nyu cognitive psychology phd

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Course Offerings

Psychology (2022 - 2024).

Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1) or the equivalent is a prerequisite for all courses in psychology, except for Data Literacy for Psychology (PSYCH-UA 8), Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (PSYCH-UA 10), and Advanced Psychological Statistics (PSYCH-UA 11). Some courses carry additional prerequisites, as noted below.

Introductory and Data Literacy/Statistics Courses

Introduction to Psychology PSYCH-UA 1 No prerequisite. Offered every semester. Cimpian, Knowles, Reed, Rhodes, Van Bavel. 4 points. Fundamental principles, with emphasis on basic research and applications in psychology’s major theoretical areas of study: thought, memory, learning, perception, personality, social processes, development, and physiological bases of psychology. Includes direct observation of methods of investigation through laboratory demonstrations and student participation in current research projects.

Data Literacy for Psychology PSYCH-UA 8  No prerequisite. Offered every year. Ma. 4 points. Equips students with a critical understanding of how behavioral data, statistics, and the results of psychological research are used and misused. Topics: lying with data, cognitive biases, Bayesian reasoning, coincidences, opinion polling, pseudoscience, the scientific process, academic publishing, navigating the scientific literature, types of data, experimental design, variables, the concept of a p-value, and the replication crisis.

Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences PSYCH-UA 10 No prerequisite. PSYCH-UA 10 and 11 may be taken in either order. Offered every semester. Bauer. 4 points. Focuses on computation and the application of statistical tools and techniques for evaluating data and interpreting results from psychological studies. Data description, significance tests, confidence intervals, linear regression, analysis of variance, and other topics. Utilizes both randomized experiments and correlational studies.

Advanced Psychological Statistics PSYCH-UA 11 No prerequisite. PSYCH-UA 10 and 11 may be taken in either order. Offered every semester. 4 points. A more theoretical approach that provides a deeper understanding of the aim and use of various behavioral statistical analyses and procedures. Focuses on the use of statistical tests, software used to analyze data, data visualization, and empirical methodologies .

Core A: Psychology as a Natural Science

Two Core A courses must be taken for the major, one for the minor. Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1) is the prerequisite for all Core A courses.

Perception PSYCH-UA 22 Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Offered every semester. Landy, Maloney, Winawer. 4 points. Survey of basic facts, theories, and methods of studying sensation and perception. Emphasis is on vision and audition, although other modalities may be covered. Topics include: receptor function and physiology; color; motion; depth; psychophysics of detection, discrimination, and appearance; perceptual constancies; adaptation, pattern recognition, and the interaction of knowledge and perception.

Cognitive Neuroscience PSYCH-UA 25 Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Offered every semester. Curtis. 4 points. Provides a broad understanding of the foundations of cognitive neuroscience, including dominant theories of the neural underpinnings of a variety of cognitive processes and the research that has led to those theories. Covers the goals of cognitive neuroscience research and the methods that are being employed to reach these goals.

Cognition PSYCH-UA 29 Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Offered every semester. Hilford, Rehder. 4 points. Introduction to theories and research in some major areas of cognitive psychology, including human memory, attention, language production and comprehension, thinking, and reasoning.

Developmental Psychology PSYCH-UA 34 Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Counts as a Core A or Core B but not both. Offered every semester. Adolph, Cimpian, Dillon. 4 points. Introduction of relevant theoretical issues and selected research. Focuses on infancy through adolescence. Lectures interweave theory, methods, and findings about how we develop as perceiving, thinking, and feeling beings.

Social Neuroscience PSYCH-UA 35 Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Counts as a Core A or Core B but not both. Offered every semester. 4 points. Reviews theories and methods guiding social neuroscience and research examining the brain basis of social processes, including snap judgments; theory of mind; empathy; emotion; perceiving faces, bodies, and voices; morality; among others.

Core B: Psychology as a Social Science

Two Core B courses must be taken for the major, one for the minor. Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1) is the prerequisite for all Core B courses.

Personality PSYCH-UA 30 Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Offered every semester. Andersen. 4 points. Introduction to research in personality, including such topics as the self-concept; unconscious processes; how we relate to others; and stress, anxiety, and depression.

Social Psychology PSYCH-UA 32 Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Offered every semester. West. 4 points. Theories and research about the social behavior of individuals: perception of others and the self, attraction, affiliation, altruism and helping, aggression, moral thought and action, conformity, social exchange and bargaining, group decision making, leadership and power, and environmental psychology.

Developmental Psychology PSYCH-UA 34 Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Counts as a Core A or Core B but not both. Offered every semester. Adolph, Cimpian, Dillon. 4 points. Introduction and overview of relevant theoretical issues and selected research. Focuses on infancy through adolescence. Lectures interweave theory, methods, and findings about how we develop as perceiving, thinking, and feeling beings.

Social Neuroscience PSYCH-UA 35 Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Counts as a Core A or Core B but not both. Offered every semester. 4 points. Reviews theories and methods guiding social neuroscience and research examining the brain basis of social processes, including snap judgments; theory of mind; empathy; emotion; perceiving faces, bodies, and voices; morality.

Core C: Laboratory Courses 

One Core C course is required for the major. Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1) and either Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (PSYCH-UA 10) or Advanced Psychological Statistics (PSYCH-UA 11) are prerequisites for all Core C courses. These courses have additional prerequisites as noted below.

Laboratory in Social and Organizational Psychology PSYCH-UA 38 Prerequisite: Personality (PSYCH-UA 30), or Social Psychology (PSYCH-UA 32), or Industrial and Organizational Psychology (PSYCH-UA 62). Offered in the fall. Heilman. 4 points. Acquaints students with research methodology in organizational psychology. They perform an original study, such as a laboratory experiment or research survey, in one of these areas.

