Can I have your attention, please!
My outtake of: ‘Zo werkt aandacht’ by Stefan van der Stigchel
Written by Andre Soff
Strategy at VBAT
Stefan van der Stigchel, Associate professor at the department of Experimental Psychology at Utrecht University, published a book on how attention really works. Here’s some valuable insight about attention in our world of distraction:
The illusion of a rich visual world
The moment you open your eyes; you automatically start looking around. I see a car coming from the right, a beauty ahead. I get the illusion of looking to a rich visual world. However, we perceive less of our environment than we expect. You probably know the famous example of attention with a video clip of a basketball game and while you concentrate on a task to count the passes, you completely miss the gorilla running through the field.
Our brain is efficiently focussing on information that is relevant for the task of counting the passes. It is difficult for us to realize this, like checking if the light in the refrigerator is still on after we close it. Despite our selective observations, we’re bombarded by visual information every day. Our vision is the most important of senses in perception and it works at high speed. It is useful to separate the physical seeing of our eyes and a second step of identification in our brains. Everybody sees the gorilla but a lot of people don’t identify it. When confronted very shortly with a picture, we see all details but only become consciously aware of the core (gist) of it. What we identify is mostly steered by our expectations. Even catchy objects are not identified when they are not to be expected.
What makes something stand out
It all starts with visibility. For visibility you need contrast. Contrast in colour, form or size. Distinctiveness from its environment. If an object is not visible it will not be identified.
- The further away an object is from our centre of attention, the less it stands out.
- If an object is surrounded by similar objects, the object is less likely to stand out.
- The further away other objects are, the more the object of choice stands out.
Selection through attention
Visual attention is a selection of our brains of visual information, to identify it by connecting existing knowledge. Attention is like a spotlight on a stage. The spotlight can go from one place to another and it can be either wide or more focussed. We can control our own personal spotlight. This usually happens unconsciously, out of reflex, but can be controlled if desired. When something is changed and there is no possibility to refer to prior knowledge, change blindness occurs. Relevant memories are needed to form a sort of before and after picture, so don’t be disappointed when your friend doesn’t notice your new haircut. Change blindness also occurs when CaCa Cala is written in the original Coca Cola wordmark.
How do we decide what our attention is focussed on
A pop-out effect occurs when we are confronted with distinctive information that drives our attention. Colour is a stronger differentiator than form. Unique colour information will always automatically grab your attention and is therefore context related. The second step is keeping attention, which mostly has to do with personal interest. If you’re hungry, food will get more attention. Faces, however, have an evolutionary pop-out effect, so our attention towards them is inherent. You can use such knowledge to cue attention, i.e. a new panel or by presenting a face looking in the direction of the object.
What you’re looking at shows it all
Our eyes have the highest speed muscles in our body. Our eyes wink and move but what we see is a fluid sight. The same counts for the combination of our left and right eye. Attention and eye movement are strongly related. So to getting attention, the eyes need to focus on the right place. For maximum effectiveness, the size of your so-called spotlight is important. When you are searching for the right isle in a supermarket, you have a large spotlight and your attention will look for large signs. Eye tracking will be used more in the future for research, but also as a user interface, since it is the fastest connection between our brain and muscles.
You only see what you expect to see
Expectations are crucial in noticing objects. Our visual world is full of regularities and we use them during our discovery of the environment. The context gives us expectations that help us to navigate our attention in an effective way. We can learn quickly what to expect in a certain context like the search for a menu on a webpage. We can remember many different contexts over a long period of time, which explains why you still know where the doorknob is in your childhood bedroom. Attention is also steered by visual associations we have with the object, like yellow bananas and purple Milka chocolate bars. Such attention, based on earlier experiences, is called priming. Time based research proves that such learning effects even can also work the other way around, e.g. bananas cannot be red. When the visual property is connected to a reward, like delicious chocolate, the property will stand out automatically.
We don’t just see, we look. We don’t just hear, we listen
We look through the glasses of the past to see the present. We learned where to find interesting information and select the right information for further processing based on that. When our expectations are different, we’re confronted with our limited observations. The last step after seeing and identification is consciousness. Our attention is also steering consciousness to focus at important information. When you’re focussed on a certain task, you’re only consciously processing the relevant information. You are counting and not consciously seeing the gorilla. The limited size of our conscious mind gives the most important information priority.
This is how attention works
Because we have limited ability to steer our attention, we will not perceive everything in our rich visual world. That is why designers and advertising people have to fight for our attention. Only if you have attention, there is a chance to get access to our consciousness. All other information is seen but rejected. We can steer our attention spotlight but are primarily driven by our reflexes. Is what we see also what we get? We only see the light in the fridge as we open the door.
Thanks for your attention.
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Written by Andre Soff
Strategy at VBAT
