Developing a comprehensive profile of attentional control strategy

无论是在繁华的时代广场上行走，还是在宁静的森林中徒步旅行，他们的感官捕捉到的信息都远远超过了完全处理的信息。幸运的是，人类具有注意力机制，这有助于优先考虑视觉，声音，气味等，与行为最相关的（例如，一个人接近，而不是广告牌上明亮的闪光灯）。虽然大多数人拥有强大的能力来使用注意力（例如，寻找红色的东西，在农产品区找到苹果），人们如何战略性地使用这些能力有很大的差异。例如，虽然大多数人都有能力搜索红色来快速在农产品通道中找到苹果，但研究表明，许多人并不选择应用这种能力，因此需要更长的时间来完成任务。一个人的注意力策略--而不仅仅是他们的能力--可以决定他们在日常任务中的成功，这一概念具有重大的社会意义。首先，注意力策略可以解释人们在一些需要注意力的职业中的表现，比如行李检查、雷达监控、驾驶等等。衡量战略的使用可以帮助确定这些职业的适合性。此外，学习如何改善注意策略可以提高工作绩效。其次，许多疾病都有注意力的成分，特别是多动症和额叶损伤;了解如何使用策略可以帮助更好地描述这些疾病，并开辟潜在的治疗途径。本研究旨在使用各种人类行为和眼动追踪方法来调查和描述个体在使用注意力策略时的差异，主要有两种方法。首先，使用一个新的实验范式最近开发的研究小组-适应性选择视觉搜索（ACVS）-研究人员将探讨如何在一个任务上的策略使用推广到其他任务上的策略使用。它还将研究人们的主观努力感在多大程度上有助于他们对策略的最佳（或非最佳）使用。也就是说，有些人会因为觉得使用这些策略很费力而避免使用好的策略吗？其次，研究小组将在大样本的个体中测量各种不同的策略和能力指标，以揭示整个人群中注意力策略使用的隐藏预测因素。这将有助于研究人员了解一个人的注意力策略在许多情况下是否可以提炼成一个单一的可测量的特质或一个更复杂的，异质的特质集。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Whether one is navigating a bustling Times Square or hiking in a peaceful forest, their senses capture far more information than can possibly be processed fully. Fortunately, humans are endowed with the mechanisms of attention, which help to prioritize the sights, sounds, smells, etc., that are most behaviorally relevant (e,g., a person approaching instead of bright flashing lights on a billboard). While most people possess powerful abilities to use attention (e.g., searching for red things to find apples in a produce section), there is great variation in how strategically people use these abilities. For example, while most people have the ability to search for the color red to quickly find apples in a produce aisle, research has revealed that many people do not choose to apply this ability and, consequently, take longer to accomplish their task. The notion that one’s attentional strategies – and not only their abilities -- can dictate their success in everyday tasks has significant societal implications. First, attentional strategies might explain how people perform at a number of attentionally demanding vocations, such as baggage screening, radar monitoring, driving, and more. Measuring strategy use could help determine suitability for these vocations. Additionally, learning how to improve attentional strategy could enhance job performance. Second, many disorders have an attentional component, especially ADHD and frontal lobe damage; understanding how strategy is used could help better characterize these disorders and open up potential paths to treatment.The present research aims uses a wide variety of human behavioral and eye-tracking methods to investigate and characterize how individuals vary in their use of attentional strategy, with two primary approaches. First, using a novel experimental paradigm recently developed by the research team – the Adaptive Choice Visual Search (ACVS) – the researchers will explore how strategy use on one task generalizes to strategy use on other tasks. It will also examine the degree to which people’s subjective sense of effort contributes to their optimal (or non-optimal) use of strategy. That is, do some people avoid good strategies because they find these strategies to be effortful to use? Second, the research team will measure a variety of distinct strategy and ability metrics in a large sample of individuals to uncover hidden predictors of attentional strategy use across the population. This will help researchers to understand whether an individual’s attentional strategy across many contexts can be distilled to a single measurable trait or a more complex, heterogeneous set of traits.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.