Adults Reading Comprehension (2 passages, free)

Economists define a scarce resource as one for which demand exceeds supply. By that definition, attention may be the scarcest resource of the modern age. Information is abundant; the hours we have to absorb it are not.

Many digital services are free to use because they are funded by advertising, which means their revenue depends on capturing and holding attention. Design features such as infinite scrolling and autoplay are not accidents; they are engineered to reduce the natural stopping points that might prompt a user to leave.

Recognizing this dynamic does not require rejecting technology. It does suggest treating attention the way a careful person treats money: deciding in advance where it should go, noticing when it is being spent without intention, and building small barriers, such as turning off non-essential notifications, that make deliberate choices easier.

The writer Herbert Simon observed in 1971 that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Half a century later, the observation reads less like a prediction than a description.

Memory feels like a recording, but research suggests it is closer to a reconstruction. Each time we recall an event, the brain rebuilds it from fragments, and in doing so it can introduce changes.

In a well-known series of experiments in the 1970s, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus showed participants a film of a car accident and then asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed” or “hit” each other. Those who heard “smashed” estimated higher speeds and were more likely to later report seeing broken glass, although none appeared in the film.

Findings like these have influenced fields from law to education. Courts increasingly recognize that confident eyewitness testimony can still be mistaken, and interview techniques have been revised to avoid leading questions.

None of this means memory is useless. It means memory is a living process, shaped by language, expectation and time, and that humility about what we recall is a reasonable response.