Cute Kitten Photos Improve Concentration

Having trouble concentrating on a project at work?  Take a kitten break!  That's right - a new study conducted at Hiroshima University in Japan suggests that looking at photos of kittens and puppies can improve your concentration and attention to detail.

Cute Photos Can Improve Concentration

In this experiment, 48 university students played a game similar to "Operation," where they had to use tweezers to get little plastic body parts out of holes in a "patient's" body without touching the sides of the holes.  After one round of the game, half of the students were shown photos of adult dogs and cats while the other half were shown pictures of kittens and puppies.  

The researchers found that the students improved their performance on the second round of the game after they had viewed photos of kittens and puppies.  More specifically, these students seemed to perform the task in a slower and more deliberate manner.  However, those who had viewed photos of adult cats and dogs did not improve their performance in the second round of the game.

Cute Photos Can Improve Attention to Detail

The researchers conducted a second timed experiment where college students were asked to identify a series of stimuli shown on a screen.  Each stimulus was one large letter made up of many smaller letters.  For example, a bunch of small Ws would be in the form of a large T.  

Students were randomly shown photos of baby animals, adult animals, or neutral objects between each task.  Students who viewed the cute baby animals were faster at identifying the small letters that composed the large letters.  

This experiment suggests that looking at cute baby animals may help a person shift one's attention to focus on details more effectively.  The researchers hypothesize that this could be because babies require their caregivers to focus closely on their mental and physical well-being and to be alert to possible threats.   

The findings of this study are published in the journal PLoS ONE.  

The next time you find yourself struggling to focus on a task, try looking at several photos of cute baby kittens and puppies.  You might just find that it helps improve your ability to concentrate!  

A few of websites I enjoy containing cute kittens are:  

Good Morning Kitten.

Daily Kitten.

LOL Cats.

Did viewing cute baby animal photos help improve your concentration? Please come back and let us know if this technique worked for you!

Source

PsychCentral: Viewing Cute Images Improves Concentration