Laboratory in Personality and Social Psychology PSYCH-UA 39 Prerequisite: Personality (PSYCH-UA 30), or Social Psychology (PSYCH-UA 32), or Abnormal Psychology (PSYCH-UA 51), or Industrial and Organizational Psychology (PSYCH-UA 62). Offered every semester. Balcetis, Gollwitzer, Knowles. 4 points. Methodology and procedures of research and exercises in data analysis and research design. Statistical concepts such as reliability and validity, methods of constructing personality measures, merits and limitations of correlational and experimental research designs, and empirical evaluation of theories. Student teams conduct research projects.

Laboratory in Developmental Psychology PSYCH-UA 40 Prerequisite: Developmental Psychology (PSYCH-UA 34). 4 points. Review of observational and experimental techniques for studying children. Requires a short-term study in a field or laboratory setting. Two presentations requiring a literature review and a proposed experimental design, with a report of the results of the study due at end of term.

Laboratory in Infancy Research PSYCH-UA 42 Prerequisite: Developmental Psychology (PSYCH-UA 34), and/or to be taken with a second semester of Tutorial in Infant Research (PSYCH-UA 992). Permission of the instructor required. Offered every semester. Adolph. 4 points. Part of a year-long research training program. General methods for studying infant development and specific methods for examining infants’ perceptual-motor development. Students design and conduct laboratory research projects, code and analyze data, and prepare results for presentation and publication (grant proposals, conference submissions, and journal submissions).

Laboratory in Cognition and Perception PSYCH-UA 46 Formerly PSYCH-UA 28. Prerequisite: Perception (PSYCH-UA 22), or Cognitive Neuroscience (PSYCH-UA 25), or Cognition (PSYCH-UA 29). Offered every semester. Gureckis, Hilford, McElree. 4 points. Experience and knowledge of empirically-based investigations into cognition and perception is provided. Students engage in class-designed experiments and carry out research projects. Students learn to formulate experimental questions, design and conduct an experiment, complete statistical analyses, write research papers and present a short research talk.

Psychological Science and Society PSYCH-UA 53 Formerly PSYCH-UA 300. Prerequisite: Perception (PSYCH-UA 22), or Cognitive Neuroscience (PSYCH-UA 25), or Cognition (PSYCH-UA 29), or Personality (PSYCH-UA 30), or Social Psychology (PSYCH-UA 32), or Developmental Psychology (PSYCH-UA 34), or Social Neuroscience (PSYCH-UA 35). Offered every semester. 4 points. Provides an understanding of the research process in psychology, starting with empirical investigations and proceeding to the communication of the research (e.g. through primary journal articles and popular media). Emphasizes critical review and analyses of methods, statistical examinations, descriptions, and claims and interpretations of scientific research.

Advanced Elective Courses

Two advanced electives are required for the major, one for the minor. All have prerequisites in addition to Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1), as noted below. A student who takes a quantitative advanced elective (identified in the course descriptions below) for the major requirement of "one additional quantitative course" cannot double-count the course as a general advanced elective.

Teaching in Psychology PSYCH-UA 2 Prerequisite: admittance by application only. Offered every semester. Hilford. 2 points. Students attend a weekly seminar on teaching psychology, as well as the Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1) lecture. Students put their training to immediate use by teaching a weekly Introduction to Psychology recitation.

Language and Mind PSYCH-UA 27 Identical to LING-UA 3 (formerly LING-UA 28). Prerequisite: Cognition (PSYCH-UA 29). McElree, Pylkkänen. Offered in the spring. 4 points. Introduces the field of cognitive science through an examination of language behavior. Begins with interactive discussions of how best to characterize and study the mind. These principles are then illustrated through an examination of research and theories related to language representation and use. Draws from research in both formal linguistics and psycholinguistics.

Practicum in Clinical Psychology Research PSYCH-UA 43 Formerly Laboratory in Clinical Research. Prerequisite: Personality (PSYCH-UA 30), or Abnormal Psychology (PSYCH-UA 51), or Clinical Psychology (PSYCH-UA 81). Offered every semester. Westerman. 4 points. Students complete a set of hands-on research exercises. Methods include correlational and experimental designs and observational procedures. Topics include: psychotherapy process research; case formulation approaches to psychopathology and therapy; theoretical perspectives that are employed in both research and clinical practice .

Linguistics as Cognitive Science PSYCH-UA 48 Identical to LING-UA 48 and LING-GA 48. Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Offered every other year. Marantz. 4 points. See linguistics for course description.

Abnormal Psychology PSYCH-UA 51 Prerequisite: any Core B course or permission of the instructor. Offered every semester. Reed, Westerman. 4 points. The kinds, dynamics, causes, and treatment of psychopathology. Topics: early concepts of abnormal behavior; affective disorders, anxiety disorders, psychosis, and personality disorders; the nature and effectiveness of traditional and modern methods of psychotherapy; viewpoints of major psychologists past and present.

Introduction to Psycholinguistics PSYCH-UA 56 Identical to LING-UA 5. Prerequisite: Language (LING-UA 1). Offered every other year. McElree. 4 points. Theories and research concerning the cognitive processes and linguistic representations that enable language comprehension and production. Topics: speech perception, visual processes during reading, word recognition, syntactic processing, and semantic/discourse processing.

First Language Acquisition PSYCH-UA 59 Identical to LING-UA 59. Prerequisite: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1). Offered every year. Cournane. 4 points. See linguistics for course description.

From Illusions to Inference PSYCH-UA 60 Prerequisites: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1), and either Advanced Psychological Statistics (PSYCH-UA 11) or Calculus I (MATH-UA 121) or equivalent. Counts as a quantitative advanced elective. Offered every other year. Ma. 4 points. Examines illusions (visual, auditory, tactile, vestibular, and multisensory) to understand the central concept of inference in perception: how the brain constantly forms hypotheses about the outside world and tries to figure out which is most probable.

