Attention Contagion in the Virtual Classroom

Attention Contagion in the Virtual Classroom

Attention contagion is the spread of attentive and/or inattentive behaviors among students in a learning environment (1). Classroom teachers are very familiar with this phenomenon; especially when it’s the spread of inattentive behaviors. It looks like one student feeling and hearing the buzz of their cellphone in their backpack and those around losing focus on the lesson. It’s a student on their laptop in class looking at a website that is off task and other students choosing to attend to that stimulus instead of the classroom content. 

Those are quite obvious examples of attention contagion, but other examples are a bit more covert. The spread of inattentive behaviors can also look like Billy choosing to not take notes in class and others around him deciding they don’t need to take notes either based on Billy’s behaviors. It can also be as simple as one student slouching in their chair impacting others’ attention. I guess my point here is that the spread of inattentive behaviors doesn’t necessarily have to occur due to outwardly distracting behaviors, which is interesting for me to consider as a teacher. It’s easy for me to tell Billy to silence and put his cell phone away or to limit his laptop use to only relevant websites. It’s a bit harder for me to keep tabs on those less-attentive-yet-not-outwardly-distracting behaviors. I’ve talked about this a bit in this previous article about attention contagion.

The present research (2) looks at the phenomenon of attention contagion, not in the brick-and-mortar classroom, but in the virtual classroom. When students attend virtual class meetings, does the presence of other students in ‘webcam video thumbnails’ impact attention, note taking, motivation to learn, and assessment? That’s the all-important question and one that should really spark interest from all learning and teaching online. 

So, here’s the setup. Participants (n = 61, college undergraduates) watched a 30-minute lecture online, which included four webcam thumbnails of other students watching the same lecture. The four confederates were also watching live and all would either exhibit attentive behaviors (periodically nodding head, slight forward lean, no checking phone or other website, etc.) or inattentive behaviors (bored facial expression, slouching, looking away from the video, fidgeting, periodically checking phone, etc.) during the lecture. It’s important to note that during the lecture, the inattentive confederates were not loud or acting aggressively, they just didn’t actively attend to the lecture presentation. The image below is from the research article and illustrates what participants experienced when attending the virtual class. Can you guess whether this image is from the attentive or inattentive group? : )

After the lecture, participants answered a multiple-choice quiz (23 questions) that assessed lecture content and completed a survey regarding their experience in the virtual class. The survey began with demographic questions before moving into inquiring about their assessment of the four confederates’ attention and whether they thought this impacted their attention and performance on the quiz. 

All materials used in this study, including the lecture video and a list of all the survey questions and quiz questions, are available here…this is a super cool aspect of this study that I certainly don’t find in a lot of the research I read. Kudos to the authors for making these resources available. It allows those of us who are not familiar with the details of conducting research a peak behind the curtain.

So, what were the findings? Here are a few key points. All survey data is on a scale from 1-10.

• Participants seemed to grasp whether the confederates were attentive or inattentive, rating attentive confederates at 8.76 and inattentive confederates at 4.34.
• Participants’ motivation to learn appears to have been impacted by the attentive or inattentive behaviors of the confederates. Before the lecture, participants with attentive confederates rated their motivation to learn at 7.03 and participants with inattentive confederates rated their motivation to learn at 7.58. However, during the lecture, participants with attentive confederates rated their motivation to learn at 7.41, which is an overall increase in motivation to learn with this group. The participants with inattentive confederates rated their motivation to learn during the lecture as 6.63, which is an overall decrease in motivation to learn.
• Participants’ perceived use of cell phones and other websites during the lecture also appears to have been impacted by being in the attentive or inattentive group of this study. Participants with attentive confederates estimated their cell phone use at .21 minutes and visiting other websites during the lecture at .31 minutes. Participants with inattentive confederates estimated their cell phone use at 1.75 minutes and visiting other websites during the lecture at 1.25. The researchers used the term media multitasking when discussing this topic (3).
• Participants’ score on the post lecture quiz also appears to be impacted by being in either the attentive or inattentive confederates group. Participants with attentive confederates averaged a score of 79.01 and participants with inattentive confederates averaged a score of 66.85.

