#Distraction

A new psychological study has found that everyday sounds of illness, such as coughing and sniffling, may disturb learning more than we realize—by subtly distracting students and impairing their academic performance. The research, published in Evolutionary Psychological Science and reported by PsyPost, reveals that exposure to common pathogen-related sounds during a learning task results in statistically significant declines in test scores, raising questions about classroom environments and the human mind’s sensitivity to signs of disease (psypost.org).

Imagine cruising down Rama IV in morning traffic, your focus broken by flashy billboards and blaring tuk-tuks. While the chaos of Bangkok can feel overwhelming, emerging scientific research reveals that our brains have a surprising ability to adapt and learn to filter out distractions—helping people stay focused amid sensory overload. The latest evidence, from a collaboration between Leipzig University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, explains how repeated exposure to the same distractions can literally train your neural circuits to ignore them, a finding with deep relevance for urban-dwelling Thais as well as Thai students facing digital and classroom noise (SciTechDaily).