Sensory and Information Overload

Abstract

One of the most pervasive and novel characteristics of life in technologically advanced societies is the growing prevalence of conditions of sensory and informational overloads. Even though this assertion seems self-evident, or perhaps because of it, little systematic effort has been made to examine its empirical basis and to attempt theoretical integration of the diverse lines of research and hypotheses that apply the explanatory concepts of sensory and information overload. Yet these concepts reflect profound changes in the environment in which we live and their impact on the quality of life, on subjective experience, on individual and social behavior, and on human health and disease. Urbanization, crowding, noise, mass media of communication, revolution in information technology. explosive growth of printed data, conditions of work-these are the major factors that are transforming man's sensory environment. Some of the sensory input that bombards him consists of symbolic stimuli intended as messages and meaningful communication. Some represents physical stimuli, such as noise, which are by-products of technological development and are devoid of informational content. For the purpose of this discussion I shall follow the distinction between information inputs, connoting symbolic stimuli on the one hand, and sensory inputs, which refer to physical stimuli that do not consist of messages, on the other. Overstimulation, or overload, may result from the excess and other attributes of both symbolic and physical stimuli. Paradoxically, the much less commonly encountered and practically less important opposite conditions, those of perceptual and sensory deprivation, have given rise to a massive research effort and theorizing. Ingenious experiments carried out by Hebb and his co-workers at McGill University between 1951 and 1954 proved to be methodo-logically fertile. I Reduced and/or monotonous environmental stimulation has evoked in some experimental subjects a set of symptoms including illusions and hallucinations, mostly in the visual sphere; impairment of attention and directed thinking; emotional disturbances, notably anxiety; feelings of unreality; delusions of persecution; increased suggestibility, etc. Numerous explanatory hypotheses have been put forth to accout for these phenomena. I Lindsley2 proposed in 1958 that the behavioral and experien-tial changes encountered in states of sensory deprivation shared a common neurophysio-logical mechanism with those provoked by sensory distortion and overload. In each