【正文】 d then tried to squeeze in three weeks worth of running practice just the day before a track meet, how well do you think you39。s supposed to be a quiet environment? Samantha Not exactly. My brother and parents try to keep it down when I am studying, but the phone pretty much rings off the hook, so … Professor So you might try a place with fewer distractions, like the library … Samantha But the library closes at midnight, and I like to study all night before a test, you know, so everything is fresh in my mind. I studied six straight hours the night before the midterm exam . T hat ’ s why I expected to do so much better. Professor Oh ok. Y ou know that studying six consecutive hours is not equivalent to studying one hour a day for six days. Samantha It isn ’ t? Professor No. There is research that shows that after about an hour of intense focus, your brain needs a break. It needs to, you know, shift gears a little. Your brain39。t do badly on the exam, but I agree it did not reflect your potential. I say this because your work on the lab project was exemplary. I was so impressed with the way you handle the microscope and the samples of onion cells, and with how carefully you observed and diagramed and interpreted each stage of cell division. And I don39。s some speculation that h umans started having a major impact on Earth much earlier, about 8000 years ago. That39。s right, up to a point, bu t that ’ s not all. Lavie also discovered that as she made the task more difficult , V5 became less a ctive, so that means that now people weren ’ t really noticing the star field at all. That was quite a surprise and it approved that the second hypothesis – that we do perceive eve rything all the time but the brain categorizes distractions differently, well, that wasn39。t admit the unimportant information. The second h ypothesis is that, yes, we do perceive everything, but the brain categorizes the information, and whatever is not relevant to what we are concentrating on gets treated as low priority. So Lavie did another experiment, designed to look at the ability to concentrate better in the face of increased difficulty. This time she used brain scanning equipment to monitor activity in a certain part of the brain, the area called V5, which is part of the visual cortex, the part of our brains that processes visual stimuli . V5 is the area of the visual cortex that39。s the next part of the experiment that was surprising. When the difficulty really increased, when the screen filled up with letters, people got better al spotting the Xs and Ns . What do you think that happened? John Well, maybe when we are really concentrating, we just don39。clock . Lecture Lecture Lecture Lecture 1 1 1 1 Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a psychology class Professor For decades, psychologists have been looking at our ability to perform tasks while other things are going on, how we are able to keep from being distracted and what the conditi ons for good concentration are. As long ago as 1982, researchers came up with something call ed the CFQ the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire. This questionnaire asks people to rate themselves according to how often they get distracted in different situations, like h um … .. fetti ng to save a puter file because they had something else on their mind or missing a speed limit sign on the road. John? John I39。d better get to work. Do you have any advice on how I should cover the story? Advisor Well, Max will want to talk to you but I am sure he will tell you to find out things like why the physics department39。t made any decision about me yet? Advisor Well I just got here a few minutes ago... haven39。s see . I think I told you that we ask prospective reporters to turn in some outlines for possible articles . Student Yeah, I sent them in about a week ago, but I haven39。s right. You39。m Anna, the faculty advisor Student Oh, great! I39。m Peter Murphy. You probably don39。re taking a jo urnalism class and you ’ ve done some reporting before in high school, right? Student Wow, you have a good memory. Advisor Well we haven ’ t had many students applying lately so … so anyway, you still want to do some reporting for us? Student Yeah, if you have room for me on the staff . Advisor Well we always need more reporters, but you know, we don39。t heard anything back yet, so, so I thought I39。t been in for a couple of days. Just give me a second to check my . Uh … here is a message from Max. Let ’ s see. Well it seems you ’ ve really impressed him. He says it would be wonderful if you could join our staff. Student Oh, great! When can I start? Advisor WeII, you turned in an outline on something to do with the physics department? Student Yeah, they39。s worried about enrollment. Has the number of students been getting smaller in recent years? By how much? What kinds of plans are they considering to address this problem? Student Right, some of those issues are already in what I proposed . Advisor And you39。ve lost my share of puter files, but not because I ’ m easily distracted. I just fet to save them. Professor And that39。t perceive irrelevant information . Maybe we just don39。s responsible for the sensation of movement. Once again, Lavie gave people a puterbased task to do. They have to distinguish between words in upper and lowercase letters or even