digital era psychology studies on cognitive changes

Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of PSIWORLD2011 doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.01.218 Social and Behavioral Sciences Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 2011 000–0

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 33 (2012) 732 – 736

1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of PSIWORLD2011

doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.01.218

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000

www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia PSIWORLD 2011

Digital era psychology – studies on cognitive changes

Cristian Vasilea*

a Petroleum Gas University of Ploiesti, 39 Bucuresti Blvd, Ploiesti, 100680, Romania

Abstract

In recent decades there was an increasing impact of the technological development, felt most strongly in the area of information and communication technology (ICT) ICT have become present in many areas of activity and in increasingly more households, transforming our world in the so-called Information Society

The study focuses on the possible consequences of the use of digital technologies (more specific: internet activities, games etc.) on cognitive processes Our approach evaluates the impact of frequent use of “internet based activities”

on the cognitive functions The paper seeks also possible implications of cognitive changes in the whole personality

© 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd Selection and peer-review under responsibility of PSIWORLD 2011

Keywords: ICT; digital; psychology; cognition

1 Introduction

According to different studies, there is an increasing number of children and, especially, adolescents using computer-based activities for socializing, gaming, e-mail, web-sites visiting etc (Johnson, 2006) Moreover the learning process is based increasingly more on the online activities, such as teacher – students platforms interaction, online tasks, multimedia usage for teaching in classroom and so on

In addition the modern technology brought us different digital gadgets which surround all of us: iPhones, iPods, iVideos – all of them connected to Internet or to different Internet-based networks This way almost all information is processed and transmitted by IT means Teenagers and young people increasingly rarer read a newspaper Traditional libraries have few customers, and e-books are already used widely in most developed countries To further facilitate "reading" audio-books were made available to "readers"

* Corresponding author

E-mail address: clinical_psycho@yahoo.com

© 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of PSIWORLD2011

All these major changes took place in a very short period in human history During one generation

mankind started from the invention of communication networks within companies, to reach the internet

with all its applications used by so many people

The information and communication technology (ICT) have become present in many areas of activity

and in increasingly more households, transforming our world in the so-called Information Society

(Castells, 2000)

Nowadays we cannot ignore the changes in people’s lives brought by the Internet and its accessories

This led to the breakdown of the geographical barriers, and the development of real-time, instantaneously,

of certain activities that are based on cognitive functions (DiMaggio et al., 2001)

2 Internet-based activities

Almost all the digital activities are related somehow to internet For instance, one of the most used

commercial activities is the online shopping Patwardhan and Yang (2003) show that in a survey made in

2001 in U.S the results indicates that 48.2% of all Americans over 18 years old (100.2 million persons)

used online shopping and have bought different products

Studies show that digital media was the most popular media in 2010 61% of users used the internet

daily compared to only 54% watching TV, 36% listening to the radio and 32% reading newspapers

There are different statistics showing how often the internet is used daily, such as the graphs below:

Figure1 Internet daily usage (Weg, 2011)

Figure 2 Social network users in Europe (http://pewinternet.tumblr.com/post/7497313287/europe-social-media-map)

We have to underline that there is an inverse correlation between the age of the internet users and the number of the users: while the number of users increase, their age decreases About 25% of 5-year-old children use the internet The number rises to over 50% by age 9 and to at least 75% by ages 15-17’ (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2003)

All these internet-based activities have a major impact on cognitive functions, modifying or adjusting the human cognition to a digital world

We use the “cognition” term encompassing fundamental mental processes: perception, memory, language, thinking (with problem solving processes and comprehension), attention Cognitive development includes changes or adjustments in cognition over time After the computer invention we started to use the computer function in order to understand (and explain) better the human mind functions

3 Cognitive adjustments

Emphasized using of the computer in the last decades appears to have lead to different changes in PC operators’ cognitive functioning Furthermore, some studies have been focused on cognitive changes that have emerged among children and adolescents using frequently the computer (internet, chat etc.) Tardieu and Gyselinck (2003) discuss (on empirical evidence) about working memory constraints and about the need to consider the limitations of cognitive resources available to a user of a multimedia system (Oostendorp, 2003) Jtirrlelti and Htikkinen develop a socio-cognitive model for analyzing Web-based

interaction (id.)

