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"Psychology - Concentration"

I was watching some program on tv yesterday, which featured a psychological test where people are shown words written in different colours. The words themselves are the name of colours, but don't correspond to the colour in which the word is written.

The test is to name the colour it's written in, ignoring what the word actually says. It's surprisingly difficult.


It's supposed to test your ability to concentrate on one thing without being distracted.

And after not doing very well, it's a skill I'd like to improve.

Does anyone know how I can do this?

I love you all.

There are many parts of your brain which deal with paying attention and with what information you are concious of and what not. Mainly the reticular activating system in your brainstem (i.e neither right nor left side), the limbic system (encompasses both hemispheres) the sense organs and the frontal lobes, along with the hippocampus, where you store long term memories, the posterior parietal cortex, the basal ganglia and the latinal pulvinar in the thalamus (which, if not functining properly, is linked with dyslexia)

The more efficient these part of the brain are at focusing in on what you need, and filtering everything else away from the higher centres of your brain, the better you are at concentrating on one thing in spite of other stimuli.

The efficiency also has a downside though, in that it makes you slightly less aware and thus slower to respond to some stimuli which you are not concentrating on. For instance, there was an experiment done at Harvard in 1999, where they asked 28 people to note down how many passes one particular team (dressed in white) made in a basketball match against a team in black. Only 6/28 noticed a black umbrella being opened on the sidelines when later questioned. Basically that shows that concentrating on one thing blocks out other stimuli which might be important, so don't go too crazy trying to improve your concentration, because it might mean you get run over one day because you don't notice a bus coming while you're reading a roadsign.

Apparently, it's creative for right brain, and analytical for left.

Left brain thinking processes
Logical
Analytical
Quantitative
Fact-based
Planned
Organised
Detailed
Sequential

Right brain thinking processes
Holistic
Intuitive
Synthesising
Integrating
Emotional
Interpersonal
Feeling-based
Kinaesthetic

So er... whatever side isn't working that well... practise using it. :D There are probably exercises out there to strengthen each side.

*Sob* only 88%. I was okay until the very last one...

But the left brain - right brain thing.. I hadn't given that much thought. I'm very strongly right-brained (if I have them the right way round).

But the skill of excluding everything but what you're concentrating on from the information you're taking in,

any ideas how to actually improve it?

Lol, very good Grix. I didn't fare so well either :^D

Found a better one, can't link directly to it.

Search for concentration tests on google, top link, follow the redirect, do the test.

I failed, utterly.

yer exactly. Also that's cheating.

FFF haxor.

Easy, 100%.

It's much harder when you have to shout them out quickly.

It's so bloody easy.
Do you know how?

Just blur your vision so you can't read the words.

Amazing.

100%
Yey

A few typos down there.

I got 100% too. But not too well in the one in TQ. Bulking underpressure, that's what it is... ARGHHHAJFErj 3209