The recent rise in media use has prompted researchers to investigate its influence on users' basic cognitive processes, such as attention and cognitive control. However, most of these investigations ...have failed to consider that the rise in media use has been accompanied by an even more dramatic rise in media multitasking (engaging with multiple forms of media simultaneously). Here we investigate how one's ability to switch between 2 tasks and to perform 2 tasks simultaneously is associated with media multitasking experience. Participants saw displays comprised of a number-letter pair and classified the number as odd or even and/or the letter as a consonant or vowel. In task-switching blocks, a cue indicated which classification to perform on each trial. In dual-task blocks, participants performed both classifications. Heavy and light media multitaskers showed comparable performance in the dual-task. Across 2 experiments, heavy media multitaskers were better able to switch between tasks in the task-switching paradigm. Thus, while media multitasking was not associated with increased ability to process 2 tasks in parallel, it was associated with an increased ability to shift between discrete tasks.
Models of visual search posit that target absent responses occur when the quitting threshold for the trial is reached before a target is detected, and that feedback about missed targets allows the ...quitting threshold to be adaptively set to the difficulty of the search task. While these models may effectively capture processes in lab-based tasks, in real-world searches feedback is often impossible to provide. Instead, observers have little information about their errors, and may only be aware of when they successfully detect the target. We posit that in the absence of feedback the time required to find a target might influence quitting thresholds. In three experiments, we investigate how manipulating the mean time and the standard deviation of time to detect a target influence quitting thresholds in target absent trials. To vary target detection times while holding the search stimuli constant, we used an eye-movement contingent change to surreptitiously introduce a target near fixation at a particular time. Results show that decreasing the mean time to find a target also decreases the number of items inspected and reaction time in target absent trials, the hallmark of a shift in the quitting threshold. By contrast, varying the standard deviation around a fixed mean had no impact on target absent search times. These findings suggest that people are sensitive to the typical time required to find a target in a given task and use that information to flexibly adjust target absent quitting thresholds, but people are not sensitive to the variability.
Alcohol concentration has traditionally been labeled in the form of alcohol by volume (ABV). This format can cause difficulty in evaluating accuracy of a pour because it doesn't directly connect with ...recommendations related to "standard drinks," the approach used by the US CDC and others organizations which intend to facilitate responsible drinking behaviors. Strategies which more directly connect guidelines related to healthy drinking behaviors to alcohol labeling are needed.
Assess how a label identifying the number of standard drinks per container impacts the ability of undergraduate students to accurately pour a standard drink.
This study employed a 3 x 2 x 2 experimental design. Undergraduates were asked to pour a standard drink from mock products from three alcohol categories (beer, wine and liquor); products were presented in two types of label (traditional ABV vs. standard drinks/container) at two concentrations of alcohol content (high and low).
We calculated standardized pour errors (pour errors in standard drink units). Analysis of these standardized pour errors suggested that 1) people tended to underpour beverages of low concentration across product categories and overpour those high in concentration. 2) When the standard drink label was present, pour accuracy was improved, when compared with pours from containers affixed with ABV labels in low alcohol concentrations across all product categories (beer, wine and liquor). 3) For treatments that comprised high concentrations of alcohol, the standard drink label significantly increased accuracy only for beer. However, it is worth noting that beer with an ABV label was the condition with the most dramatic overpours, and these problematic overpours were dramatically reduced by the addition of a standard drink label.
Our work empirically supports the notion that Undergraduate students are better able to accurately assess and pour a standard drink of alcohol from bottles incorporating a label which includes standard drinks/container vs. those with traditional ABV labeling. That said, the effect is quite different for each alcohol category: beer, wine, and liquor and depends on whether the product is high or low in concentration of alcohol for its category; as such, policy makers should consider alcohol categories and concentrations from a public health perspective when recommending changes to labeling.
We investigated whether multitasking with media was a unique predictor of depression and social anxiety symptoms. Participants (N=318) completed measures of their media use, personality ...characteristics, depression, and social anxiety. Regression analyses revealed that increased media multitasking was associated with higher depression and social anxiety symptoms, even after controlling for overall media use and the personality traits of neuroticism and extraversion. The unique association between media multitasking and these measures of psychosocial dysfunction suggests that the growing trend of multitasking with media may represent a unique risk factor for mental health problems related to mood and anxiety. Further, the results strongly suggest that future research investigating the impact of media use on mental health needs to consider the role that multitasking with media plays in the relationship.
The probability of missing a target increases in low target prevalence search tasks. Wolfe and Van Wert (2010) propose 2 causes of this effect: reducing the quitting threshold, and conservatively ...shifting the decision making criterion used to evaluate each item. Reducing the quitting threshold predicts that target absent responses will be made without fully inspecting the display, increasing misses due to never inspecting the target (selection errors). The shift in decision criterion increases the likelihood of failing to recognize an inspected target (identification errors). Though there is robust evidence that target prevalence rates shift quitting thresholds, the proposed shift in decision making criterion has little support. In Experiment 1 we eye-tracked participants during searches of high, medium, and low prevalence. Eye movements were used to classify misses as selection or identification errors. Identification errors increased as prevalence decreased, supporting the claim that decision criterion becomes more conservative as prevalence decreases. In addition, as prevalence decreased, the dwell time on targets increased while dwell times on distractors decreased. We propose that the effect of prevalence on decision making for individual items is best modeled as a shift in criterion in a drift diffusion model, rather than signal detection, as drift diffusion accounts for this pattern of decision times. In Experiment 2 we replicate these findings while presenting stimuli in an rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream. Experiments 1 and 2 were consistent with the conclusion that prevalence rate influences the item-by-item decision criterion, and are consistent with a drift diffusion model of this decision process.
