A new study from Goldsmiths, University of London, may have found the cause for lack in concentration while performing available tasks, reports Medical Xpress.
The study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which inspected the impact of urbanization in performing tasks when compared with people living in remote places. Dr. Karina Linnell, from the Department of Psychology led the study. The research uncovered some new facts which show that people residing in an urbanized locality are easily distracted and are unable to perform tasks at their best.
"Attentional engagement has a big impact on our ability to conduct tasks to the highest standard," said Dr. Linnell, according to Medical Xpress. "What if, for example, companies realized certain tasks would be better carried out by employees based outside of the urban environment where their concentration ability is better?"
Dr. Linnell was accompanied by Dr. Caparos, Professor Davidoff, and Dr. de Fockert, who studied a remote tribe living in northern Namibia in the Kunene region known as Himba. The Himba tribe was compared with urbanized Himba and urbanized British through tasks to identify the level of focus among these groups, the report said.
All these groups were given tasks to find the target information and ignore the nonessential information, for example, displaying an image with a face in the center and side-lined with many related faces and these groups had to identify which side the image in the center was facing.
The results of these tasks showed a better attention and focus among the Himba tribe while the urbanized Himba and British showed less focus comparatively.
"While for this research we focused on the Himba to ensure a suitable control group, the findings do have wider implications," Dr. Linnell said. "This research suggests a trend that people who live in less urbanised areas of the UK, such as the Shetlands, may be in a better cognitive state to concentrate on tasks then those who live in large cities."
