Oculomotor feedback rapidly reduces overt attentional capture

Anderson, Brian A.; Mrkonja, Lana

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104917

Cited by 12 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Ref. 77 , 78 ). Since our aim was to isolate possible negative effects of the alert signal’s salience even under favorable conditions, we did not manipulate load, but kept the primary task simple and constant.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High visual salience of alert signals can lead to a counterintuitive increase of reaction times

Einhäuser,

Neubert,

Grimm

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is often assumed that rendering an alert signal more salient yields faster responses to this alert. Yet, there might be a trade-off between attracting attention and distracting from task execution. Here we tested this in four behavioral experiments with eye-tracking using an abstract alert-signal paradigm. Participants performed a visual discrimination task (primary task) while occasional alert signals occurred in the visual periphery accompanied by a congruently lateralized tone. Participants had to respond to the alert before proceeding with the primary task. When visual salience (contrast) or auditory salience (tone intensity) of the alert were increased, participants directed their gaze to the alert more quickly. This confirms that more salient alerts attract attention more efficiently. Increasing auditory salience yielded quicker responses for the alert and primary tasks, apparently confirming faster responses altogether. However, increasing visual salience did not yield similar benefits: instead, it increased the time between fixating the alert and responding, as high-salience alerts interfered with alert-task execution. Such task interference by high-salience alert-signals counteracts their more efficient attentional guidance. The design of alert signals must be adapted to a “sweet spot” that optimizes this stimulus-dependent trade-off between maximally rapid attentional orienting and minimal task interference.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High visual salience of alert signals can lead to a counterintuitive increase of reaction times

Einhäuser,

Neubert,

Grimm

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, workers could practice orienting to specific potential hazards when they come within a certain proximity, to the point that such orienting becomes a habitual attentional response. Such training could be coupled with adaptive attentional feedback (see Anderson & Mrkonja, 2021, 2022) to ensure the engagement of attentive behaviors that could become habitual with practice. Such training could even be paired with a system of reward contingencies for vigilance toward potential hazards; this might accentuate training benefits (see Anderson et al, 2011).…”

Section: Curbing Attention To Hazards Through Experiential Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention Failures Cause Workplace Accidents: Why Workers Ignore Hazards and What To Do About It

Anderson,

Kim,

Gregoire

et al. 2023

Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Accidents readily occur when workers are not attentive to the hazards of their work. For some professionals, such as workers in the construction and mining industry, exposure to workplace hazards occurs on a daily basis. Such repetitive exposure to workplace hazards poses unique challenges for the attention of workers. This review explores how, in the absence of negative consequences, repetitive exposure to hazards decreases attention to them. Recommendations, informed by the science of attention, suggest how to combat the tendency to ignore frequently-exposed hazards and restore worker vigilance, thereby reducing the frequency of workplace accidents. Experiential training incorporating virtual reality holds some promise.

show abstract

“…Do the demands of finding and extracting relevant perceptual information, such as those involved in visual search, meaningfully contribute to the cognitive effort required by a task? Unlike memory-demanding cognitive tasks, people often conduct a visual search with limited awareness of what they have looked at (e.g., Adams & Gaspelin, 2020, 2021; Anderson & Mrkonja, 2021; Chen & Wyble, 2015; Horowitz & Wolfe, 1998; Theeuwes et al, 1998; Võ et al, 2016), maintaining a representation of the searched-for stimulus in active memory (Woodman et al, 2013) and engaging low-demand and potentially largely automatic attentional processes (see Anderson, 2018). Indeed, a number of involuntary, low-demand attentional processes support the selection of pertinent stimuli, which has been argued to reflect an adaptive attentional system that functions to minimize the need for controlled and effortful processes in the attainment of a desired state (Anderson, 2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual search as effortful work.

Anderson¹,

Lee²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tasks that involve more demanding cognitive operations, such as working memory maintenance and rule switching, tend to be perceived as effortful. People will make choices that minimize the need to perform such tasks and will even accept some measure of physical pain in exchange for the ability to avoid them. Nearly all tasks require that people find and extract relevant perceptual information from their environment, but demands of this nature are often ignored in the study of mental effort. Visual search is sometimes described as "difficult" or "easy" on the basis of search slopes or other performance-based metrics, but how such performance differences map onto conceptions of cognitive demand is unclear. In the present study, we examined whether people would be willing to exert physical effort in exchange for the opportunity to minimize the number of items they needed to search through in a visual search task and whether they would be more willing to endure physical effort demands if it resulted in fewer items needing to be searched. Our results are broadly consistent with the idea that the performance of visual search constitutes effortful work that can trade-off with physical effort demands, which has broad implications for theories of visual information processing and practical considerations for professions that tax peoples' ability to search.

show abstract

Oculomotor feedback rapidly reduces overt attentional capture

Cited by 12 publications

References 32 publications

High visual salience of alert signals can lead to a counterintuitive increase of reaction times

High visual salience of alert signals can lead to a counterintuitive increase of reaction times

Attention Failures Cause Workplace Accidents: Why Workers Ignore Hazards and What To Do About It

Visual search as effortful work.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About