Visual attention: a psychologist’s perspective
Dr Chris Atherton
School of Psychology,University of Central Lancashire
your brain is lazy, shallow, and easily
distracted.
(but ultimately, also hackable)
So what do you do?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephangeyer/3020487807/sizes/o/
“so are you analysing me now, then?”
thinkingperception
attention
memory
University of Central Lancashire
Preston
Andy
Where is the educational merit ...
• ... in row after row of bullet points?
• Students are expected to sit there for two hours
• I get antsy if I don’t check Twitter for 10 minutes
education as endurance event
http://www.flickr.com/photos/infomatique/1800877044/
education needs to embrace
instructional design!
disclaimer: ‘education’
technical communication needs
to embrace psychology
modern psychology
http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/webimages/gallery_1850_gents.gif
Gestalt grouping principles
continuity
similarity
proximity
9-dot problem
1
2
3
4
start here
there is no square!
we group objects faster based on proximity ...
... than we do based on colour or shape
(Quinlan & Wilton, 1998)
for what/where decisions, the brain
hacks itself!
where?
what?
visualcortex
what/where pathways
farming out tasks to separate pathways buys more processing power
“attentionomics”
Experiment :
gloatsproutbringtheirbenchstocktrain
whole
blacktrapstrapslackcrackflap
wrapwrack
glacksprutslaffblupprib
kreebfrallsowl
the “magic number 7” (± 2)
(Miller, 1956)
magic number 4 ?
(Cowan, 2001)
subitization
subitization
subitization
max. working memory load:
4-5 things
working memory capacity is limited— but hackable.
cognitive load= amount of work
needed to understand or learn something
intrinsic cognitive load:how inherently difficult
something is
A
C
E
D
F
B
A
CB
extraneous cognitive load:extra work imposed by
the thinking/learning environment
A
CB
A has a reciprocal relationship with B and with C.
B has a reciprocal relationship with A but only receives incoming information from C
C has a reciprocal relationship with A but not with B, to which it feeds forward.
good instructional design is all about reducing
extraneous load
the hack: farm out work to the brain’s different pathways
visualcortex
visual/auditory pathways
auditorycortex
http://moviescreenshots.blogspot.com/
we LOVE audiovisual stimulation!
so why isn’t this any good?
does pictures
does language (spoken or written)
Death by PowerPoint:
boredoverloaded
... our research
http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html
“why can’t education be like that?”
not just aesthetic!
study 1(in the lab)
traditional bullet-points with occasional diagrams
sparse text only
sparse text with diagrams
identical auditory track in each condition
MCQ performance
9. If an advertising campaign has 60 Gross Rating Points (GRPs), the advert could reach:
(a) 60% of the target audience once, or 15% of the audience four times
(b) 30% of the target audience once, or 15% of the audience two times
(c) 30% of the audience twice, and 40% of the audience four times
(d) 60% of the audience once, and 10% of the audience four times
traditional
sparse text
sparse text, graphics
... no difference between groups
Essay answer performance
What do you remember about the main part of the presentation? Please write as much as you can ...
How advertising can be useful to a product but that there is a fine line between successful and negative advertising. Identified key factors affecting the success of advertising, such as exposure and an adverts relation to the product.Frequency of exposure can have a detrimental effect on the success of an advert. Consumers should be made aware of a product but not bombarded. Advertisers must concern themselves with selecting suitable mediums to reach desired audiences at the right frequency of risk the advert not affecting the consumer
num
ber
of t
hem
es w
ritt
en a
bout
* = significant difference
In other words, slides that look like this:
help students learn better than slides that look like this:
study 2 (in the lecture theatre)
Again, students either saw slides like this ...
... or slides like this:
MCQ performance = same
Essay answer performance
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
no. o
f the
mes
wri
tten
abo
ut
traditionalslides
sparseslides
significant (p < .05)
(a) sparse slides lead to fewer competing attentional demands
either ...
(b) sparse visual cues lead to better encoding of information
or ...
implications for instructional design and tech comms?
max. working memory load:
4-5 things
less is more!
split the load
pictures
words
make the brain’s native skills work for you
your brain is lazy, shallow, and easily
distracted.
(but ultimately, also hackable)
finiteattentionspan.wordpress.com
Twitter: @finiteattention
Thank you to:Dr Andy MorleyOlivia Mitchell Simon Bostock
TCUK 2009 committee
