Medina, John. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2014.

Brain Rule #6: Attention

This was my favorite chapter of Brain Rules, so far. I was intrigued by (paid attention to) a few things in this chapter: interest and multitasking. This chapter starts off by making the connection between attention and learning. We do not pay attention to things that are boring. The more attention given the more likely the information will be learned/saved for later. The author states: “The more attention the brain pays to a given stimulus, the more elaborately the information will be encoded—that is, learned—and retained…better attention equals better learning” (105).  The author presents the Michael Posner’s Trinity Model to show how the brain processes information and the way we pay attention to things:
    1.    Alerting or Arousal Network: detect new stimulus
    2.    Orienting Network: turn toward it
    3.    Executive Network: decide what to do based on what we observe

The author identified that things that grab our attention are related to “memory, interests, and awareness” (106).  

As I was reading this chapter, I was thinking of what quotes I identified as important and what parts of the text jumped out to me. What stays with me from this chapter is connected to what I find interesting. This will vary from person to person. This is significant in regards to helping students identify sources and choose quotes from sources. The author states,“Your brain continuously scans the sensory horizon, constantly assessing events for their potential interest or importance. It gives the more import an events extra attention” (107). I have been doing most of my reading this semester on the Kindle. The application underlines popular quotes that were highlighted/annotated by other readers. Each week I am fascinated by the number of quotes highlighted by others that seem insignificant to me. This causes me to question myself. Why are these quotes not significant to me? What are they reading for that I’m not? Should I be reading differently? Should I highlight the quote just in case?  If I feel this way, I’m sure my students do, too. I think it would be good to point out how memory, interest, and awareness impact composition, especially with research. Students often ask about what quotes to use. My favorites are their concern about sounding too opinionated and not being able to use first person pronouns. They often wonder how they can write an argument without using first person, and they have trouble distinguishing fact from opinion. I try to explain to them that no matter how objective they try to be and how many facts they use, they are still impacting the text because they are choosing what quotes and facts to use. I wonder if a discussion of interest’s impact on attention and what grabs our attention can help with these issues and with audience awareness.


Multitasking stuck with me because it is something I do or try to do all the time. It was sad to see “The brain cannot multitask.” The brain cannot pay attention to multiple things. So, “people who appear to be good at multitasking actually have good working memories, capable of paying attention to several inputs one at a time.” (117). I pride myself on my multitasking abilities. I am known for them. I began to wonder if I could be working more effectively by not multitasking.  So, for this set of reading notes. I have one screen open, no television, no music, and no other books or notes open. I am just doing these reading notes. These are the fastest reading notes I have done since having to do reading notes in Spring 2014. However, they are also the saddest because it is so quiet. I realize that I do need background noise; silence is painful. I also realize that splitting my attention was causing my Executive System to go through the 4 steps (shift alert, rule activation for task #1, disengagement, rule activation for task #2) over and over gain with maybe 4 or 5 tasks. This is slowing down everything. I guess this is the end of my multitasking, but I feel good that I can still have music in the background to fill all this silence.


The end of this chapter was very enlightening and terrifying for me as an instructor. I am against lectures because I find them ineffective. However, even though I do not lecture, I do not want to treat my students like geese. I don’t want to overwhelm or force feed them. I don’t want to do this, but with the amount of information they need to learn in 16 weeks, it is really not an option. This makes me think of New Learning. The current system that we have is designed for force feeding. It does not really allow for providing information and giving students time to digest and make connections. Instructors can make changes in their individual classes to help with this (i.e. 10-min presentation and hooks), but will this benefit the students overall; would it be a bandage for a gaping wound?

Key points (123): 
    •    “We are better at seeing patterns and abstracting meaning of an event than we are are recording detail”: Meaning over details
    •    “Emotional arousal helps the brain learn”: survival strategies-eating, reproduction, and familiarity/memory
    •    “Audiences check out after 10 minutes, but you can keep grabbing them back by telling narratives or creating events rich in emotion”: hooks throughout the lecture

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