The working memory (WM) is specialized on different sensory organs This way we can discuss about

visual WM or auditory WM As we know, the human being is mainly visual In addition we can observe

that the modern multimedia and internet-based activities are mainly visual In this specific case we will

discuss about the visual WM

The visual clutter data/information could lead to an overload of the visual WM and to a decrease of the

subject’s efficiency and cognitive performance Studies conducted in different environments indicates

that the overload issue appear when the information is transmitted only or mainly through a visual way

Tardieu and Gyselinck (2003) presents few studies on WM in the virtual environment We reproduce

below one of these studies:

“Using a short computer-generated animation depicting the process of lightning formation or a car’s

braking system, Mayer and Moreno (1998) examined how students integrate animation with a text

presented visually or auditorily Students viewed the animation along with the corresponding text

presented visually (same-modality presentation) or they viewed the animation along with the concurrent

narration presented auditorily (different-modality presentation) Three measures of performance were

considered: a memory test of the relevant steps in the process described, a matching test between the

names for elements and those placed in an illustration, and a transfer test requiring the subject to apply

his or her learning to new situations Students performed better on these tests when the animation was

accompanied by the text presented in an auditory rather than in a visual modality The authors

interpreted this to indicate that visual working memory is overloaded when materials are presented in

the same modality, whereas cross-modal presentation of the information in effect reduces the processing

overload Because learners are not able to hold the corresponding pictorial and verbal representations in

working memory at the same time, they have difficulties building connections between representations

presented in the same modality.”

Another study reproduced in the table below (Johnson, 2011) show a multiple function analysis,

among the cognition is also analyzed in terms of gender

4 Discussion

It is generally considered as the digital era and especially the internet-based activities negatively affect children and adolescents There are even some opinions that IT technology is one of the factors underlying exponential growth of certain disorders, such as ADHD Yet increasingly more results suggest that adaptive cognitive changes occur from the intensive use of digital technology and these changes don’t influence in a negative manner the human functioning within the modern society Yet there are several studies indicating that the increasing usage of the internet-based activities lead to the reduction of some specific skills from pre-digital human period

Studies indicate also that the human cognition is changing: we are adapting to new ways of information processing However the visual path is used in an excessive way in the digital world and this could lead to a decrease of the cognitive performance due to overload

Personality goes also through important changes Besides the cognitive adjustments, the social identity

is changing due to new ways of socializing Some behaviors adapt to the virtual world (e.g cyber bullying) The emotional area is also adapting to a new world

References

Castells, M (2000) The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol I MA, Cambridge,

UK:Blackwell

DiMaggio, P., Hargittai, E., Neuman, W R and Robinson, J P (2001) Social Implications of the Internet Annual Review of Sociology Vol 27: 307-336

Johnson, G (2006) Internet Use and Cognitive Development: a theoretical framework E-Learning and Digital Media, 3(4),

565-573.

Johnson, G.M (2011) Internet Activities and developmental Predictors: Gender Differences Among Digital Natives Journal of interactive Online Learning, Vol 10, no 2, 64-76

National Center for Educational Statistics (2003) Computer and Internet Use by Children and Adolescents in 2001:statistical analysis report Jessup: US Department of Education

Patwardhan, P., Yang J (2003) Internet dependency relations and online consumer behavior: a media system dependency theory

perspective on why people shop, chat, and read news online Journal of Interactive Advertising Vol 3, no.2, 57-69

Sprenger, M (2010) Brain-based teaching in the digital age Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD

Tardieu, H., Gyselinck, V (2003) Working memory Constraints in the Integration and Comprehension of Information in a

Multimedia Context In Cognition in a digital world (Ed van Oostendorp) New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.,

Publishers

van Oostendorp, H (ed.) (2003) Cognition in a digital world New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers

Weg, S (2011) Three important facts about global Social Media and Internet usage

http://ynovation.blogspot.com/2011/07/three-important-facts-about-global.html