The links between attention and tactile awareness

注意力和触觉意识之间的联系

• 批准号: ES/L007983/1
• 负责人: Polly Dalton
• 金额: $ 35.6万
• 依托单位: Royal Holloway University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2015 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FL007983%2F1
• 关键词: links; between; attention; tactile; awareness

The information that we receive through the sense of touch can be extremely important, in indicating that a stimulus has already made contact with the body and may thus require an immediate response. For example, although the sight and sound of a mosquito suggests that you may soon be bitten, the feeling of it landing on your skin signals that this risk has substantially increased! Given this high level of importance, one might assume that tactile stimuli would be detected with very high priority, perhaps to the extent that they could attract our attention even when we are engaged in another demanding task. However, in contrast to this assumption, intriguing preliminary findings suggest that the absence of attention can in fact leave people open to 'inattentional numbness', whereby they completely miss tactile stimuli that are otherwise clearly noticeable (Mack & Rock, 1998). Indeed, although it is possible to feel a mosquito landing on the skin, many of us have also suffered the consequences of not doing so successfully, perhaps experiencing 'inattentional numbness' through focusing attention on an absorbing book or a delicious meal. Pickpockets may deliberately exploit this tendency, bumping into someone on one side in order to draw attention away from a pocket on the other side from which they are stealing a wallet. The current project will investigate this exciting phenomenon of 'inattentional numbness' and will use it to address several important theoretical issues within the field of tactile attention research.First, we will examine the priority with which an unexpected touch can attract attention. An influential theory in this area ('perceptual load theory', see Lavie, 2010, for review) predicts that people are less likely to notice unexpected stimuli when they are engaged in a demanding task than when they are engaged in an undemanding task. This prediction has never before been tested within touch. It therefore remains possible that tactile stimuli might be processed with such high priority that they are detected even when the ongoing task is highly demanding. We will use the 'inattentional numbness' paradigm to provide a formal test of whether people are less likely to notice unexpected tactile stimuli when they are engaged in a demanding task. This work is important both in furthering our understanding of the detection of unexpected tactile stimuli and in providing the first test of perceptual load theory within touch.Next, we will move our research into a more multisensory context, in order to bring it closer to real-world situations in which information is received simultaneously through more than one sensory modality. We will ask whether paying attention to a tactile task can reduce detection of auditory and/or visual stimuli and also whether detection of tactile stimuli might be affected by a concurrent visual or auditory attention task. As well as extending the inattention paradigm to reflect more lifelike situations, this research will contribute to the important theoretical debate over whether processing resources are shared between sensory modalities or kept distinct between modalities (see Driver & Spence, 2004, for review).As well as contributing to theoretical understanding in a range of areas, the findings from our project will have many potential applications to real life situations. The process of detecting and responding to unexpected tactile stimuli is important in a range of situations. For example, tactile warning signals have for a long time been used in aircraft cockpits (where the 'stick shaker' is used to warn pilots of an impending stall) and they are increasingly being introduced to domestic cars (several of which now use tactile stimuli as part of lane deviation warning systems). Investigations of 'inattentional numbness' are therefore likely to have a wide range of important practical implications, in areas as diverse as interface design and accident investigation.

我们通过触觉获得的信息可能非常重要，它表明刺激已经与身体接触，因此可能需要立即做出反应。例如，尽管蚊子的视觉和声音表明你可能很快就会被叮咬，但它落在你皮肤上的感觉表明，这种风险已经大幅增加！鉴于这种高度的重要性，人们可能会认为，触觉刺激将以非常高的优先级被检测到，甚至在我们从事另一项要求很高的任务时，它们可能会引起我们的注意。然而，与这一假设相反的是，有趣的初步研究结果表明，注意力的缺乏实际上会让人容易出现“疏忽麻木”，即他们完全忽略了原本明显可见的触觉刺激(Mack&Rock，1998)。事实上，尽管我们有可能感觉到蚊子落在皮肤上，但我们中的许多人也因为没有成功地做到这一点而遭受过后果，可能是因为把注意力集中在一本吸引人的书或美味的食物上而体验到了疏忽麻木。扒手可能会故意利用这一倾向，撞到一边的人，以转移人们对另一边的口袋的注意力，他们正从另一边的口袋里偷钱包。本项目将研究这种令人兴奋的疏忽麻木现象，并将利用它来解决触觉注意研究领域中的几个重要理论问题。首先，我们将检验意外触摸可以吸引注意力的优先顺序。这一领域的一项有影响力的理论(“知觉负荷理论”，见Lavie，2010)预测，人们在从事一项要求很高的任务时，不太可能注意到意想不到的刺激，而不是从事一项要求不高的任务。这一预测以前从未被近距离检验过。因此，仍然有可能以如此高的优先级处理触觉刺激，从而即使在正在进行的任务要求很高的情况下也能检测到它们。我们将使用“疏忽麻木”范式来提供一项正式的测试，测试人们在从事一项要求很高的任务时，是否不太可能注意到意外的触觉刺激。这项工作对于加深我们对意外触觉刺激检测的理解，以及对触觉内知觉负荷理论的首次测试都是重要的。接下来，我们将把我们的研究转移到一个更多感觉的背景下，以便使它更接近于通过多个感觉通道同时接收信息的真实世界。我们将询问对触觉任务的注意是否可以减少对听觉和/或视觉刺激的检测，以及对触觉刺激的检测是否可能受到同时进行的视觉或听觉注意任务的影响。除了扩展注意力不集中范式以反映更逼真的情景，这项研究还将有助于重要的理论辩论，即加工资源是在感觉通道之间共享还是在通道之间保持不同(参见Driver&Spence，2004)。除了有助于在一系列领域的理论理解之外，我们项目的发现将在现实生活中有许多潜在的应用。检测和响应意外触觉刺激的过程在一系列情况下都很重要。例如，长期以来，触觉警告信号一直被用于飞机驾驶舱(在飞机驾驶舱中，触觉振动器被用来警告飞行员即将失速)，它们正越来越多地被引入国内汽车(其中几辆现在将触觉刺激作为车道偏离警告系统的一部分)。因此，对“疏忽麻木”的研究可能会在接口设计和事故调查等不同领域产生广泛的重要实践意义。

项目成果

Losing your touch? Sustained inattentional numbness for dynamic tactile events.

• DOI: 10.1037/xhp0001092
• 发表时间: 2023-04
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-HUMAN PERCEPTION AND PERFORMANCE
• 影响因子: 2.1
• 作者: Murphy, Sandra;Dalton, Polly
• 通讯作者: Dalton, Polly

Out of touch? Visual load induces inattentional numbness.

• DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000218
• 发表时间: 2016-06
• 期刊: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance
• 作者: Murphy S;Dalton P
• 通讯作者: Dalton P