Attentional Blink

Attentional Blink in Practice

Attentional blink refers to the inability to perceive a second stimulus whenever the second stimulus follows the first stimulus in succession with a short time lapse. Human s attention is focused on the most important stimuli and thus they focus

on it, whenever a second stimuli appears, however important it is it goes unnoticed with the magnitude of inability to be perceived increasing with a shorter time lapse between these successive stimuli (Petrovsky, 2008). When a person focuses on changing parameters like the value4s of different machine and part performances in an aero plane he may only recognize the first signal for an error while two or more error alerts may have appeared in successive within a short time period. This is a phenomenon that explains how our brains will take time to conceptualize the first stimuli before the second can be detected however humans pay attention to filter unimportant stimuli. In an experiment carried by Raymond et al the perception of a second letter embedded in a stream of serially presented letter proved that humans encounter difficulty to perceive the second letter as the interval between the two letters is less than about 450ms. Since this is a phenomenon that originates from the brain, with its inability to recognize fast changing parameters humans find some tasks encountering attentional blink hence can cause errors or unexpected results (Wright, 1998). To eliminate attentional blink scientists have proved that through training, humans will reduce the time gap required to perceive two different stimulus in succession.  Through training be using the second letter being red while the first being white, people were trained to realize the second letter faster. For three days this experiment was repeated and after the three days whenever the second letter was replaced with its original white color still the people realized in a shorter time. After periods of over a year the people involved in the experiment were again proven to have retained the skill of perceiving successive letters with minimal time lapse (Maciokas, 2000) (Petrovsky, 2008).

Among other targets that can be used to induce attentional blink can be an experiment where a picture of a plate is followed in succession with the one for a spoon with pictures of household utensils used as separation. Secondly another experiment for attentional blink can involve fine pictures in succession with distractor pictures of scrambled scenes used as separation, this would involve two picture, one of a cat and the other of a rabbit, the separators would be scrambled scenes of domestic animals.

With the first experiment the plate would be displayed first while other utensils are to be used prior and as separation where the spoon follows and later again succeeded by other household utensils. People will most likely realize the plate whenever it appears as the first object, since psychologically they are prepared to identify the spoon, the spoon being small and less conspicuous as opposed to thee spoon, they might require a longer time lapse to identify the spoon. Generally the eyes would perceive the plate as a larger object and will condition themselves to expect the spoon as a larger object too, since the spoon is relatively small it may go unnoticed for shorter lapse time. These objects need to have the same picture brightness and color. In the vent that the spoon is given a more conspicuous color like red as opposed to the plate then a shorter time lapse will be required to notice the spoon. In this experiment, since these objects involved vary greatly in size, participants would learn to easily identify the spoon even at shorter times of scene separation. This can be explained by the reasoning that on observing the plate, a relative size would be bigger than the spoon.

With the second experiment, the cat would appear first and the rabbit expected to succeed it. Since these two animals look similar to the eye, they are expected to have a shorter time lapse duration for recognition. When the cat appears the observer would condition himself/ herself to identify the rabbit. Since the scrambled scenes separating the two animals are made from domestic animals, participants will most likely make an earlier judgment to identify the rabbit, in this case if the two animals are given a longer time lapse, many respondents might fail and identify the scrambled scenes as the cat just before it appears. This experiment would result in many errors as the cat and the rabbit look much similar in size and appearance. After learning, it’s expected that respondents will still find it hard to identify the rabbit when shorter time lapse are involved. For such an experiment it would require a longer time for successive scenes keeping the time of picture separation varying.

