns out, the study was readily available in an open-access journal, so if you're a motivated reader and want to get right to the details, just click this link: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048

If you want my version, read on. 

To start with, the authors hypothesized that there is some sort of moderate-optimal level of ambient noise for people engaging in 'creative cognition' (a.k.a., original thinking).  The supposed mechanism behind this is that the increased difficulty of processing information, amidst distraction, will widen their focus, thereby increasing the likelihood of making abstract connections.  At low noise levels, people are more highly focused, and although this may be good for some tasks, it hampers creativity.  At higher noise levels, there is essentially a processing-overload effect, where it becomes difficult to focus on anything but the noise.  

This made pretty good sense to me; although I don't work in coffee shops very often, I do find that I work more efficiently and get more done when there are other people working in the lab/office with me.  I've always thought that it was sort of a social pressure thing – I'm less likely to allow myself to be distracted if other people are working hard around me – but it's entirely possible there is also a creativity boost from the manic key-typing sounds and other low-level office noise.  But then again, the presence of others may also lead to a simple widening of focus, as we tend to carry on sporadic conversations as we work.  

I think I have an even better widening of focus when I'm in the shower or getting ready for bed – that's when all the really great ideas hit!

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1617

 

Anyways, the study went a little beyond what the typical psychological assessment of noise on work habits would have gone: the noise they used wasn't static, buzzing, or a dull tone, it was the ambient noise from a restaurant blended with a few traffic sounds.  The authors created these tracks at three noise levels – low (50 dB), moderate (70 dB), and high (85 dB) – or didn't play the noise at all (control group), meanwhile having the subjects (65 undergraduate students) complete a Remote Associates Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Associates_Test). 

What they found was that, on average, students answered more questions correctly when they were subjected to a moderate level of noise.  The high-noise students answered the fewest questions, while the low noise and control (no noise) groups were intermediate.  Apparently, high noise levels also reduced student response time, whereas there was no difference in response time among moderate, low, and control groups.  

After this, the authors did a second experiment involving a test of the students' ability to generate creative ideas.  Again, they found that high noise inhibited this ability both in terms of the number and quality of ideas, and although there was no difference in the number of ideas between low and moderate noise, the moderate group had the best (most creative) ideas, on average.   

These authors were super-thorough, following up with a number of physiological tests (to better understand the mechanisms) and additional experiments (to confirm the breadth of the influence), but all still pointed towards the original hypothesis: moderately increased stress levels lead to heightened creativity.  

So fellow writers, students, and creative people, my advice to you is this: play some music, work with others around, take a shower, work in a coffee shop, of plant yourself firmly on one of those benches in the hallway of your college if you are working on something that requires creative focus.  I'm not sure if this includes math problems or coding, but I imagine that you'll get much more done on your papers, or get higher marks on them, if you have a little noise in the background.  It may not work for all of us, but I can say it often does for me, and it's definitely worth a try. 

Video gaming and college: a difficult mix to manage

This post was partly motivated by my own experiences, but also partly motivated by spending time with undergraduate students who either admit to having problems with too much gaming, or exhibit signs of it (e.g., playing during a course lecture).   I hope at least a few people who read it learn something new about themselves!

During my first two years as an undergraduate student, I approached studying as a slightly ramped up version of what I had done in high-school: a few more all-nighters perhaps, but largely a minimalist approach of getting assignments and basic readings done, but without regular reviewing or practicing of material.  Although it was obvious that this approach wasn't working well after my first set of exams, I was somewhat dazzled by the fact that I could no longer coast through with 80s and 90s while not putting in much effort.  It took me a while to learn effective study and preparation techniques, probably at least in part because, in this midst of the chaos of learning to be a good student, I had a few pretty major distractions: a part-time job at which I worked 12-20 hours per week, a love of spending 1.5 to 2 hours every day at the gym, and way too much television and video games.  

Before I get into my analysis of how these things affected me, I have a confession to make: I'm not a gamer.  That's right, although I grew up with these consoles around me and often played them, the only game system I've ever purchased was a $20.00, second-hand Game-Boy, and the games that came with it (which I don't even remember).  Sure, we had a family Nintendo system that I would play as a pre-teen, but I was never so committed to games that I was willing to spend my hard-earned money on them.  But then two things happened that brought video games into my life in an unavoidable way: My little brother, whom I could describe as a fairly dedicated gamer, bought himself an X-Box, and my Mom and Dad bought the first family desktop computer.  I was not prepared for this.