Industrial and Organizational Psychology PSYCH-UA 62 Prerequisites: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1); either Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (PSYCH-UA 10) or Advanced Psychological Statistics (PSYCH-UA 11); and one Core B course chosen from Personality (PSYCH-UA 30), or Social Psychology (PSYCH-UA 32), or Developmental Psychology (PSYCH-UA 34). Offered every year. 4 points. Psychology applied to the workplace; human behavior from the perspective of employees and employers. Analyzes the individual, the team, and the organization as a whole. Topics include employee engagement, satisfaction, identity, esteem, and career interests, as well as hiring, firing, and motivating and rewarding staff to increase performance and productivity.

Motivation and Volition PSYCH-UA 74 Prerequisites: Cognition (PSYCH-UA 29) and Social Psychology (PSYCH-UA 32). Offered every year. Oettingen. 4 points. Major research, theories, and findings. Topics: willpower and its absence, the psychology of goal setting and implementation, self-regulation disorders. Cognitive-neuropsychological and economic approaches.

Political Psychology PSYCH-UA 75 Prerequisite: Social Psychology (PSYCH-UA 32). Offered every year. Jost. 4 points. Comprehensive survey of political psychology— a dynamic sub-discipline at the intersection of psychology and political science. Topics include: historical development of political psychology; role of values in social science; authoritarianism and mass politics; personality and political leadership; mass media and candidate perception; individual and group decision-making; social identification; racial and ethnic prejudice; protest and collective action; revolution and terrorism.

Experiments in Beauty PSYCH-UA 79  Offered every year. Pelli. 4 points. Beauty is famously hard to study scientifically, but students in this hands-on laboratory course will each week formulate beauty-related questions and design and implement experiments to answer them. We also read and discuss one article or chapter each week from authors including Kant, Woolf, Berlin, Donoghue, Kuhn, Quine, and Wittgenstein.

Clinical Psychology PSYCH-UA 81 Prerequisites: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1) and Abnormal Psychology (PSYCH-UA 51). Offered every year. Reed, Westerman. 4 points. Provides a broad overview of the field. Topics include: assessment and treatment of psychological disorders. Attention is devoted to psychotherapy, but early intervention, psychopharmacology, and behavioral medicine also receive consideration. Combines theory, research, and practice; uses illustrative clinical examples; and discusses current controversies.

Special Topics in Psychology PSYCH-UA 300 Topics determine prerequisites. Offered every semester. 4 points. Advanced-level seminars. Topics vary. Some courses offered can count towards the quantitative advanced elective requirement (i.e. Computer Programming for the Psychological Sciences, Computational Neuroscience, Decision Making).

Special Courses

Supervised Reading PSYCH-UA 993 Prerequisite: permission of the department. May be repeated for credit. Counts only as elective credit toward the degree if taken for less than 4 points. If taken for 4 points, students may seek permission of the department to count toward the major as an advanced elective. Hilford. 1 to 4 points per term. Independent study, which may include research, readings, and written work. Supervised by a faculty member. May be used for internship or other practical training (academic work is required to earn credits; average of two hours a week at internship per point). Students may take no more than 12 points of independent study and/or internship; no more than 8 points may be taken in any one department.

Research Experience in Psychology PSYCH-UA 996 Prerequisites: Introduction to Psychology (PSYCH-UA 1), Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (PSYCH-UA 10), and permission of the department. May be repeated twice (a total of three enrollments) up to a maximum of 6 points. Hilford. 2 points. Students identify a faculty member sponsor in the Department of Psychology and complete work in a research laboratory under the direct supervision of the faculty mentor. Provides critical preparation for graduate study and develops students' skills in research; data management, analysis, and visualization; statistics; computer programming; grant and paper writing.

Honors Courses

Open only to students who have been admitted to the psychology honors program. The Honors Seminars (PSYCH-UA 200 and PSYCH-UA 201) may be counted as the two advanced electives required for the major.

Honors Seminar I PSYCH-UA 200 Prerequisite: admission to the honors program. Offered in the fall. 4 points. Recent studies and classical papers related to current controversies in psychology. Discussion of theoretical and technical aspects of each student’s thesis project.

Honors Seminar II PSYCH-UA 201 Prerequisite: Honors Seminar I (PSYCH-UA 200). Offered in the spring. 4 points. Students present preliminary results of their thesis projects and interpret their findings.

Graduate Courses Open to Undergraduates

Certain courses in the Graduate School of Arts and Science are open to junior or senior psychology majors who have (1) permission of their undergraduate psychology adviser, (2) permission of the Department of Psychology (graduate division), (3) the additional specific prerequisites listed for each course, and (4) permission of the instructor. For further information, please consult the department and the Graduate School of Arts and Science Bulletin.

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Global PhD Student Fellowship in Psychology

The NYU Abu Dhabi Global PhD Student Fellowship is offered in the areas of Cognition and Perception, as well as Social Psychology in collaboration with the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science .

The program generally involves one to two years of classwork at NYU New York, followed by three to four years of research at NYU Abu Dhabi. If selected, the doctorate is fully funded under the NYU Abu Dhabi Global PhD Student Fellowship.

Key Features of the Fellowship

• New York University degree upon graduation
• Access to the extraordinary resources of the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science and NYU Steinhardt
• Graduate coursework in New York
• Cutting-edge research opportunities in NYU Abu Dhabi’s labs
• Tuition, fees, and health insurance provided throughout the program
• Generous research assistantship and stipend provided by NYU Abu Dhabi throughout the program
• Assistance for degree-related travel between Abu Dhabi and New York
• Campus accommodation at no cost in Abu Dhabi
• A contribution toward accommodation costs in New York
• Career development assistance at both campuses

Master's Programs at NYUAD

Learn how to apply.