Among the occupations that attentional blink could act on their disadvantage include boxing, driving and in aviation industry. In the boxing career, the boxers usually have to perceive the expected actions of their opponent upon a given action inflicted on them, it therefore is a game of swift decision, pre-planned actions and action against action. When a boxer encounters a blow from an opponent, it’s most likely that he never anticipated the blow, this is actually carried through taking advantage of attentional blink. A boxer will always be vigilant of the opponents most likely arm to take action on the target, they concentrates on the opponents hand that is most likely to hit them, however when using this strategy, a boxer will usually give the opponent a false impression by releasing his blow to his target, using his strategy he confuses the opponent who takes a precautionary to evade or result this blow on its expected target point, just instantly he releases the other blow to hit his target again in the most unexpected target point. Since all this happens in successive and within a short time, the target has little time to conceptualize that the other blow has been directed to him since the time lapse is usually too small. By using this strategy, the boxer has an added advantage over his opponent hence can be a winning strategy and has been widely used over time. In this case if the lapse time of the second blow is long enough then the target boxer can take a precautionary step to avoid a knockout at this point

Secondly the driving career can be easily affected by attentional blink, this occurs when one activity happens in front of the driver followed by another within a short period of time. When a driver is driving a car, he\she must concentrate on the windscreen view ahead, with this situation it’s most likely that he will witness among many events happening in front. In this situation, a driver usually witnesses cars and other locomotives like motor bikes in front cross the roads, change lanes and get out of lanes. When any of these activities happens, the driver perceives this stimuli, however if another event happens successively in a short time lapse, the driver may not realize the second action and may easily cause an accident. Ion a situation where a driver sees a motorbike in front of him change lane may not realize an oncoming vehicle in the opposite direction move to his lane if these processes take place in a short time lapse. A driver in front will usually change lane to avoid an oncoming vehicle to avoid head on collision, this is a precautionary step even if the safety lane is the other lane is the opposite lane, the driver behind this driver may not realize the other drivers action was to evade the oncoming vehicle but rather would momentarily see the driver change lane, if the car on the loose is too near then they would crush before this driver takes an action.

Thirdly, in the aviation industry, a pilot who steers an airplane deals with several parameters to make his decision. Parameters of changing altitude, engine power and performance, pressure regulation within the plane and fuel levels and consumption. In such a situation, the pilot might have some parameters unnoticed if they have their warning=s in succession with minimal lapse times. In an event that for instance during take-off the pilot is required to check the planes speed and engine power, since these parameters are always varying due to environment conditions the pilot might make a wrong move. During plane take off, the plane must develop enough speed while at the same time all engines must achieve a given power threshold, in the event that a pilot observes the speedometer and engine power dial and realizes that they are okay he opts to take off, however he may have gained enough speed and engine power and thus engages the takeoff gear not noticing that the engine speed had decreased before putting his attention to the take-off gear and engaging it. In the event that the engines fail to build enough power he may fail to takeoff and finish the runway therefore causing accident.

The design of vehicles with heads up display wasn’t a good idea since they were all visible at the same time one was attentive on the windscreen view, this situation makes the driver concentrate at two things at a time, since the human mind retains attention to the most active parameters, the driver might concentrate on the fuel levels and speedometer and forget he had a front view too to observe obstacles in front of the car.  However the head up display has an added advantage over head down display since better speed control is achievable, less mental stress on the driver and easier to use for first time users (Maciokas, 2000) (Petrovsky, 2008). In the contrary these two displays have no significant differences when a high driving load is involved. In the vent that the driver may want to check the speed and during this instant another event like obstruction in front occurs in a short lapse time, the driver may not make a decision to get on his emergency brakes immediately he looks in front of the car, this situation is likely to lead to accident and therefore heads up display is a dangerous technology. The head up display interface has been found to cause decreased response times under traffic conditions and adverse weather conditions (Maciokas, 2000) (Wright, 1998).

References

Maciokas, J. B. (2000). Cognitive and attentional changes with age : evidence from attentional blink deficits. New York : Oxford University Press.

Petrovsky, N. (2008). The attentional blink modulations of hunger and satiety. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.

Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2000). Psychology. Upper Saddle River,: NJ : Prentice Hall,.

Wright, R. D. (1998). Visual attention. New York: Oxford University Press, .