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14/11/2013

People In Love Are 'Less Likely To Concentrate'

People who are in love are less able to focus and concentrate on tasks, according to a new study.

Published in the journal Motivation and Emotion, the research found that a lover's concentration for daily tasks, such as study or work, may be impaired by their partner, suggesting a reduced cognitive control.

Researcher Henk van Steenbergen, explained: "When you have just become involved in a romantic relationship you'll probably find it harder to focus on other things because you spend a large part of your cognitive resources on thinking of your beloved."

For the study, Mr van Steenbergen, alongside his colleagues from Leiden University and the University of Maryland, analysed 43 people who had been in a relationship for less than six months.

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Participants were asked to perform a number of tasks. One of these tasks included being times as they sorted irrelevant from relevant information, and it was discovered that the more in love a person was, the less they were able to concentrate on the 'relevant' information.

The results were the same for both men and women.

In another task, the volunteers had to listen to music that elicited romantic feelings. They were then asked to think of a romantic event that intensified those feelings, before they completed a questionnaire which assessed the 'intensity' of their love.

Mr van Steenbergen admitted: "The reason why romantic love is associated with cognitive control is still unknown.

"It could be that lovers use all their cognitive resources to think about their beloved, which leaves them no resources to perform a boring task.

"It could also be that the association goes in the opposite direction: people who have reduced cognitive control may experience more intense love feelings than people who have higher levels of cognitive control."

(JP/CD)

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"People who are in love are less able to focus and concentrate on tasks, according to a new study."