驾驶员为何对道路关键事件“视而不见”?——“自下而上”和“自上而下”加工机制的交互作用

驾驶员“视而不见”错误是指驾驶员的视线虽然指向道路上的危险目标, 却没有知觉到其存在, 对交通安全构成威胁。本文首先在注意计算框架内, 分别从“自下而上”和“自上而下”两种加工机制探讨诱发驾驶员“视而不见”错误的主要因素, 该框架解释力不足的原因在于没有充分考虑实践经验和动机对驾驶员预期和注意定势的影响。由此提出注意计算框架扩展模型, 通过“自下而上”和“自上而下”的交互作用机制对驾驶员“视而不见”错误提出综合解释。     

在汉字加工中间隔效应对重复知盲效应的影响

本研究采用RSVP任务考察了在汉字信息加工中间隔效应对重复知盲效应的影响。研究发现：（1）间隔效应是影响重复知盲效应的主要因素之一。当间隔数较小（或间隔时间较短）时,有较强的重复知盲效应;随着间隔数的增加（或间隔时间的延长）,重复知盲效应逐渐减弱;（2）在同一系列位置,第一个重复项R1的正确率远大于第二个重复项R2,这可能反映出注意在重复知盲效应中的作用。     

Bodies capture attention when nothing is expected

Functional neuroimaging research has shown that certain classes of visual stimulus selectively activate focal regions of visual cortex. Specifically, cortical areas that generally and selectively respond to faces (Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., & Chun, M. M. (1997). The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. Journal of Neuroscience, 17(11), 4302-4311; Puce, A., Allison, T., Asgari, M., Gore, J. C., & McCarthy, G. (1996). Differential sensitivity of human visual cortex to faces, letterstrings, and textures: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Neuroscience, 16(16), 5205-5215.) and to the human body (Downing, P. E., Jiang, Y., Shuman, M., & Kanwisher, N. (2001). A cortical area selective for visual processing of the human body. Science, 293(5539), 2470-2473.) have recently been described using fMRI. A parallel body of research has focused on the ability of faces to "capture" the focus of attention, compared to other kinds of objects (Lavie, N., Ro, T., & Russell, C. (2003). The role of perceptual load in processing distractor faces. Psychological Science, 14(5), 510-515; Ro, T., Russell, C., & Lavie, N. (2001). Changing faces: a detection advantage in the flicker paradigm. Psychological Science, 12(1), 94-99; Vuilleumier, P. (2000). Faces call for attention: evidence from patients with visual extinction. Neuropsychologia, 38(5), 693-700.). The present study uses Mack and Rock's "inattentional blindness" paradigm to investigate whether unexpected, task-irrelevant human body stimuli capture awareness when attention is occupied by a primary task (Mack, A., & Rock, I. (1998). Inattentional blindness. London: MIT Press). Silhouettes and stick figures of human bodies, and silhouettes of hands, were compared to control stimuli including object silhouettes, object stick figures, and scrambled silhouettes of bodies, body parts, and objects. Participants were significantly better able to detect a human figure relative to the control stimuli. These results suggest that the human body, like the face, may be prioritized for attentional selection. More generally, they are consistent with the proposal that the visual system assigns attentional priority to types of stimuli that are also represented in strongly selective cortical regions.     

Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super‐recogniser ability to spot faces in a crowd and susceptibility to change blindness

Police worldwide regularly review closed‐circuit television (CCTV) evidence in investigations. This research found that London police experts who work in a full‐time “Super‐Recogniser Unit” and front line police identifiers regularly making suspect identifications from CCTV possessed superior unfamiliar face recognition ability and, with higher levels of confidence, outperformed controls at locating actors in a bespoke Spot the Face in a Crowd Test. Police were also less susceptible to change blindness errors and possessed higher levels of conscientiousness and lower levels of neuroticism and openness. Controls who took part in Spot the Face in a Crowd Test actor familiarisation training outperformed untrained controls, suggesting this exercise might enhance identification of persons of interest in real investigations. This research supports an accumulating body of evidence demonstrating that international police forces may benefit from deploying officers with superior face recognition ability to roles such as CCTV review, as these officers may be the most likely to identify persons of interest.     

