In an age when the average attention span of a typical human being is 8.25 seconds, a study has revealed that we actually pay better attention today than 30 years ago. It's a bit surprising but the rationale behind this result is the fact that the average IQ of populations have increased from one generation to the next, a phenomenon described as the Flynn effect. This conclusion came from an analysis of data from 179 studies which involved 21,000 people from 32 countries. The studies were conducted between 1990 and 2021 wherein participants had taken a d2 Test of Attention.
Looking through the data, the researchers led by Denise Andrzejewsky of the University of Vienna, saw that the performance of adults had increased in that span of time while children's results remained about the same. However, they did notice that children made more mistakes despite being able to complete the test quicker. But, when looking at results from German-speaking countries, children made fewer mistakes, but adults' results were roughly the same throughout the years. -via Boing Boing
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