A new honesty

There was a time when we attended conferences with hundreds of participants, all seated in chairs-in-church-row fashion with everyone facing the podium. We all sat in a posture of apparent listening and paying attention. We’re still seated that way – but something has changed.

What do scientists tell us about an adult’s attention span? Researchers Dukette and Cornish in 2009 determined “. . . adults can only sustain attention for about 20 minutes.” So a conference presentation lasting 90 minutes would have – at a minimum – 4.5 times when individuals’ thoughts drifted.

Today I’m in that very setting. It’s a 90-minute conference presentation by a single speaker using PowerPoint slides. Immediately around me are attendees peppered in the church-pew chair arrangement. While the room is set for about 600 or so attendees, that ample number of chairs allows for no crowding. To my left are four empty seats in the row; to my right is one empty seat. People are seated directly behind me and there are numerous empty seats scattered around the rows ahead.

I’ve been coming to these conferences for years, all throughout my professional career in healthcare. The conference room settings haven’t changed much. The speakers’ delivery mode hasn’t changed much except overhead transparencies have now morphed into PowerPoint slides via the computer. The topics have evolved but still maintain consistent themes, like business concepts, government initiatives or directives, physician relationships, etc.

There is, though, one highly visible change. I look around the rows near me and see laptops, tablet computers, and phone devices in use. The person in front of me is checking emails on her large laptop. How do I know? I can read her messages from where I’m sitting. The person two seats down from me is making a message on his phone. Ditto for the persons over a row.

This prompts me to glance around – is anyone just sitting and looking at the speaker and screen? Yes. Quite a few, in fact. So why am I looking around and not paying attention to the speaker? I’m not really sure, other than because I’ve always thought it was rude to use devices while someone is presenting. If there were only 100 attendees in the room, would I be checking phone messages while the speaker was talking? If only 50 persons? If 10? What if it was just the speaker and me in the room – would I still use my devices? Of course not because that’s rude behavior, as though what’s going on in my phone is vitally more important than what’s going on at the front of the conference room. But is this really any different than in the pre-electronic device days?

Back then we all sat in presentation audiences looking attentive. No one knew what we might have been thinking about. No one could tell if we were or weren’t paying attention. No one ever knew that we might have been sitting there thinking about all kinds of things – work, home, family, self. Anything but the presentation.

[Nancy Linenkugel is a Sylvania Franciscan sister and chair of the department of Health Services Administration at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio.]