Sustained attention and the experience of flow
- PDF / 1,455,948 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 8 Downloads / 189 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Sustained attention and the experience of flow Jeremy Marty‑Dugas1 · Laura Howes1 · Daniel Smilek1 Received: 10 April 2020 / Accepted: 1 October 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The state of flow—often referred to as being “in the zone”—is characterized by the experience of deep, effortless concentration on the activity one is engaged in. While much of the flow literature seems to imply a tight link between flow and attention processes, relatively little work has assessed this question empirically. In the present study, we explored how the experience of flow relates to behavioural performance on the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). Flow was indexed at the state level using thought-probes and at the trait level via questionnaires. The main finding was that those who experienced more state-level flow during the SART made fewer commission errors during the task, indicating that flow is linked to better sustained attention. Interestingly, the correlation between flow and sustained attention performance was found to increase in the second half of the task. While trait flow was not related to SART performance, it was found to be predictive of state flow during the task, such that those who tended to experience higher levels of flow in their everyday lives also experienced more flow during the experiment.
Introduction ‘Flow’—the experience of being completely and effortlessly absorbed in what one is doing—has been documented across a diverse set of activities, including playing sports, creating art, sailing and performing surgery (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975/2000; Macbeth, 1988; Swann, Keegan, Piggot & Crust, 2012). Several descriptions of flow experience imply that those who are prone to flow (i.e. higher in trait flow) also tend to have greater sustained attention abilities (Csikszentmihalyi, 1978; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). However, interestingly, relatively little work has examined empirically the relation between the experience of flow and sustained attention abilities (de Sampaio Barros, ArujuMoreira, Trebelin & Radel, 2018). Here we build on prior work (Cermakova, Moneta & Spada, 2010; Marty-Dugas & Smilek, 2019; Schiefele & Raabe, 2011; Ullén et al., 2012; Ullén et al., 2016; see also Study 2.1 and 3.2) to further explore the relation between flow and sustained attention using more refined and targeted measures of both flow and sustained attention.
* Jeremy Marty‑Dugas [email protected] 1
When considering this relation, it is important to recognize that flow and sustained attention are not equivalent constructs. Flow is characterized by the phenomenological experience of deeper or more focused concentration, which simultaneously feels effortless (Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 2010; Marty-Dugas & Smilek 2019)—and as such is best indexed directly, using subjective reports rather than performance metrics (which are typically agnostic to the experience of effort). Sustained attention, however, refers to the extent to which an indiv
Data Loading...
