Probing attentional allocation with a novel forced-response method

生活充满了干扰。外面的汽车噪音、电脑上的弹出窗口、与它们的外观相协调的短信，以及当我们试图专注于手头任务时的视觉干扰。然而，人类在面对他们试图达到的目标时，能够过滤掉干扰。这是如何实现的呢？目前的研究项目旨在研究视觉世界中显著的干扰如何损害持续的表现，以及人类如何设法减轻这些干扰以提高工作效率。为此，研究人员创造了一种研究分心的新方法。参与者在其他分散注意力的物品中搜索一个特定的物品，同时记录下他们眼睛每时每刻的运动。这项任务迫使他们在每个视觉阵列呈现后的不同时间做出反应。研究人员可以追踪参与者看的地方，以及在不同时间对每个显示器的处理中分心是如何影响他们的。数据还将使用一个计算模型进行分析，该模型有助于揭示分心是如何影响表现的。本研究为研究视觉世界中的分心创造了一个模型情境。参与者看到一系列几何物体；他们的任务是把眼睛移到展品中形状奇怪的物体上。为了分散他们的注意力，有时会出现一个与任务无关的奇怪颜色的物体。这项任务的一个关键特征是，它改变了参与者随每次显示移动眼睛的时间，因此有时在显示出现后需要很快做出反应，有时参与者需要更长的时间来处理视觉信息。从理论上讲，行为由两个心理过程组成：1)对必须避免的干扰物的反射性反应，2)对形状奇怪的物体的目标导向反应。最后，调查人员将研究自然视觉场景中的分心。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Life is full of distractions. There are car noises from outside, pop-ups on our computers, text messages that chime their appearance, and visual distractions while we are trying to concentrate on a task at hand. Yet humans are remarkably able to filter out distractions in the face of some goal that they are trying to reach. How is this accomplished? The present research program is aimed at studying how salient distractions in the visual world hurt ongoing performance and how humans manage to mitigate these distractions in order to be productive. Toward this end, the investigators have created a novel way of studying distraction. Participants search for a particular item among other distracting items while the moment-by-moment movement of their eyes is recorded. The task forces them to respond at varying times after the presentation of each visual array. The investigators can track where participants are looking and how distractions affect them at different times into the processing of each display. Data will also be analyzed using a computational model that helps uncover how distractions impair performance. This research creates a model situation for the study of distraction in the visual world. Participants see a series of geometric objects; their task is to move their eyes to the oddly shaped object in the display. To distract them, an oddly colored object that is irrelevant to the task is sometimes presented. A critical feature of the task is that it changes the time available to the participants to move their eyes with each display so that sometimes a response is required very quickly after a display is presented and sometimes participants have longer to process the visual information. Performance is modeled theoretically as consisting of two mental processes: 1) a reflexive response to the distractor that has to be avoided and 2) a goal-oriented response to the oddly shaped object. Finally, the investigators will study distraction in natural visual scenes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.