The applications for Fall 2024 are now closed. Applications will re-open for Fall 2025 in September.

Exciting Psychology Research is Happening at NYU Abu Dhabi

Psychology professors Jocelyn Bélanger and PJ Henry explain how we can gain better insight into human nature.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

NYU Abu Dhabi has the Gulf region’s only non-invasive MRI scanner dedicated solely to brain research.

How Working Memory Works

Grocery lists. Directions. People's names. Kartik Sreenivasan explains how we remember this stuff.

What Makes Us Human?

Psychologist Olivia Cheung studies how experience and learning influence a person’s ability to recognize objects.

Learn about our  faculty .

Graduate Student Highlight

A Pathway Between Two Worlds

The benefit of studying in both New York and Abu Dhabi allows Melissa Vega to expand the scope of her research work.

For more information about our programs, please contact  [email protected] .

Advanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Post-Master's Certificate Program

The Post-Master's Certificate in Advanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a 17-session program taking place over two semesters. The program begins with the foundations of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approaches and quickly progresses to application of these techniques to issues commonly seen in clinical practice including: Depression, Transdiagnostic Anxiety (Social Anxiety, Generalized Anxiety, Panic, etc.), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and more. "Third wave" CBT approaches including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) techniques are weaved into many of the sessions to enhance standard CBT practices. This program will teach practical hands-on clinical skills to help practitioners better help their clients.

Program Highlights

Topics include:

• Cognitive-based therapy approaches
• Behavioral-based therapy approaches
• Cognitive Restructuring
• Thought diaries, identifying cognitive disorders, and using Dysfunctional Thought Records
• Behavioral Activation
• Exposure Therapy
• Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) techniques to enhance standard CBT practices

Program Requirements

This certificate requires the completion of 17 two-hour sessions over the course of two semesters held at New York University’s Washington Square Campus in Greenwich Village, NYC. Assignments include weekly readings and a final learning assessment in the form of a project or test.

Program Schedule

The program runs on Wednesdays from 4:55–6:55 pm, over the course of the 2024-25 academic year. These classes will be offered in person at New York University's Washington Square Campus in NYC.

• September 18, 25
• October 9, 16, 23, 30
• November 13, 20

Spring 2025

• January 8, 15, 22
• February 12, 19, 26
• March 5, 12

About the Director

Andrew B. Schmidt, PhD, LCSW-R 

Dr. Schmidt is a skilled Cognitive Behavioral Therapist who trains and supervises other therapists in CBT-based approaches. He specializes in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, Trauma, and Depression and has trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Exposure and Response PRevent, and other exposure based approaches. He is an adjunct lecturer at NYU Silver.

Continuing Education Contact Hours

34 NYSED and ASWB/ACE Continuing Education Contact Hours will be awarded for this program.

Social Work

New York University Silver School of Social Work is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers {#SW-0012}.

NYU Silver School of Social Work, 1415 is approved as a provider for social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) www.aswb.org through the Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. NYU Silver School of Social Work maintains responsibility for the program. ASWB Approval Period: 11/19/22 - 11/11/25. Social workers should contact their regulatory board to determine course approval for continuing education credits.

Mental Health

New York University Silver School of Social Work is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors {#MHC-0083}.

For Mental Health Practitioners: Please check with your state, if you are not licensed in New York, to determine if these credits will be accepted for licensing renewal.

55 jurisdictions accept ACE-approved provider CE contact hours . ACE is not an approved Continuing Education provider in the states of New York (though NYU Silver is NYSED CE approved in NYS) and West Virginia, unless the event is outside of West VA. ACE only approves individual courses in New Jersey, though NYU Silver is CSWE-accredited and therefore accepted for licensed NJ professionals.  Here is a full list of statutes related to social work CE .

Application

Access the Post-Master's Certificate application here.

Fees and Refund Policy

The cost of this certificate program is $2,130, which includes registration and application fees and the cost of an online compendium of readings.

Available discounts include:

• 25% discount for NYU Silver School of Social Work MSW/DSW/PhD alumni
• 25% discount for practicum instructors currently working with NYU Silver School of Social Work graduate students.
• 15% discount for applicants who have already completed one NYU Silver certificate program.
• 50% discount for veterans.

Please note: discounts may not be combined.

Deposit:  Upon acceptance into the program, a $250 non-refundable deposit is required to secure your place. This deposit is applied to the total cost of tuition. 

Refund Policy for Early Withdrawal

The $250.00 program deposit is non-refundable. Students that withdraw before the first class will be refunded 100% of their fees (minus the deposit). Students that withdraw after up to and including two (2) sessions will be refunded 70% of their fees (minus the deposit). Students who withdraw after up to and including four (4) sessions will be refunded 55% of their fees (minus the deposit).Students who withdraw after four (4) sessions will receive no refund.

Please note: although the tuition payments are broken down into deposit, fall, and spring installments (a practice meant to create smaller, easier payments for students), the term 'sessions' refers to the entire program. Students who withdraw after four sessions, even if they have not begun the spring semester, are still required to pay their spring semester bills.

Scholarships

MB Practice  offers the Advanced CBT program as a scholarship opportunity for those who sign up with their service.  More information can be found  here .

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Cognitive Neuroscience

Program overview.

NYU Shanghai, in collaboration with ECNU's School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, welcomes applications from outstanding students for doctoral and master’s study in Neuroscience. Within the standard duration of studies (4-year Ph.D. / 3-year master's), students are required to complete their coursework at ECNU, undertake their master’s and doctoral research under the supervision of NYU Shanghai faculty, and pass through the dissertation defense. NYU Shanghai neuroscience faculty work on topics related to visual perception, perception and action, and visuomotor control; human cognitive neuroscience, speech and language, motor-sensory interaction, mental imagery, and other higher-level cognitive functions; neural mechanisms of economic decision-making, modeling and analysis of neuronal systems.

