Complementary Information Literacy Training Practices in University Teaching and Academic Libraries

Cognitive Effects Of Internet Information Overload: More Time Or More Attention?

Again because of the rapid pace of technological progress, we have not been able to develop a set of codified and culturally embedded practices which can help us cope with information overload. From a cognitive viewpoint, there are objective limits on our mind’s information processing capacity (Eppler & Mengis, 2004), as the flow of information that each of us deals with must be selected, organized and assessed in order to be absorbed. But this entails a major cognitive effort that often causes significant adverse impacts (Misra and Stokols 2012). Young people who are digital natives, for example, have information processing behaviors characterized by rapid shifts in attention and less deliberation. They thus engage in multitasking behaviors that lead to increased distraction and poor self-control, preferring activities that bring immediate rewards for their information needs, even if the quality is low. Recent neuroimaging studies appear to confirm that these behaviors are associated with structural changes in the brain (Loh & Kanai, 2016). Interestingly, it seems that the multitasking required in video games can improve attention control performance by modifying frontal-parietal brain circuitry. This suggests that exposure to different forms of multitasking can have different effects on cognition (Bavelier et al., 2012).