Using Fidget Spinners May Actually Impede Learning

By Emily Reynolds Though fidget spinners have been around since the early 1990s, it was 2017 when they really started to make a stir, becoming a seemingly overnight sensation and starting to appear in offices, classrooms, public transport and pretty much anywhere else they were permitted. The actual provenance of the design has been debated, but many companies market the toys as a tool for concentration, particularly for those who have anxiety, ADHD or autism. Calming — and fun — they may be, but do they actually work when it comes to keeping attention? Julia S. Soares & Benjamin C. Storm from the University of California, Santa Cruz think not. In a new paper, they look at the marketing of fidget spinners as attentional aides — and come to the conclusion that they may be actively distracting. To examine the effect of fidget spinners on attention, the team asked 98 undergraduates to watch an educational video lecture about the process of baking bread while either using a fidget spinner or not; a further half of those not using a fidget spinner watched the lecture near someone who was. They were then asked to report any lapses in attention, and took a memory test for the material. If the logic of the marketing held, those playing with fidget spinners should have outperformed those who were not. But in fact they did not report any fewer lapses of attention than participants from the non-spinning condition, and actually performed significantly worse in the memory test...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Educational Memory Source Type: blogs