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Cognitive Psychology

Speaking of Psychology: Why our attention spans are shrinking, with Gloria Mark, PhD

Episode 225.

These days, most of us live our lives tethered to our computers and smartphones, which are unending sources of distraction. Research has shown that over the past couple of decades people’s attention spans have shrunk in measurable ways. Gloria Mark, PhD, of the University of California Irvine, talks about how the internet and digital devices have affected our ability to focus, why multitasking is so stressful, and how understanding the science of attention can help us to regain our focus when we need it.

About the expert: Gloria Mark, PhD

Kim Mills : When was the last time that you had an entire day completely free from digital distractions? No text messages, no email notifications, no social media and no aimless internet browsing. It might be hard to think of the last time you even had a tech free hour. These days, most of us live our lives tethered to our computers and our smartphones, which are unending sources of distraction. Sometimes it can feel impossible to concentrate deeply on anything for any significant length of time.

And indeed researchers have found evidence that over the past couple of decades, people's attention spans have shrunk considerably. So how has the rise of the internet and digital devices affected our ability to focus and pay attention? What does it mean to pay attention to something anyway? When you're being bombarded by different tasks, notifications, and emails, is it possible to multitask and deal with them all effectively? Or is productive multitasking a myth? How can understanding the science of attention help us to regain our focus when we need it to improve both our productivity and our happiness?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology , the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

My guest today is Dr. Gloria Mark, a psychologist and the chancellor's professor of informatics at the University of California Irvine. Dr. Mark studies how people interact with technology in their everyday lives and how technology affects our attention, multitasking, mood, and stress level. She studies people's behavior in real world settings and she's found that our attention spans have been shrinking over the past two decades. Her new book, published in January, is called Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity . 

Dr. Mark, thank you for joining me today.

Gloria Mark, PhD : Thank you so much for having me.

Mills : Most of us probably think that we know what it means when we say we pay attention to something, but you wrote in your book that there are different kinds of attention. Can you talk about that? What are the different kinds of attentions that we experience in our everyday life?

Mark : Let me actually start out by talking about what William James, the father of psychology, says about attention. So back in the 19th century, he said “Everyone knows what attention is. It's the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.” Of course, everyone knows what attention is. We all believe we know what attention is, but it's a lot more complicated than that.

So when I was studying attention, it occurred to me that you can be very engaged in something and you can put in a lot of mental effort. If I'm reading an article, it be challenging for me. On the other hand, there's a lot of things we do that are not at all challenging, but we're very engaged in. So when we're playing solitaire or playing simple games online, or if a person is gardening, they might be very engaged and not at all challenged. So we set out to study different kinds of attention when people use their devices. And what we did was we probed people throughout the day and we asked them at this point in time, want you to respond very quickly and tell us how engaged were you in what you just did, and how challenged were you in what you just did?

We find that when people are engaged and challenged, there seems to be rhythms in the day when this happens. And people seem to have peaks of times when they do this. We call this focused attention, tends to be late morning and again mid to late afternoon, about two to three. And when people are very engaged in something and not at all challenged, we call that rote activity.

Lots of things that people do are rote activity when they're online. It could be simple games, it could be even reading the news or doing social media. They tend to do that relatively uniformly throughout the day. But we do find that focused attention occurs in rhythms and it seems to correspond to the ebb and flow of our mental resources that we have available.

Mills : Well, I mentioned in the introduction that you have found evidence that our attention spans have shrunk in recent years, at least as measured by how long people spend on tasks and screens at work. Can you talk about that? How much have our attention spans shrunk?

Mark : So we started measuring this back in 2004, and at the time the measures that we used were stopwatches because that was the most precise thing we had at the time. We would shadow people with stopwatches for every single activity they did. We would record the start time and the stop time. So you're on a screen where you're working in a Word doc, as soon as you get to that screen, we clicked start time, soon as they turned away and checked email, we clicked stop time for the Word document, start time for the email. But fortunately, sophisticated computer logging methods were developed, and so of course we switched to those. So back in 2004, we found the average attention span on any screen to be two and a half minutes on average. Throughout the years it became shorter. So around 2012 we found it to be 75 seconds.

This is with logging techniques. This is an average. And then in the last five, six years, we found it to average about 47 seconds, and others have replicated this result within a few seconds. So it seems to be quite robust. Now, another way to think about this result is the median. The median means the midpoint of observations. The median is 40 seconds. And what this means is that half of all the measurements that we found were 40 seconds or less of people's attention spans. Now obviously because we're talking about averages and medians, sometimes people do spend longer, but quite a good bit of the time, their attention spans are much shorter and with an average coming to 47 seconds.

Mills : So why is this a problem? Since it seems to be happening almost universally at this point, is this just the new normal?

Mark : It seems to be the new normal because we seem to have reached a steady state over the last five or six years where these are the measures that we're seeing. Is this a good thing? I would argue it's not a good thing for the following reasons. First of all, we find in our research a correlation between frequency of attention switching and stress. So the faster the attention switching occurs, stress is measured by people wearing heart rate monitors. We show that stress goes up. We know from decades of research in the laboratory that when people multitask, they experience stress, blood pressure rises. There's a physiological marker in the body that indicates people are stressed. And in our studies, we've also simply asked people with well valid instruments to report their stress, their perceived stress, and it's reported to be higher the faster that we measure attention shifting.

