MP: Where does it leave us in the 21st century? Well, it’s hard to say. Definitely in a society in which there’s a lot of information available, and we should expect the human to continue to adapt to this, because although genetic adaptation is relatively slow and long term, many of the genes that we have that shape these networks are also influenced by our experiences—not the genes themselves, but their expression. And so we should expect exposure to the network—to increased information—to change the skills that people have. We can point to the advantages of those changes—perhaps in multitasking, that’s one that you discussed—and you can also point to disadvantages. People often use the term attention span, suggesting that we can’t sustain attention for long periods of time. I don’t know if there’s really any strong evidence for that, but there is a certain amount of plasticity in these networks, and that suggests that they’re adapting to circumstances that we’re in in this century.

RJ: Are there any specific genes or gene expressions that researchers are focusing on in this regard?

MP: Oh, yes. Well, we’ve worked on several genes that show influence. For example, style of parenting. For example, dopamine genes that interact with the style of parenting to shape aspects of the ability of people to, for example, their activity level and impulsivity and so on. So, yes, there’s increasing interest, particularly in dopamine and serotonin genes, in how their expression might be influenced by things that happen in the culture, or things that might be deliberately designed to improve performance by training.

RJ: To get back to one of the things you mentioned about attention span—do you see any trends in the media in changing attention span? Or do you think that’s just something that’s like a meme that maybe doesn’t have as much meaning as some people have—

MP: Well, the problem with “attention span” is that the psychologists mean something quite different than the lay definition. So the psychological definition is the number of items you can take in at a single glance. That is very limited, and probably hasn’t been changed. Now, I could be wrong about that; certainly the definitive studies haven’t and maybe can’t be done, because, of course, things are changing all the time, so if you study one cohort, you’d be studying a different group than another cohort.

But the layperson means, by “attention span”, “How long will I continue to work on a particular task?” And that’s much more difficult to know whether there’s been any change there. It could very well be… people usually say “Well, people won’t sit down and read War and Peace because they’re used to reading short.” And that may very well be true, but the adaptations that’ll allow us to read short pieces on the Web and to move back and forth between one source of information, one blog and so on, you know, if we choose to change those by settling down, turning off and working on something else… since plasticity is rare, we probably could change to a different style of processing information. But there are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to every style.

RJ: So, in your opinion, is there a concern for society? The kind of rapid changes in available information and kind of dissemination of news, information, from formation of knowledge?

MP: Well, the human is an adaptable person. Changing all the time. If we believe that we are or were kind of the best that we can be now or fifty years ago or a hundred years ago, then those changes will be seen as disadvantages. But of course we’re changing as the media industry changes. There is, of course, a lot of conservation. It isn’t that the human is a completely different organism. But there is adaptability, too, and there are changes, and they have advantages and disadvantages. Depends on what you like, I guess.

RJ: So I take it you’re—would you say on the balance optimistic as far as the technological changes and information?

MP: Well, yeah, I guess that would be said to be. At least, I don’t think that we’re in a dire situation, and that the media has dumbed us down to a huge degree or anything like that. I don’t see any real evidence. In fact, worldwide measures of intelligence, such as we can make them, have improved greatly over the last hundred years or so.

RJ: Are there trends—I don’t know if you’ve looked at them—but are there trends in media consumption and attention that you’ve seen change? Or maybe not even just attention, but the amount of information available, and how people—

MP: Yeah, this question I really can’t answer; that is, I haven’t done anything to look at the actual media changes. But, of course, in our daily life, we’re all familiar with things that we can do, like, you know, record telephone calls. If you wanted to have me visually present, you could do that now, which wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago and so on. So, yes, of course, we’re all familiar with some changes. But I haven’t really studied this at all.

RJ: OK. Do you have any ideas for the sort of things journalists or editors can learn from the study of cognitive science and attention, whether it’s packaging their information differently, or anything like that?