Perceptual load affects change blindness in a real‐world interaction

Change blindness is the striking inability to detect seemingly obvious changes that occur between views of a scene. The current study assessed perceptual load as a factor that may affect change blindness for human faces. The study had participants (n = 103) interact with a researcher in a testing room that imposed low or high perceptual load. Midway through the conversation, the researcher was replaced by another person. Thirty‐nine percent of participants failed to detect the change. There was a significant effect of perceptual load, with greater change detection under low load (71%) than high load (52%). This research suggests that the perceptual load imposed by a task may have a significant effect on the likelihood of change blindness and ought to be considered in future research.     

Look at them and they will notice you: Distractor-independent attentional capture by direct gaze in change blindness

Humans have shown a detection advantage of direct vs. averted gaze stimuli in visual search tasks. However, instead of attentional capture by direct gaze, the detection advantage in visual search may depend on attention-grabbing potential of the distractor stimuli to which the target needs to be compared. We investigated attentional capture by direct gaze using the change blindness paradigm, in which successful detection does not require comparison between the target and the distractor items. Participants detected a masked gaze direction change in one of four simultaneously presented schematic faces. The distractor gaze directions were systematically varied across three experiments. Changes resulting in direct gaze were detected more efficiently than those resulting in averted gaze, independently of distractor gaze directions. This finding suggests that the detection advantage is specifically due to attentional capture by direct gaze, not properties of distractor items.     

Dynamic traffic management on a familiar road: Failing to detect changes in variable speed limits

Variable speed limits (VSL) are used more commonly around the globe lately. Although on a macroscopic level positive effects of VSLs have been reported, the caveat is that the impact of VSLs is very sensitive to the level of driver compliance. Thus far it is unknown whether all individual drivers are actually able to notice when a speed limit changes into another speed limit; a prerequisite for purposeful speed limit compliance in the first place. To simulate regular driving conditions, twenty-four participants were familiarised with a particular route by driving the same route in a driving simulator nineteen times on five separate days. Part of the route consisted of a motorway where VSL signs were regularly displayed above every driving lane. At drive nineteen, speed limits changed from 80 km/h to 100 km/h on four out of eight consecutive signs. After passing all signs, one expects 6.25% of the participants still to be unaware that the speed limit had increased (based on chance), while the results showed most participants had failed to notice the speed limit change (58.3%). Instead, they saw what they expected to see: a speed limit of 80 km/h. If the speed change had been vice versa, in other words from 100 km/h to 80 km/h, this would immediately result in speed offences, though not deliberately at all.     

Cell-Phone–Induced Driver Distraction

ABSTRACT— Our research examined the effects of hands-free cell-phone conversations on simulated driving. We found that even when participants looked directly at objects in the driving environment, they were less likely to create a durable memory of those objects if they were conversing on a cell phone. This pattern was obtained for objects of both high and low relevance, suggesting that very little semantic analysis of the objects occurs outside the restricted focus of attention. Moreover, in-vehicle conversations do not interfere with driving as much as cell-phone conversations do, because drivers are better able to synchronize the processing demands of driving with in-vehicle conversations than with cell-phone conversations. Together, these data support an inattention-blindness interpretation wherein the disruptive effects of cell-phone conversations on driving are due in large part to the diversion of attention from driving to the phone conversation.     

Crossmodal change blindness between vision and touch

Change blindness is the name given to people's inability to detect changes introduced between two consecutively-presented scenes when they are separated by a distractor that masks the transients that are typically associated with change. Change blindness has been reported within vision, audition, and touch, but has never before been investigated when successive patterns are presented to different sensory modalities. In the study reported here, we investigated change detection performance when the two to-be-compared stimulus patterns were presented in the same sensory modality (i.e., both visual or both tactile) and when one stimulus pattern was tactile while the other was presented visually or vice versa. The two to-be-compared patterns were presented consecutively, separated by an empty interval, or else separated by a masked interval. In the latter case, the masked interval could either be tactile or visual. The first experiment investigated visual-tactile and tactile-visual change detection performance. The results showed that in the absence of masking, participants detected changes in position accurately, despite the fact that the two to-be-compared displays were presented in different sensory modalities. Furthermore, when a mask was presented between the two to-be-compared displays, crossmodal change blindness was elicited no matter whether the mask was visual or tactile. The results of two further experiments showed that performance was better overall in the unimodal (visual or tactile) conditions than in the crossmodal conditions. These results suggest that certain of the processes underlying change blindness are multisensory in nature. We discuss these findings in relation to recent claims regarding the crossmodal nature of spatial attention.