So all of these measures seem to be consistent. I'll also measure that when people shift their attention so fast, and this is multitasking, when you keep switching your attention among different activities, people make more errors. And that's been shown in studies in the real world with physicians, nurses, pilots. We also know that performance slows. Why? Because there's something called a switch cost. So every time you switch your attention, you have to reorient to that new activity, that new thing you're paying attention to, and it takes a little bit of time.

So imagine if you're writing, let's say, say you're writing a chapter and you suddenly stop what you're doing and you switch and do something else, and then you come back to it, it's going to take you some time to reconstruct, what was I writing? What was the topic I was thinking about? What were the words I was using? That takes a bit of time. And so we incur these switch costs throughout the day as we're switching our attention, and this creates more effort. It uses more of our very precious mental resources on top of the work that we actually need to do.

Mills : You've also found that some switching is good. It's normal during the course of a day so that you might really concentrate on something for a length of time, and then you take a break and maybe you go online or maybe if you're working from home, you put in a load of laundry or you take a walk. Isn't that something that we actually need to do?

Mark : Absolutely. It's so important that we take breaks because if you work until you get exhausted, then of course you can get burnout. It's so important to take breaks and replenish. And by taking breaks, we have more energy, we have more attentional capacity, and we can actually do more. We can be more productive. The problem is that in our current world, many work environments, people neglect to take meaningful breaks, and we get ourselves into position where our performance suffers as a result.

Now, if you're going to take a break, it's really important to take a break at a point in the task that's called a break point. And a break point is a natural stopping point in a task. So going back to the writing example, if I'm writing something, a breakpoint would be at the end of a section or even at the end of a paragraph, but at a point where when I come back to it, then there's not going to be a lot of effort for me to have to reconstruct what I was doing. I've already finished that part. If you interrupt yourself in the middle of doing something as opposed to a natural stopping point, you use up a lot more mental resources and it's also more stressful.

Mills : Well, for people who want to schedule breaks, who really want to intentionally make the changes that you're talking about, what do you think about programs such as internet blockers that prevent people from going online during certain hours of the day so that you can force yourself to be more focused? Do you think that those are effective?

Mark : We've done a study with internet blockers, and it turns out it very much depends on an individual's personality. So people who have poor self-regulation skills can benefit from these kinds of blockers. Essentially what you're doing is you're offloading the work of self-regulation onto the software, and the software becomes a proxy agent for you. It's doing the work. It turns out people who have good self-regulation skills, so people who score low in impulsivity as a trait, people who score high in conscientious these are people who are actually harmed by these blockers.

Why? Because these are people who are very good at taking breaks and coming right back to work. They can take a break, they can go to social media, they can go to a news site and they can take a break, relax themselves, then they can come back to work. In this study, we took away their opportunity to take a quick online break, and they got burnt out. They worked straight through. They didn't take breaks. On the whole, I prefer that people develop their own agency, their own self-efficacy in controlling their attention. These software blockers can be good at times, but I think it's far more important that people learn to develop their own skills to control their attention.

Mills : A lot has been written about the Pomodoro technique, which is basically you set a timer for every 25 minutes and then you agree you're going to work straight through for 25 minutes, a timer goes off and you get a five minute break. What about that as sort of a low tech blocker?

Mark : Well, that's fine, but there are individual differences and some people would be able to work longer than what the Pomodoro technique dictates. Some people would work less. I think it's much more important that people become self-aware of their own level of energy and the amount of attentional resources they have available and take breaks according to what their own levels are.

So I've learned to do this. I've learned to become more aware of what my own capacity is, and when I start feeling tired, that's the point when I take a break. If I know I've got a really hard task to do, I might schedule a break before I start doing that task so I can replenish myself and then right after so that I can build back up the resources that I expended. The worst thing you can do, the worst thing is to schedule back to back Zoom meetings without breaks that it just gets us exhausted. There's no transition between these meetings. So we need to schedule in transitions between these kinds of hard tasks.

Mills : And when we're talking about attention and attention spans, there's something a little bit different but related, which is the concept of flow. Can you explain what that is? Because that is a kind of attention and it's very, very different from what we've just been talking about.

Mark : That's right. So flow is a type of attention that the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered, and it's what he calls the optimal state of attention. It's when people are so immersed in something that time just doesn't seem to matter. And so it's when we are at our peak creativity, we're using the optimal amount of challenge of our skills. So if we're not challenged enough in whatever your skill happens to be, you won't go into flow. If you're challenged too much in your skill, you won't go into flow. It'll be too hard. So there's that sweet spot that you have to hit to go into flow. So before I went into psychology, I actually had studied fine arts and used to be an artist, and I would get into flow regularly, and it's the nature of the work of being an artist and being creative that I could regularly get into flow.

Now, as a scientist, I rarely get into flow because of the nature of my work where I have to be very analytical and I have to use very careful thought. Is that a bad thing? No, not at all. It's very rewarding. It's just I realize that the nature of my work and the nature of a lot of knowledge work is such that it may not be conducive to flow, but sometimes I get into flow. If I'm in say a brainstorming session with other people, we might get into a kind of group flow where everyone is feeding off of each other's ideas. But in my typical day-to-day life, now, I generally don't get into flow, and it's not a bad thing.

Mills : Let's talk for a minute about the effect of the internet and devices on children's attention span. Most of your research has been with adults, but kids are spending a lot of time on devices as well. Are they going to have even more trouble with attention than those of us who first experience this level of distraction as adults?

Mark : This is something that I think we should be very concerned about as a society. So it turns out children that are as young as two to four years old, they already average two and a half hours of screen time a day. And when they get to be between five and eight, they average about three hours of screen time a day. Now, most of that screen time, it's TV and YouTube viewing, but children also do a lot of gaming. So we know from a lot of laboratory studies that when children are very young, they're a lot more susceptible to distraction than older children. And when they're distracted, it takes them longer to get back and focus again on that thing that they were distracted from. So I worry that when young children are spending so much time on the screen, it acculturates them to think that this is normal behavior to be on a screen.

