Today's post is only tangentially about Maryanne Wolf's Reader Come Home, which contained plenty of interesting details about a range of topics. I'm pulling a couple of those details today as a starting point for some follow-up questions about the context or relevance of those data-driven conclusions. The goal is to show some examples of how I approach one specific aspect of analytical thinking - the process of understanding how a researcher made a certain conclusion, then determining how strongly I feel about the resulting implications.
First, there was a thought regarding how college professors report that students are becoming less patient with complex literature, particularly in terms of how much time is required for comprehending these works. This is an easy observation to accept, but I do wonder if the time aspect is more relevant than first meets the eye. If students generally feel like there are more constraints on their time compared to an equivalent student in the past, then these professors would be misunderstanding the source of this impatience.
There was also a reference to studies that suggest the short-term memory capacity of adults is shrinking, perhaps by up to 50% over the past decade or two. It's an alarming statistic but presented without a comparison point - how are adults succeeding in their lives as a result of this change? In my mind, if there are so many new tools available to us for tracking, organizing, and referencing information, then you could argue that a certain percentage decline in short-term memory would be expected (and optimal). That said, I do concede that 50% feels high.
Finally, Wolf mentioned new research investigating whether digitally trained youth can multitask more effectively than older generations. I would hope so! There seems to be a trend toward dismissing multitasking out of hand, but I'd prefer a perspective that looks at the task with a consideration for key details. What does it mean to multitask? What is being measured, and how? Who is in the measurement group? What is successful multitasking? Wolf's book does well in the reference to multitasking by pointing out that the one promising theory supposes expert training in at least one of the tasks better enables effective multitasking, which reveals helpful details that allow a reader to better appreciate the broader conversation among experts about multitasking.
