Can You Hear Me, Mother? The sixth in a continuing series of articles related to the psychology of gaming A few weeks ago, I went round to see Mum, unexpectedly, on a Sunday afternoon. I pressed the bell, and heard it ring inside. No answer. Strange, I thought. She's always in at this time. I rang a second time. I could hear Megan, her dog, bouncing about on the other side of the door - unfortunately, she doesn't bark. Still no Mum. I was getting a bit concerned by now. Looking through the keyhole, I could see the key was in the lock, so I knew she was in. If I had been in an adventure game I would have had a newspaper and a pencil in my rucksack, and could have slid the paper under the door, put the pencil in the lock, waggled it to dislodge the key and pulled it through on the paper so I could unlock the door. But this was real life. No pencil. No paper. No rucksack. I gave the bell a final ring and this time I did hear footsteps. The door opened and there was Mum. She was a bit confused at my greeting of "Thank goodness you're okay". I discovered she'd been in the middle of a fight in her current RPG that she hadn't heard the bell until the third ring! If I hadn't heard it ring myself from outside, we both would have doubted it had actually rung the other two times. As someone who has got equally engrossed in her own little world when in the middle of a good game (or book, or piece of music, come to that), she had my sympathy. When I used to play the MUG GODS, back in the late 80s and early 90s, I could hold intelligent conversations while playing ... and remember nothing of them later. I was just so sucked into 'life on-line' that life in the real world took second place at times. It wasn't so much that I was trying to do two things at once ... I didn't even realise I was doing one of them! Sometimes, while listening to a tape on my Walkman, while heading up Sidcup Hill, I get so lost in the music that I suddenly find myself half way along the high street, not remembering anything of the trip. Not even crossing two fairly busy roads on my way there. I find this rather scary and unsafe. The fact that the trip is familiar and one I've done several times a week for a dozen years or more doesn't reassure me. To me, there seems to be two separate but related things going on in cases like this where our minds freewheel. One is that we can get so engrossed in an activity - for example, playing a computer game - that we stop reacting to things that happen outside the game ... door bells, telephones and so on. The other is that we can seem to carry on normal activities ... conversations etc ... yet we are running on automatic pilot. Our full concentration is really being given to the game. Sometimes this can go wrong - once when I was on the computer, concentrating on what I was doing, I raised a glass to my lips to drink, didn't open my mouth, and effectively threw it into my face. It didn't do my sweater or the keyboard much good. So, what's going on? Is it good for us to get so enmeshed in one activity at the expense of others going on at the same time? Will we always 'come round' if we really need to? Once again, I asked psychotherapist Adrian Blake for his opinion. He said: "Now pay attention! How many times did we hear that at school? The aim was to get us to focus our eyes and ears on the teacher to the exclusion of other things. Attention takes energy, therefore it obeys the laws of physics. It is not limitless - we put food in our mouths, some of it is converted to energy. Food is 'fuel' to keep our body's life support systems going, and to provide energy for our attention system. Without attention we could not learn and, essentially, would not be able to predict danger. We talk about an attention span. This is exactly what it is. Attention being a span means we are capable of divided attention within certain limits. The within certain limits bit is important. Let's take an example. If we are talking to someone at the same time as we are casually strolling along together we can do both activities simultaneously because walking is a long-practiced activity that takes very little of our attention. Look at it like this:- Attention needed for walking, looking where Attention needed for we're going etc ... conversing 20% 80% -------------|---------------------------------------------------| 100% But what happens if the other person asks us an in-depth question that requires some pondering? Often we will both stop walking. Why? Because the attention needed for conversing is now greater and eats into the attention required for walking. One activity has to be sacrificed - and the one that is sacrificed is the least important one. In diagram form it might look like this:- Insufficient 'spare' attention for Attention needed for walking conversing 10% 90% ------|----------------------------------------------------------| 100% Of course if you both had to get to your destination urgently, then the conversing would be sacrificed. We might say, "Well, that's an interesting question. I need to really think about that. Could we talk about it later?" In the case of Sue's mum, the game she was engrossed in took priority. She was so intent on the game she literally could not hear the doorbell. Sue asks, will we 'come round' if we need to? If we're driving a car along a familiar route we can 'switch off' because driving takes very little attention in that scenario (Americans call it highway hypnosis). Our attention might be focused on other thoughts, or on listening to the car radio. If some emergency happens however we usually 'come round' very quickly. Our brain systems recognise a potential danger and automatically prioritise the focus of our attention. So how much do you remember of what you've just read? To the extent you've been distracted by other thoughts or external events you will remember less of all this. It doesn't mean you're forgetful or stupid. You're just obeying the laws of the universe." - o -