The problem is that when children are very young, there are certain parts of their brain that are not yet mature. So their ability to self-control and a part of the brain called executive function and executive function, you can think of it as the governor of the mind. So it manages things like decision-making, and setting priorities of what we should be paying attention to. It helps manage interference of peripheral stimuli in the environment, and executive function is not yet well developed and children are sitting in front of screens and they're exposed to all kinds of potential distractions.

So I think this is not a good idea. Children need self-control for learning, and more and more we're seeing schools having a lot of online learning available for kids, and kids need self-control as a skill to be able to search for information, to do math problems online, to read and write without being distracted. I find it problematic that we're putting children into a digital world before some very critical mental functions are fully developed. I don't think kids are really ready for that.

Mills : Can focus be taught? I mean, you seem to be implying that we need to be doing something particularly with children so that they aren't constantly distracted. But how do you teach somebody to focus on something?

Mark : Well, for children, I think the best thing children can do is to do activity off-screen. And I think they would learn to focus, whether it's playing outside, reading books is an excellent way to get children to focus. If we're talking about adults, I think that one of the best things that adults can do is to make sure that your internal tank of mental resources is kept at high capacity. So when you have a full tank of resources, you can focus much better than when you're just spent, when your resources have just drained because you're doing hard work all day, you're switching your attention a lot. It's going to be very, very hard to focus, and there are things we can do to build up those resources. So one of the best things you can do is to get a really good night's sleep. Everyone says, of course we know you should get a good night's sleep, but let me tell you what happens when you don't. When people accumulate what's called sleep debt and sleep debt is the accumulation of loss of sleep.

If you need eight hours of sleep a night—and I need eight hours of sleep a night—but if you're only getting six hours a night, that difference is called a sleep debt. And if you're consistently getting six hours of sleep a night, you're accumulating sleep debt. And we know that the greater the sleep debt, the shorter the attention spans. And what do people do when they have a lot of sleep debt? We found that they tend to do more lightweight activities like social media. They just don't have the resources to be able to focus and do hard work, so they do what's easy based on the amount of resources that they have available.

Mills : Let's switch topics for a minute to something else that you talk about in your book, which is how TV and movies have changed in the past few decades. You're right that the pace of television and movies has sped up and things like the length of each camera shot, they're getting shorter. Why is that? And are those changes affecting our attention or is this happening because the people who are creating these things already know that we have no attention anymore?

Mark : So I was very surprised to learn that TV and film shot lengths have decreased over the years. They started out much longer. They now average about four seconds a shot length. That's on average. If you watch MTV music videos, they're much shorter. They're only a couple of seconds. So we've become accustomed to seeing very fast shot lengths when we look at TV and film. Even commercials have shortened in length. Commercials used to be much longer. Now it's not uncommon to see six-second commercials, even shorter than that. Now it's a chicken and egg question. We don't know if TV and film have affected our attention spans on computers and phones. We don't know if our attention spans have affected the decision-making of film editors and directors. We don't know exactly if there is any causal connection we see these two parallel trends.

It could be the case that directors and editors are influenced by their own short attention spans when they create these film shots or it could be that they're creating short film shots because they think that's what the viewer wants to see. But this has become quite ubiquitous. In fact, on YouTube, there's a particular YouTube aesthetic which uses jump cuts. So when you're watching a YouTube film, the film becomes very jumpy. The natural pauses that people make when they speak it is removed. So the idea is to pack more content into a shorter amount of time. So we're seeing short lengths of content from all directions. It's not just what we're attending to on computers and phones.

Mills : But I think you found that some of this we're doing to ourselves. I know some people who feel like they're so time crunched that when they want to listen to a podcast, they turn up the speed to 1.5 or 2 and then listen to it. Why are we doing this to ourselves and is this helping?

Mark : I myself have sometimes done that?. Why do we do this? There's a number of reasons. I can't say exactly why we do it. It could be because we want to fit more content into a shorter amount of time because there's so much content available, right? We're talking about access to the world's largest candy store, and we want to sample all the wares that are available. So of course, you might want to speed up the podcast so that you can simply take more in and quickly get to your next favorite podcast. So I don't know exactly why we're doing it on ourselves. It could be also out of habit. We're just used to listening to things faster, but we do have all of this content available to us at our fingertips within milliseconds, and so perhaps we just want to sample as much as we possibly can.

Mills : Now, during the pandemic, many people have switched to remote work, which I'm guessing has meant more emails, more messages on Slack, and Teams, and workers have to deal with all of this. How do you think this is affecting people's attention and focus? Do you even know? Is it too soon to say?

Mark : Yeah, so I've worked on a survey with colleagues. So we have people’s self-reports, they've reported that it's hard to focus. I've done other work where we're looking at team interaction in remote work and have picked up some information from that. People do report having a hard time focusing. It's a different kind of distraction than you would have in a workplace. Of course, you're distracted by the pile of dirty laundry that you're looking at. In a workplace, you might be distracted by ambient noise in the workplace. We do know that it makes a difference whether people have a private workspace at home where it can be quiet or whether they have to share a public working space with others, which is more distracting. Some people might go to a cafe to work, and of course, that creates another type of distraction. So a lot of it very much depends on the environment, where the person is working.

