Motor performance has been shown to be superior when focusing on a physically farther environmental cue (external focus-far, EF-far) instead of a cue proximal to the body (EF-near). However, little is known about whether these foci affect bimanual tasks. Further, the effect of visual information on attentional focus is unclear. In the present…

The rapid proliferation of online learning in higher education has accentuated the need for a deeper understanding of attentional distractions that affect learners. This study explored how doctoral students experience and manage attentional distractions in asynchronous online learning environments. Drawing on the Community of Inquiry framework,…

Purpose: The study examines the impact of social media distraction on the relationship between student engagement and student evaluations of teachers (SET) in management education, part of the STEM disciplines. While it is widely accepted that student engagement and evaluation of teachers are two important constructs of active learning systems,…

Dramatic changes in education have occurred in the last twenty years due to technological developments, including social media, smartphones, increasing access to the internet, the move to learning management systems, the growth of online classes, and artificial intelligence, just to name a few. Most recently, a global pandemic caused higher…

Mind wandering is often defined as the phenomenon of one's attention drifting away from the current activity toward inner thoughts and feelings. In the laboratory, mind wandering is most frequently assessed with thought reports that are collected while people perform some ongoing activity. It is not clear, however, inasmuch the resulting…

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of social media engagement, which includes frequency of using social media platforms (FSMP) and social media involvement, on the academic distraction and academic performance of the student. The study further tests the moderating role of attention control on the relationship between…

Current views posit that forming and retrieving memories of ongoing events influences action control. However, the organizational structure of these memories, or event files, remains unclear. The "hierarchical coding view" posits a hierarchical structure, wherein task sets occupy a high level of the hierarchy. Here, the contents of an…

Background: Attentiveness during class is critical for learning. Teachers have strategies to promote active engagement and active learning, yet little control over students' baseline level of alertness and focus upon arriving to class. Objective: To evaluate the effect of pre-lecture cognitive exercise on attention and learning in lectures.…

Eye gaze tracking has recently become indispensable for domains like virtual reality, augmented reality, human-computer interaction and advertisement. The commercial eye gaze tracking equipment is too expensive to be used by the masses. In this manuscript, a non-invasive, low-resolution ordinary camera-based system has been proposed for tracking…

Many researchers agree that information residing in the focus of attention in working memory benefits from a boost in memory strength and activation, as well as heightened accessibility. However, recent studies have questioned this heightened accessibility. More specifically, these recent studies found reduced accessibility for an item in the…

The dissertation investigated the interplay between an elevated sense of purpose moderated by heightened altruistic motivation and sustained attention in a college undergraduate population. Drawing on existing literature highlighting the positive effects of purpose on well-being and cognitive abilities, the study introduced an experimental design…

Success in postsecondary education requires proficiency with academic online information seeking. Navigating the internet to find information is a complicated task that is vulnerable to lapses in attention. This study examined the relationships among Canadian graduate students' self-reported behavioral inattention symptoms, awareness and…

The human eye scans visual information through scan paths, series of fixations. Analogous to these scan paths during the process of actual "seeing," we investigated whether similar scan paths are also observed while subjects are "rehearsing" stimuli in visuospatial working memory. Participants performed a continuous recall task…

Recent research suggests that both a holistic focus of attention (i.e., focusing on the general feeling of a movement) and an external focus of attention improve motor performance relative to an internal focus of attention. The purpose of this study was to determine how a holistic, internal, and external focus impacts torque production and…

Background: Both eye movement modelling examples (EMMEs) and cues guide attention and improve learning in multimedia learning environments. EMME can act as a special form of cue. However, no studies have directly examined whether EMME would be superior to visual cues. Objective: The study was to investigate whether there were advantages of EMME…