attention
dmunger | February 22, 2006I'm sure most Cognitive Daily readers are aware of the massive debate permeating the scientific world these days. No, not evolution versus creationism; I'm talking about object- versus space-based attention.
Haven't heard of this raging debate? Well, then, let me refer you to a fascinating pair of experiments conducted by Massimo Turatto, Veronica Mazza, and Carlo Umiltà. The issue comes down to this: a critical problem for psychologists is the issue of attention. How does the perceptual system decide where to focus our attention when literally millions of bits of information are available to…
dmunger | February 9, 2006Take a look at this video (click on the image to play). It's pretty clear what's going on -- the green dot bumps into the red dot, causing it to move:
But what about this one?
With this movie, it's harder to say: some people would say the green dot passes through the red dot, turning red and then moving on. Others would say the green dot launches the red dot, as before. It's an ambiguous figure.
But now look at this new movie, with two sets of dots. What's happening with the top pair of dots: launching, or passing through?
Most people would now say that the green dot on the top…
dmunger | December 30, 2005What is your mind doing when you think about something? For decades, the prevailing wisdom was that when you imagine, say, the scent of a flower or your lover's perfume, your mind is doing something different from when you actually smell those things. The metaphor was a computer: The hardware for sensing things was distinct from the software for thinking about things.
More recent evidence suggests that the way we understand concepts relies on the sensorimotor system. When you think of the sound of a dripping faucet, the same parts of your brain are activated as when you are actually hearing a…
dmunger | December 13, 2005Last week we discussed two experiments in a report by Adam Anderson about how the phenomenon of attentional blink is modified when the task includes arousing words. Perhaps not surprisingly, we're more likely to notice arousing words like "ejaculate" or "foreplay" in a rapidly presented sequence than neutral words like "plane" or "clock."
But Anderson wasn't finished—he wanted to explain why this phenomenon occurs. Are we more likely to remember arousing words after the fact? Or are arousing words inherently more able to attract our attention? So, Anderson reversed the attentional blink task…
dmunger | December 9, 2005A few months ago, Jon Stewart opened the eyes of his Daily Show audience when he interviewed the author of the book On Bullshit. Viewers accustomed to hearing the familiar bleep when Stewart enters foul-mouth mode were surprised to find that the word came through completely uncensored. Stewart himself reveled in his new freedom, repeating the word "bullshit" dozens of times over the course of the interview. It was difficult not to notice the word every time he spoke it.
Adam K. Anderson of the University of Toronto, who specializes in studying attention, wondered if negative words like "…
dmunger | December 5, 2005Take a look at these two photographs of my son Jim taken a month or so after he was born (and, as he would be quick to point out, nearly 14 years ago). Which is more memorable?
It may depend on your age. It's natural for your priorities to change as you get older, and so it seems, you may have a different response to pictures depicting emotions. Your kids grow up and leave home, and suddenly Little League and Disney seem less significant. Perhaps fine wine and opera rise up to fill that void. Later still, you begin to think about retirement, and gradually it seems more important to reach…
dmunger | November 21, 2005The picture below will link you to a quick animation. The blue ring will gradually get smaller until it obscures the three "8"s, then continue to shrink until the figures are visible again. While they are obscured, the 8s will be transformed into letters (S, P, E, U, or H), and a new letter will also appear. Your job is to search for the letter U or H—it has an equal chance of appearing where any of the 8s were, or in the new spot. Click on the picture to try it out.
Attention researchers Steven Franconeri, Andrew Hollingworth, and Daniel Simons used a similar animation to answer a key…
dmunger | November 18, 2005Attentional blink researchers Christian Olivers and Sander Nieuwenhuis noticed something curious when they conducted their experiments. When they were testing their stimuli, they felt that they could do the task better when they were distracted. Their participants also reported that they tended to perform better when they were a little unfocused on the task.
Attentional blink, as we've reported before, is a short period when we're less able to notice an item flashed briefly in our visual field. The classic experiment involves a rapidly flashed sequence of random digits or letters—Olivers and…
dmunger | November 15, 2005Take a look at the following three animations. Each will flash very rapidly through a set of words (9 words per second!). Your job is to watch carefully and see if you notice a word that describes an occupation that a human performs for money. Such a word may or may not be in each list, and you only get one chance with each one. No cheating!
List 1
List 2
List 3
Did you see an occupation in any of the lists? Just one or two of them?
If you're like most people, you had no problem spotting "attorney" in the first list, but you missed "carpenter" in the second list. The third list was probably…
dmunger | April 25, 2005It's impossible to pay attention to everything in the visual field at once. If we could, magicians would be out of business: most "magic" tricks work by distracting the viewers' attention while the real trick is being done in plain sight.
However, if a new object enters our field of view, we quickly direct our attention that way and make note of it. This would have come in handy for our ancestors as they kept watch for predators. Now its primary use is probably avoiding car accidents (or shutting down Web browsers when the boss shows up at your cubicle!). Interestingly, this facility is not…
dmunger | March 4, 2005The world of someone who has a psychological disorder is different from the world of a healthy person. For example, someone suffering from clinical anxiety will notice threatening stimuli sooner, and an alcoholic will perceive alcohol-related images quicker than healthy people. These different perceptions of the world exacerbate the illness, making recovery even more difficult.
But what about casual users of alcohol, or occasional users of marijuana? Is their world different too? A group of researchers led by Harry T. Jones of the University of Glasgow devised an experiment to test this…
dmunger | March 2, 2005Take a look at the following movie (quicktime required). The movie will alternately flash a picture of a desk and a patterned block. Your job is to see if anything about the picture of the desk changes each time it flashes. Don't replay the movie when you get to the end; just stop.
Did you notice any changes? Most people won't spot any changes at all when they watch this movie the first time. But watch the image as you press play again, and you'll see that the desk has changed significantly from the beginning to the end of the movie. I actually rotated it by two degrees at each point along…