We also know that if you're remote from your colleagues, you can't really signal to them when is a good time to interrupt. If you're in a workplace, and especially if you can see your colleagues, you can see when they just hung up the phone, then you know it might be a nice time to walk over and talk to them or you might stand outside their office and wait, and then you can see when it's good to interrupt. When we're remote, we don't have that visual information, and so we can just be sending electronic communications to our colleagues at all time. There's another study that I did with my postdoc, and she found that a lot of people feel that they want to go above and beyond what they ordinarily do to be able to signal to their colleagues, to their supervisors that they're working hard. And so they jump to answer their email, their Slack messages so that they can demonstrate, hey, I'm working—you don't see me, but I want you to know that I'm here and I'm working hard, and that's why I'm going to jump on these messages.

Mills : Now, we've been talking a lot about what individuals can do regarding better attention spans, but are there changes that organizations should be making or even changes at a societal level that could help all of us with boosting our ability to stay focused on important things?

Mark : There are, and I'm a big advocate for changes on a collective level. And the reason is that if any individual decides to just pull out and completely cut themselves off from technology, they might penalize themselves. If you're a knowledge worker of any kind, you're cutting yourself off from important work communications. You can be cutting yourself off from communications from family, friends, loved ones, from important news in the world. So it's not always beneficial for any individual to cut themselves off, but an organization can do things. They can, for example, control times during the day when electronic communications are sent. They can create a window of time when no communications would be sent, and this would be a quiet time when people can work. In our research, we find that people check email on average 77 times a day. And if you have this quiet time, at least you can curtail that checking.

We might be able to reduce the amount of checking because there's no point to check, there won't be email coming. On a societal level, there's starting to be what's called right to disconnect laws, and there's one in France, it's called the El Khomri law. There's also Ireland and Ontario have policies, so other countries are starting to pick up on this, and it's the idea that no worker can be penalized if they do not answer electronic communications before and after work hours. New York City tried to introduce a right to disconnect law in its city council meeting. That got shut down very quickly. And my favorite, I read the transcripts of the meeting, and my favorite response, my favorite argument against it was from the Bureau of Tourism, which said, we're the greatest tourist city in the world, we're the city that never sleeps.

So if we have right to disconnect laws, it enables people to detach from work, and that has so much psychological benefit for individuals. You truly do need a break from work. We can't be on work 24/7, and that's what's happening. The borders between our personal life and work life have just blurred so that in personal time when people are at home after work, they're dealing with work problems, and work communications. People do need time to really relax, to break away from work. It's such a great psychological benefit, and if they can do that, it enables them to better reattach to work the next day because they're fresh, they're replenished. So I'm a big advocate of right to disconnect policy.

Mills : let me ask you a totally different question, which is what's next for you? What are you working on now? What are the important research questions that you want to see answered?

Mark : Yeah, so I would like to continue looking at our attention. I'm interested in a lot of things. I'm interested in how we can get more value from the internet. We have this incredible resource available to us, and so rather than be upset by it because it distracts us, how can we turn that around and instead find value from it? And how can we utilize our time best and optimize our time best when we use the resources that the internet offers without getting exhausted from it?

And I also have been looking at teamwork, remote teamwork and how that can be optimized because more and more companies are starting to have hybrid work and remote work, and what are the repercussions from that? What are the benefits from that? So I'd like to understand that better.

Mills : Well, that all sounds really interesting. I look forward to seeing your subsequent research. Appreciate your joining me today, Dr. Mark. Thank you very much.

Mark : Thank you so much for having me.

Mills : You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at [email protected] . Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan. 

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.

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Episode 225: Why our attention spans are shrinking, with Gloria Mark, PhD

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• Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity

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Your host: Kim I. Mills

Kim I. Mills is senior director of strategic external communications and public affairs for the American Psychological Association, where she has worked since 2007. Mills led APA’s foray into social media and envisioned and launched APA’s award-winning podcast series Speaking of Psychology  in 2013. A former reporter and editor for The Associated Press, Mills has also written for publications including The Washington Post , Fast Company , American Journalism Review , Dallas Morning News , MSNBC.com and Harvard Business Review .

In her 30+-year career in communications, Mills has extensive media experience, including being interviewed by The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Wall Street Journal , and other top-tier print media. She has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America , Hannity and Colmes , CSPAN, and the BBC, to name a few of her broadcast engagements. Mills holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Barnard College and a master’s in journalism from New York University.

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Effectiveness of cognitive reappraisal and distraction for induced acute pain: A laboratory study.

Health Psychology, Vol 43(7), Jul 2024, 500-514; doi:10.1037/hea0001374

Objective: Cognitive reappraisal and distraction modulate pain; however, little is known about their effectiveness at different levels of pain intensity. Thus, the aim of this study has been to analyze the differential efficacy of both strategies to reduce perceived pain intensity and pain unpleasantness in low and moderate pain levels. Method: 3 (emotion regulation strategy: cognitive reappraisal, distraction, and control) × 2 (intensity of the painful stimuli: low and moderate intensity) × 2 (time: pretest and posttest) mixed factorial design. Ninety healthy adults were randomly assigned to one of six experimental conditions. Pain-heat stimuli were administered with an advanced thermal stimulator. All participants completed the experimental pretest and posttest phases; in each phase, 12 pain stimuli were administered. Participants received brief training on how to apply cognitive reappraisal, distraction, and the control condition for the posttest phase. Data were collected from May 2022 to November 2022. Results: Analyses of repeated-measure analysis of variance showed that at posttest cognitive reappraisal and distraction were equally effective in reducing perceived pain intensity in low pain levels, while distraction was more effective than cognitive reappraisal in decreasing perceived pain intensity in moderate pain levels. Both distraction and cognitive reappraisal were effective in decreasing pain unpleasantness regardless of the intensity of the painful stimuli. Conclusion: These findings highlighted the beneficial use of both strategies in the short term for pain relief, distraction being more effective in moderate pain levels. Applying both strategies to everyday situations that may cause short-term acute pain could be of great clinical relevance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

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