A last point of interest the researchers looked at was participant publicness, the extent to which they thought about and shaped their behavior based on the idea that others will be able to see them. They asked questions on the survey about this and all data showed a nonsignificant correlation between participant’s perceived acknowledgment that they thought about this publicness and it impacting their behavior. 

So, what does this mean to me as a teacher in the physical classroom and virtual classroom?

The first thing that jumps out to me is that inattentive behaviors can impact others, even during a virtual classroom lesson. This is certainly worth noting and sharing with our students. It makes sense that the obvious distractions (chatting students, technology misuse, etc.) could impact the ability for others to attend, but the more covert distractions also impact others and that inattention can spread. I guess, intuitively, I believed that attention contagion was a real presence in the traditional classroom, but that it exists in the online world is a bit of a surprise. 

I was also interested in the finding that participants were able to note and judge the confederates’ attentive or inattentive behaviors quite easily in the virtual classroom and this either positively (with attentive confederates) or negatively (with inattentive confederates) impacted their motivation, judgement of the importance of the material, and their post-lecture quiz performance significantly. As a teacher, this indicates to me that I need to be attentive to this more covert inattention and redirect students when necessary. In telling Billy to sit up and focus on the lesson, not only will Billy be positively impacted, but so will those around him. One inattentive student isn’t simply one inattentive student, both in the traditional classroom and in the online classroom.

And, as I mentioned earlier, it is so important to tell our students this information. I constantly share with my students different research findings in the area of attention and memory and learning. How can we expect them to change their behaviors to be more conducive with learning if we don’t give them reason to do so? I think it helps students to buy into more healthy learning habits and lets them know that you care about this nerdy learning stuff…and them.

Now, the research on attention contagion is limited. To the best of my knowledge, there are currently three research studies focusing directly on this topic. The first was done in a lab and I’ve written about it here. The research discussed in this post on attention contagion in the online classroom represents the second study. The third study on attention contagion focuses on this phenomenon in the college lecture hall with a larger participant population. I’ll be writing about that study very soon…be on the lookout for a post on that. : ) So, the research on this is very limited. We need more research with different populations before we can feel more confident generalizing about attention contagion. However, through these three studies, some trends are becoming apparent. So, that’s definitely a start. 

Attention is a necessity for learning. What we attend to, we have a chance of remembering. What we don’t attend to, we have no chance of remembering. Knowing this, as a teacher, I need to be aware of situations where attention can be easily ‘stolen’ during a lesson and have real solutions available to diminish the negative impact of attention contagion, both in the traditional classroom and in the virtual classroom.

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If you’d like more information on memory processing, attention in the classroom, and learning strategies with a plethora of research pointing to their effectiveness…I know of a REALLY good book on the subject. Okay, so I’m a little biased because I wrote it. : ) It’s called Do I Have Your Attention? Understanding Memory Constraints and Maximizing Learning. If you access this link, you can find more information on the book, endorsements from Dr. John Hattie, Dr. John Sweller, Dr. Dan Willinham, and more, and methods to order in both the US and UK. 

I’ll also be presenting on the topic of attention contagion in February 2025 at The Teaching and Learning Summit hosted by Innerdrive. More information about this amazing conference and methods for purchasing tickets can be found here. I’d love to see you there. : )

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1. Forrin, N. D., Huynh, A. C., Smith, A. C., Cyr, E. N., McLean, D. B., Siklos-Whillans, J., … & MacLeod, C. M. (2021). Attention spreads between students in a learning environment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 27(2), 276.
2. Kalsi, S. S., Forrin, N. D., Sana, F., MacLeod, C. M., & Kim, J. A. (2023). Attention contagion online: Attention spreads between students in a virtual classroom. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 12(1), 59.
3. Wammes, J. D., Ralph, B. C., Mills, C., Bosch, N., Duncan, T. L., & Smilek, D. (2019). Disengagement during lectures: Media multitasking and mind wandering in university classrooms. Computers & Education, 132, 76-89.

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Feature image by Polina Tankilevitch: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-person-sitting-on-the-bed-4443178/