Practicing the attentional Dwell Away?

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Studies of the time course of visual attention have identified a temporary functional blindness to the second of two spatially separated targets: attending to one visual stimulus may lead to impairments in identifying a second stimulus presented about 200-500 ms later than the first. The phenomenon is known as the attentional dwell time (e.g. Duncan, Ward, Shapiro, 1994). Previous studies of attentional dwell time have all used naive subjects running few (<500) trials each. We have examined the outcome of practice running more than 1000 trials in each subject while recording eye movements. The results suggest that the majority of subjects may learn to optimize their performance reducing the attentional dwell time effect substantially. Further, the reduction in the attentional dwell time effect seems to be closely linked to the ability of the subject to inhibit eye movements while performing the task.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 15th Meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology 29th August - 1st September, 2007, Marseille France
EditorsJonathan Grainger, Francois-Xavier Alario, Boris Burle, Niels Janssen
Number of pages1
PublisherEuropean Society for Cognitive Psychology
Publication date2007
Pages61
Publication statusPublished - 2007
Event15th meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology - Marseille, France
Duration: 29 Aug 20071 Sep 2007
Conference number: 15

Conference

Conference15th meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology
Nummer15
LandFrance
ByMarseille
Periode29/08/200701/09/2007

ID: 2830651