3. TELEVISION IS LIKE SLEEP TEACHING
A team of researchers headed by psychologists Merrelyn and Fred Emery at the Center for continuing Education, Australian National University at Canberra reported decades ago, showed that when we watch television, our usual processes of thinking and discernment are semi-functional at best. They conclude that while television appears to have the potential to provide useful information to viewers and is celebrated for its educational function, the technology of television and the inherent nature of the viewing experience actually inhibit learning as we usually think of it. Very little cognitive, recallable, analyzable, thought-based learning takes place while watching TV.
The report says: "The evidence is that television not only destroys the capacity of the viewer to attend, it also, by taking over a complex of direct and indirect neural pathways, decreases vigilance, the general state of arousal which prepares the organism for action should its attention be drawn to specific stimulus.
"The individual therefore may be looking at the unexpected or interesting but cannot act upon it in such a way as to complete the purposeful processing gestalt.
"The continuous trance-like fixation of the TV viewer is then not attention but distraction, a form akin to daydreaming or time out."
The report explains that since television information is taking place where the viewer is not, it cannot be acted upon. The viewer must deliberately inhibit the neural pathways between visual data and the autonomic nervous system, which stimulates movement and mental attention. To do otherwise than inhibit the process would be ridiculous. The viewer is left in a passive but also frustrated state.
The authors present a forty-page technical treatise summarizing relevant brain research to trace the effects on the mind of a "simple, constant, repetitive and ambiguous visual stimulus," particularly upon the left side of the brain, the area where language, communicative abilities, cognitive thought comprehension are organized.
"The nature of the processes carried out in the left cortex and particularly area thirty-nine [the common integrative area] are those unique to human as opposed to other mammalian life. It is the center of logic, logical human communication and analysis, integration of sensory components and memory, the basis of man's conscious, purposeful, and time-free abilities and actions. It is the critical function of man that makes him distinctively human."
Evidence shows that human beings "habituate" to repetitive light-stimuli (flickering light, dot patterns, limited eye movement). If habituation occurs, then the brain has essentially decided that there is nothing of interest going on, at least nothing that anything can be done about and virtually quits processing the information that goes in. In particular, they report, the left-brain "common integrative area" goes into a kind of holding pattern. "Viewing is at the conscious level of somnambulism," they assert. The right half of the brain, which deals with more subjective cognitive processes: dream images, fantasy, intuition, continues to receive the television images. But because the bridge between the right and left brains has been effectively shattered, all cross-processing, the making conscious of the unconscious data and bringing it into usability, is eliminated. The information goes in, but it cannot be easily recalled or thought about.
If the Emerys are correct, then their findings support the idea that television information enters unfiltered and whole, directly into the memory banks, but it is not available for conscious analysis, understanding or learning. It is sleep teaching.
All of this helps explain recent findings that children, after watching television, have difficulty recalling what they have just seen. Whatever "knowledge" they gain is the sort that passes through the conscious regions where it would be available for recall and use.
Television as sleep teaching would also help explain from political work, that the more that public issues are confined to television, the less knowledgeable the public seems to be about them. The voter cannot process information he or she is apparently receiving. When politicians avoid content and concentrate on style, they are right on the mark.
The Emerys report at length upon one study that measured brainwave activity during television viewing. It established that no matter what the program is, human brainwave activity enters a "characteristic" pattern. The response is to the medium, rather than to any of its content. Once the set goes on, the brain waves slow down until a preponderance of alpha and delta brain waves become the habitual pattern. The longer the set is on, the slower the brainwave activity.
The Emerys explain that slow, synchronous brainwave activity is ordinarily associated with "lack of eye movement, fixation, lack of definition, idleness, inactivity, overall body inertness." They quote from A. R. Luria, who writes in The Psychophysiology of the Frontal Lobes: "No organized thought is possible in these phasic states and selective associations are replaced by non-selective association, deprived of their purposeful character."
Alpha is the mental state most commonly associated with meditation, but before anyone equates meditation with television, it is important to make a critical distinction. In the former, you produce your own material and in the latter it comes from outside; it is not internally generated. Dr. Freda Morris, psychologist-hypnotist says that people who are good at meditation are among the most difficult to hypnotize. "They start going into hypnotic trance, but at a certain point they begin producing their own material and cannot be influenced by outside instruction unless they choose to be. They have got their own thing going." She doubted that good meditators watch much television and added that meditation might be an excellent ability to develop in people who are bothered by television addiction. In fact, she said, television addiction might itself be symptomatic of an inability to produce one's own mental imagery."
EFFECTS OF TELEVISION ON THE BRAIN, PAGE 16 |
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