Knowing the colour of an upcoming target allows one to bias attention towards objects of that colour. It is far less clear whether knowing the colour of an up-coming distractor can allow one to ...suppress attention to items of that colour. Arita, Carlisle, and Woodman (2012) suggest that people can create a template for rejection. However, the method used in Arita et al. may have allowed people to adopt a strategy of internally generating a positive cue for the target colour or target hemifield. Here we use a method very similar to theirs, but manipulate the display layouts and the number of un-cued colours in ways that should thwart such strategies. Across three experiments, we find a negative cuing benefit only in a very special circumstance that encourages a strategic shift to internally generating a positive cue (the same circumstance used by Arita et al.). We conclude that people are unable to use a negative feature-cue on a trial-by-trial basis to suppress attention to upcoming distractors, and attribute the finding in Arita et al. to a strategic shift rather than a template for rejection.
One can exert significant volitional control over the attentional filter so that stimuli that are consistent with one's explicit goals are more likely to receive attention and become part of one's ...conscious experience. Here we pair a mood induction procedure with an inattentional blindness task to show that one's current mood has a similar influence on attention. A positive, negative, or neutral mood manipulation was followed by an attentionally demanding multiple-object tracking task. During the tracking task, participants were more likely to notice an unexpected face when its emotional expression was congruent with participants' mood. This was particularly true for the frowning face, which was detected almost exclusively by participants in the sad mood induction condition. This attentional bias toward mood-congruent stimuli provides evidence that one's temporary mood can influence the attentional filter, thereby affecting the information that one extracts from, and how one experiences the world.
Visual search can be guided by biasing one's attention towards features associated with a target. Prior work has shown that high-fidelity, picture-based cues are more beneficial to search than ...text-based cues. However, typically picture cues provide both detailed form information and color information that is absent from text-based cues. Given that visual resolution deteriorates with eccentricity, it is not clear that high-fidelity form information would benefit guidance to peripheral objects - much of the picture benefit could be due to color information alone. To address this, we conducted a search task with eye-tracking that had four types of cues that comprised a 2 (text/pictorial cue) × 2 (no color/color) design. We hypothesized that color information would be important for efficient search guidance while high-fidelity form information would be important for efficient verification times. In Experiment 1 cues were a colored picture of the target, a gray-scaled picture of the target, a text-based cue that included color (e.g., "blue shoe"), or a text-based cue without color (e.g., "shoe"). Experiment 2 was a replication of Experiment 1, except that the color word in the text-based cue was presented in the precise color that was the dominant color in the target. Our results show that high-fidelity form information is important for efficient verifications times (with color playing less of a role) and color is important for efficient guidance, but form information also benefits guidance. These results suggest that different features of the cue independently contribute to different aspects of the search process.
Targets in real-world visual search tasks, such as baggage screening, may appear on as few as 2% of searches (Hofer & Schwaninger, 2005). Rare targets are missed more frequently than common targets, ...a phenomenon known as the low prevalence effect. Given the importance of rare target detection, researchers have sought to increase performance through technological improvements, experimental manipulations, and individual differences approaches. Here we focus on the individual differences approach, which has shown that it is possible to predict an individual's low prevalence search accuracy in a T among Ls search using basic cognitive tasks. Here, we address limitations of previous work by using both basic Ts and Ls and more representative baggage screening items. Results show we can account for 53% of variance in low prevalence search accuracy. Eye-tracking results show that fluid intelligence and near transfer search performance predict selection errors (misses caused by never inspecting the target) while working memory capacity and near transfer search performance predict identification errors (misses caused by misidentifying an inspected target). We conclude that the individual differences approach can be an effective tool to select who will perform well in real-world searches.
Public Significance Statement
Individuals vary widely in how well they can perform low prevalence visual search tasks, such as baggage screening at security checkpoints. To improve threat detection accuracy in this scenario, we have identified a battery of cognitive tasks that can quickly identify those who are likely to perform low prevalence visual search tasks at a high level.
Front of pack (FOP) nutrition labels are concise labels located on the front of food packages that provide truncated nutrition information. These labels are rapidly gaining prominence worldwide, ...presumably because they attract attention and their simplified formats enable rapid comparisons of nutritional value.
Eye tracking was conducted as US consumers interacted with actual packages with and without FOP labels to (1) assess if the presence of an FOP label increases attention to nutrition information when viewers are not specifically tasked with nutrition-related goals; and (2) study the effect of FOP presence on consumer use of more comprehensive, traditional nutrition information presented in the Nutritional Facts Panel (NFP), a mandatory label for most packaged foods in the US.
Our results indicate that colored FOP labels enhanced the probability that any nutrition information was attended, and resulted in faster detection and longer viewing of nutrition information. However, for cereal packages, these benefits were at the expense of attention to the more comprehensive NFP. Our results are consistent with a potential short cut effect of FOP labels, such that if an FOP was present, participants spent less time attending the more comprehensive NFP. For crackers, FOP labels increased time spent attending to nutrition information, but we found no evidence that their presence reduced the time spent on the nutrition information in the NFP.
The finding that FOP labels increased attention to overall nutrition information by people who did not have an explicit nutritional goal suggests that these labels may have an advantage in conveying nutrition information to a wide segment of the population. However, for some food types this benefit may come with a short-cut effect; that is, decreased attention to more comprehensive nutrition information. These results have implications for policy and warrant further research into the mechanisms by which FOP labels impact use of nutrition information by consumers for different foods.
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