How visual attention mechanisms contribute to performance in a task that resembles a videogame

What is it about?

As we explore the world with our eyes, the next target to be inspected is generally selected based on how much it stands out (salience), its relevance to current goals, and recent experience. The contributions of these three factors are well understood in the context of tightly controlled laboratory tasks in which events unfold in a highly scripted, segmented sequence. However, their impact and interaction are much less certain during more natural, dynamic, unpredictable situations; say, while driving through traffic or playing basketball. We designed a visual scanning task in which these three main forms of attentional control (salience-driven, goal-driven, history-driven) interact rapidly, more akin to real life situations. Spots of different colors appeared non-stop for runs of 90 seconds, and the participants were tasked with looking at those spots that yielded the most points as quickly as possible in order to obtain the highest accumulated score for the full run (looking at a red, yellow, or blue spot yielded 3, 1, and 0 points, respectively).

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Photo by Jim Sung on Unsplash

Photo by Jim Sung on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We found that each mechanism affected in characteristic ways the probability that participants would look to the highest-value target at each moment in time, and the results were largely consistent with previous studies. However, we also found that both the speed and accuracy with which the highest-value target could be identified depended strongly on the history of recently seen stimuli. In general, performance improved as the target color was repeated but plummeted when it switched. This means that behavioral performance may be strongly swayed by short-term adaptation mechanisms that are fast and involuntary, and such mechanisms get amplified during more dynamic, less constrained situations.

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