Attention and Inattentional Blindness

Vocabulary flashcards on attention-related concepts.

Basic Research

Aimed at driving/expanding theory.

Applied Research

Aimed at addressing real world issues.

Cognitive Psychology

The scientific study of mental processes involved in how people perceive, learn, remember, think, problem-solve, and communicate.

Human Factors Psychology

Applying theories of human cognition to the study of how people interact with systems to optimize human performance.

Attention

A state in which cognitive resources are focused on certain aspects of the environment rather than on others.

Inattentional Blindness

People fail to notice an unexpected object because they are focused on a different task.

Sensory Activation

Something really bright or something moving might grab our attention

Pertinence/Relevance

What we were instructed to look for. Something relevant to us and our own experiences.

Yaxley & Zwaan (2005) - Smokers

Smokers were faster at detecting the change when a smoking object changed.

Yaxley & Zwaan (2005) - Priming

When non-smokers were told to look for smoking objects, they were just as fast at noticing the change as smokers.

Driving Distraction

Focusing on a conversation might make you miss important roadway hazards.

TSA Baggage Screening

Being distracted can lead to missing contraband.

Medical Professionals and Attention

Reviewing a scan for a particular condition may cause radiologists to overlook other abnormalities.

Basic Research (Attention)

Establish an understanding of humans' attentional capacity.

Applied Research (Attention)

Design systems to support and supplement human attention.

Human Factors Psychologists (Attention)

Study attention as it applies to real-world problems.

Attentional Cuing

Helped develop technology to combat our attentional limitations.

Attentional Blindspots

We often do not notice everything in our environment

Change Detection and Sensory Input

Change detection can be affected by sensory input/salience

Change Detection and Prior Knowledge

Change detection also can be affected by our prior knowledge, biases, and instructions.

Guiding Attention

We can guide attention to avoid missing important information through attentional cuing.

Simon & Levin (1997)

A researcher asks for directions from someone, another researcher walked through with a door and swapped with the initial researcher, few people noticed the change

Simon & Chabris (1999)

They were interested in what people pay attention to and what they ignore. Showed participants a video of students passing a basketball around, asked them to count how many times the players wearing white pass the basketball.

Attention Filters

Our brain filters out stimuli that aren’t relevant.

Limited Attention Span

We attend to less in our environment than we think.

Attention Limitations

We cannot focus on multiple changes in our environment at once

Rebecca Pharmer

UCF Psychology Alumni; US Navy civilian contractor; PhD Candidate currently

Technology to Combat Attentional Limitations

Make things more salient with alarms, highlighting, AI detection

Final Exam

The final exam will be cumulative

Paper 3

Paper 3 is due today by 11:59pm