Probing attentional allocation with a novel forced-response method

生活充满了令人分心的事情。当我们试图专注于手头的任务时，外面有汽车的噪音，我们的电脑上有弹出窗口，有提示他们出现的短信，还有视觉干扰。然而，人类在面对他们试图达到的目标时，能够过滤掉分心的事情，这是惊人的。这是如何实现的？目前的研究计划旨在研究视觉世界中显著的分心如何影响正在进行的表现，以及人类如何设法缓解这些分心以提高工作效率。为此，研究人员创造了一种研究分心的新方法。参与者在其他让人分心的物品中搜索特定的物品，同时记录他们眼睛的一瞬间的运动。这项任务迫使他们在呈现每个视觉阵列后在不同的时间做出反应。研究人员可以跟踪参与者在观看的地方，以及在每个显示过程中的不同时间，分心是如何影响他们的。数据还将使用计算模型进行分析，该模型有助于揭示分心如何影响表现。本研究为视觉世界分心的研究创造了一个模型情境。参与者看到一系列几何物体；他们的任务是将眼睛移到显示器中形状奇怪的物体上。为了分散他们的注意力，有时会展示一个与任务无关的奇怪的颜色物体。该任务的一个关键特征是，它改变了参与者在每次显示时可用来移动眼睛的时间，因此有时需要在显示后非常快地做出响应，有时参与者有更长的时间来处理视觉信息。从理论上讲，表现由两个心理过程组成：1)对必须避免的分心因素的反射性反应；2)对形状奇怪的物体的目标导向反应。最后，研究人员将研究自然视觉场景中的分心。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.