00:00A quick look at your phone can easily turn into minutes of scrolling.
00:04And every distraction forces the brain to make a decision.
00:07Stay focused or switch tasks.
00:09Let's see if there's a downside.
00:11At Technical University Berlin, I'm asked to match pairs of images,
00:14much like in a game of memory.
00:17A robot is also playing the game,
00:20offering suggestions about which image might be the correct match.
00:23A control group in another room does the same with another robot.
00:27Using eye-tracking technology, researchers record exactly where test subjects look while completing the task.
00:34One of the robots was highly reliable, the other was only helpful some of the time.
00:39When the robot was reliable, participants quickly followed its guidance and moved on.
00:44But when its advice was unpredictable, subjects kept looking at him,
00:48spending more time deliberating, even though most never consciously noticed the difference.
00:53Researchers say the brain is constantly trying to determine which information matters.
00:58When a signal is uncertain, the part of your brain involved in monitoring conflict pushes our attention toward it.
01:04More attention is spent checking, less remains for the task itself.
01:09Task switching is always associated with a cognitive cost.
01:13And these switch costs accumulate over time.
01:17So it's a really additive model.
01:19The more often you have to switch a task within a given time period,
01:23the more costs you pay.
01:25And high cognitive costs are associated with fatigue, negative emotions,
01:31and also increase the risks that you make mistakes.
01:35The same mechanism may help explain why social media notifications can be so distracting.
01:40Every buzz could be important or it could be nothing.
01:43Either way, the brain feels compelled to check.
01:46And anticipation itself can be rewarding.
01:49Anticipating a reward is to our brain very similar to the reward itself.
01:54It engages the same system and that keeps us engaged.
01:59The good news?
02:00Researchers say attention isn't fixed.
02:02Just like a muscle, it can be trained.
02:06Reducing unnecessary notifications and spending time on uninterrupted tasks
02:10can help the brain focus on what really matters.
