“I can't focus now, I will study tomorrow” - The link between academic procrastination and resistance to distraction

Procrastination is a tendency to delay tasks, despite being aware of the negative consequences of doing so. Previous studies have shown that students who frequently procrastinate, present difficulties with maintaining attention during task completion. These problems might be related to decreased resistance to distraction caused by task-irrelevant stimuli appearing in the surrounding environment. In the present study we verified this hypothesis by investigating the relationship between procrastination and susceptibility to distraction with the use of behavioral and neurophysiological measures. We recruited high (HP) and low (LP) procrastinating students and asked them to perform an Auditory Visual Distraction task which required participants to respond to visual stimuli and ignore the preceding sounds. Although HP (vs. LP) did not show increased orientation of attention towards distracting sounds, they were still less attentive to task-relevant stimuli. These results indicate that procrastination-related attentional deficits might be linked to other sources of distraction, such as mind-wandering episodes. According to our knowledge, the presented study was the first to use objective measures in order to investigate the link between procrastination and the ability to ignore external distractors. Although we did not confirm the expected relationship, we observed that students who frequently procrastinate still present certain attentional dysfunctions, which might be related to other sources of distraction, such as mind-wandering episodes. We believe that observed deficits might partially explain higher propensity to delay completion of different assignments, as inability to maintain sustained attention can increase the perceived aversiveness and difficulty of the performing tasks and/or facilitate attentional shift towards alternative goals. Obtained findings might contribute to the development of therapeutic interventions or guidelines for psychologists, managers, team leaders or teachers on how to manage the problem of procrastination in the workplace or school settings.