Now, to clarify, I was quite capable of spending hours in front of the television, much as many kids of my generation were.  From Saturday morning cartoons (8am-2pm), to the evening shows my parents would have on (4pm-10pm, most weeknights), I was quite accustomed to the bluish glow of that 20-inch screen in the living room.  Television in itself was a big distraction for me in University – I'd be upstairs in my room "trying to study", but would often find myself listening to Seinfeld's jokes, Homer Simpson's gaff's or my family's reactions to what was on.  It was just so much more attention-grabbing than what was in my chemistry text book.  But although television was distracting, I rarely skipped studying in order to watch a show – that privilege fell to video games.  

So back to the X-Box and computer.  I've never been much for the first-person shooter type games, but the RPG's and strategy games got me hooked pretty quick.  I would stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning leveling up my LOTR character or building my Jurassic Park Zoo on the X-Box, or playing and re-playing campaigns on Starcraft until I could CRUSH the opposition (I couldn't settle for a simple win) on the computer.  It didn't help that I have an addictive personality, but when these things came into my life, I was hooked.  It wasn't that I stopped studying entirely, but there definitely came a point when I would actively and repeatedly convince myself that an extra 6 hours of studying would likely make little difference, and my time could be better spent relaxing and settling my brain before I hit the books.  

 

Now I also mentioned work and gym-time.  Working for 12-20 hours a week certainly limited what I could put my time into, and my grades DID improve when I finally cut the work out in my last year and a half, but for a good chunk of my undergraduate days I was only taking 4 courses (1 short of a full load), and probably should have been able to manage this.  I remember I had several friends who also worked, managed a full course-load, and got better grades than me.  As for the gym time, I always cut these hours back during exams, and think it probably helped me more than it hindered – many studies have shown that a healthy body helps our brains to focus better, so this probably wasn't my main problem.  

Well it turns out, I'm not the only one who had problems with video games in college.  I found a study published by Tolchinksy et al. (2011) in a journal called "CYBERPSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING".  Although large-scale studies rarely find associations between GPA or attention-deficit-like symptoms and the amount of video gaming in the general population, according to the authors of this study there is a sub-population of people defined by psychologists as "problematic video game players" (PVGP, Tolchinksy et al. 2011).  Playing video games is considered to be problematic "when the behavior begins to cause significant dysfunction in the user’s activities of daily life (e.g., when playing compromises sleep hygiene job or school performance, and relationships)".  About 7.5 % of children gamers are considered to be PVGPs, to the point where they are exhibiting signs of ADHD, and these scientists wanted to find out if similar stats applied to college students.  

 

What they found is that it's much more complicated than video games being the cause of ADHD-like behaviour and bad school performance, but they can make things worse for certain people.  Specifically, if you're a male gamer with poor time-management skills, you will be much more likely to allow video games to become a problem and exhibit ADHD-like symptoms, whereas if you can limit yourself to a small amount of time on the console, you should suffer no adverse effects.  On the other hand, if you're a female, the ADHD-like symptoms themselves appear to be the culprit in leading to PVGP.  What this means is that men with PVGP benefit from enhancing their time-management skills, whereas women benefit from treatment of ADHD symptoms.  They point to the highly polarized view of gender in video game environments as a possible reason for the differences, but didn't test for it.  

So unfortunately, the blame for my own PVGP in University probably lies on something I suspected as a culprit all along – poor time management skills.  I've developed better habits since starting grad school, and I don't play video games any more, but my time-management skills could probably still use some fine-tuning.  Two things that definitely help me are making 'to-do' lists at the start of the day, and limiting my time on things like email and facebook.  See http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219553 for a few more tips.  

As for my students, my personal theory is that the odds are increasingly stacked against them – between the highly stimulating video games, amazing youtube content, and constant conversations with friends over smartphones, they are dealing with some SERIOUS distractions these days, particularly if they have time management problems or ADHD symptoms going into college.  And as much as I'd recommend that they ditch the cell-phones and consoles, it's probably more important to understand how their brains respond to these things, and take action on time management or ADHD treatment, than to get rid of their phones entirely.  

 

Before I get back to work, I thought I'd suggest something for all the behavioural psychologists out there that study problematic video game play and personal achievement.  Is there some way to control for the intelligence of the people you are studying?  I've not seen anything on this, and admittedly haven't looked very far, but it seems to me that measuring the connection between scholastic achievement or GPA's and time spent gaming could be misleading if it's not informed by the perspective of how a person would perform in an optimal learning environment.  It could be confounded by, for example, a connection existing between a person's propensity to play video games for long periods of time being connected to their intelligence.  In other words, if only the really smart kids are spending hours on the console, they are probably getting by just fine grade-wise, but could still be performing more poorly than they otherwise would be, if they were in an optimal learning environment.  This would obviously influence the results of studies that look at coarse associations between gaming time and performance.  Any takers on this study?