A scientific indicator of how easily distracted you are has been designed by a UCL (University College London) psychologist. It could be used as another assessment tool during the recruitment process and would have particular benefits in fields where employee distraction could lead to fatal errors.
People who are more easily distracted are at greater risk of being involved in accidents. Professor Nilli Lavie, UCL Psychology, who led the research published in Psychological Science, said: "When you are easily distracted, you are more liable to do things like put your keys in the fridge or call out "Come in" when answering the phone. These are the more amusing consequences of distraction but distraction can have more serious implications. For example, it is known to be associated with a higher risk of being involved in various types of accidents such as car and workplace accidents."
Some jobs , such as bus driver or pilot , put the employee in situations where the potential for distraction is very high and yet focused attention is crucial. This computer-based test, which measures subjects' accuracy and reaction times when they are exposed to distractions, would effectively filter out any candidates who were easily distracted.
Professor Lavie said: "This test could act as another form of psychometric testing for employers who want to know how focused the staff they are hiring are likely to be. Some jobs can be undertaken very well even if you are prone to being distracted. For example, you can be a great scientist or writer and still be absent-minded! But there are many areas where productivity critically depends on the ability of staff to stay focused, yet current psychometric tests do not measure it."
This test correlates with responses given to the "Cognitive Failures Questionnaire," which predicts a person's level of distractibility provided that the subject answers honestly. The questions include: "How often do you find you accidentally throw away the thing you want and keep what you meant to throw away , as in the example of throwing away the matchbox and putting the used match in your pocket".
Professor Lavie said: "Relying on questionnaires to assess how easily distracted potential employees might be obviously has its downsides , people are not always honest about their negative attributes during interviews.
"People come away from our test thinking they've done really well and haven't been distracted at all when in fact their response times increase and they tend to make more mistakes; showing that they have been distracted. So the test is objective and there's no way of doctoring the results."