Joseph D. Chisholm

REDUCED ATTENTIONAL CAPTURE IN ACTION VIDEO GAME PLAYERS

Recent studies indicate that playing action video games improves performance on a number of attention-based tasks. However, it remains unclear whether action video game experience primarily affects endogenous or exogenous forms of spatial orienting. To examine this issue, action video game players and non-action video game players performed an attentional capture task. The results show that action video game players responded quicker than non-action video game players, both when a target appeared in isolation and when a salient, task-irrelevant distractor was present in the display. Action video game players additionally showed a smaller capture effect than did non-action video game players. When coupled with the findings of previous studies, the collective evidence indicates that extensive experience with action video games may enhance players’ top-down attentional control, which, in turn, can modulate the negative effects of bottom-up attentional capture.

Improved top-down control reduces oculomotor capture: The case of action video game players

Action video game players (AVGPs) have been demonstrated to outperform non-video-game players(NVGPs) on a range of cognitive tasks. Evidence to date suggests that AVGPs’ enhanced performance in attention based tasks can be accounted for by improved top-down control over the allocation of visuospatial attention. Thus,we propose that AVGPs provide a population that can be used to investigate the role of top-down factors in key models of attention. Previous work using AVGPs has indicated that they experience less interfering effects from a salient but task-irrelevant distractor in an attentional capture paradigm (Chisholm, Hickey, Theeuwes, & Kingstone,2010). Two fundamentally different bottom-up and top-down models of attention can account for this result. In the present study, we compared AVGP and NVGP performance in an oculomotor capture paradigm to address when and how top-down control modulates capture. In tracking eye movements, we acquired an explicit measurement of attention allocation and replicated the covert attention effect that AVGPs are quicker than NVGPs to attend to a target in the presence of a task-irrelevant distractor. Critically, our study reveals that this top-down gain is the result of fewer shifts of attention to the salient distractor, rather than faster disengagement after bottom-up capture has occurred. This supports the theory that top-down control can modulate the involuntary capture of attention [added].

Rotating With Rotated Text: A Natural Behavior Approach to Investigating Cognitive Offloading

Determining how we use our body to support cognition represents an important part of understanding the embodied and embedded nature of cognition. In the present investigation, we pursue this question in the context of a common perceptual task. Specifically, we report a series of experiments investigating head tilt (i.e., external normalization) as a strategy in letter naming and reading stimuli that are upright or rotated. We demonstrate that the frequency of this natural behavior is modulated by the cost of stimulus rotation on performance. In addition, we demonstrate that external normalization can benefit performance. All of the results are consistent with the notion that external normalization represents a form of cognitive offloading and that effort is an important factor in the decision to adopt an internal or external strategy.

Action video games and improved attentional control: Disentangling selection- and response-based processes

Research has demonstrated that experience with action video games is associated with improvements in a host of cognitive tasks. Evidence from paradigms that assess aspects of attention has suggested that action video game players (AVGPs) possess greater control over the allocation of attentional resources than do non-video-game players (NVGPs). Using a compound search task that teased apart selection- and response-based processes (Duncan, 1985), we required participants to perform an oculomotor capture task in which they made saccades to a uniquely colored target (selection-based process) and then produced a manual directional response based on information within the target (response-based process). We replicated the finding that AVGPs are less susceptible to attentional distraction and, critically, revealed that AVGPs outperform NVGPs on both selection-based and response-based processes. These results not only are consistent with the improved-attentional-control account of AVGP benefits, but they suggest that the benefit of action video game playing extends across the full breadth of attention-mediated stimulus–response processes that impact human performance.

Action video game players' visual search advantage extends to biologically relevant stimuli

Research investigating the effects of action video game experience on cognition has demonstrated a host of performance improvements on a variety of basic tasks. Given the prevailing evidence that these benefits result from efficient control of attentional processes, there has been growing interest in using action video games as a general tool to enhance everyday attentional control. However, to date, there is little evidence indicating that the benefits of action video game playing scale up to complex settings with socially meaningful stimuli - one of the fundamental components of our natural environment. The present experiment compared action video game player (AVGP) and non-video game player (NVGP) performance on an oculomotor capture task that presented participants with face stimuli. In addition, the expression of a distractor face was manipulated to assess if action video game experience modulated the effect of emotion. Results indicate that AVGPs experience less oculomotor capture than NVGPs; an effect that was not influenced by the emotional content depicted by distractor faces. It is noteworthy that this AVGP advantage emerged despite participants being unaware that the investigation had to do with video game playing, and participants being equivalent in their motivation and treatment of the task as a game. The results align with the notion that action video game experience is associated with superior attentional and oculomotor control, and provides evidence that these benefits can generalize to more complex and biologically relevant stimuli.

The Embodiment of Focus: Investigating the Impact of Leaning Behavior on Our Cognitive State and Other's Perception of Our Cognitive State.

The emerging literature on embodied cognition highlights the role that the body plays in cognitive and affective processes. We investigated whether different body postures, specifically leaning postures thought to reflect different states of cognitive focus, can impact cognitive focus and task performance. In three experiments we confirmed that different postures are perceived reliably by others to convey distinct and different states of cognitive focus. However, the individuals who actually adopted the postures did not experience any subjective change in cognitive focus nor demonstrate any influence of leaning posture on performance across a range of tasks that varied in their naturalness and complexity. Only by instructing participants to adopt a posture associated with a focused or unfocused cognitive state did an association between performance and posture emerge. These data indicate that changes in ones body do not necessarily yield a reliable change in ones cognitive state, even when (a) those changes in body are reliably perceived by others as inducing a change in cognitive state, and (b) changes in cognitive state lead to robust changes in the body. In light of these findings, we propose two related accounts that point to leaning behavior as being the result of ones increasing need to focus. Thus, rather than influencing cognitive state, leaning behavior may instead reflect the embodiment of ones cognitive state of focus.

A Cognitive Ethology Study of First- and Third-Person Perspectives

The aim of the present study was to test the cognitive ethology approach, which seeks to link cognitions and behaviours as they operate in everyday life with those studied in controlled lab-based investigations. Our test bed was the understanding of first-person and third-person perspectives, which in lab-based investigations have been defined in a diverse and multi-faceted manner. We hypothesized that because these lab-based investigations seek to connect with how first- and third-person perspective operates in everyday life, then either some of the divergent lab-based definitions are missing their mark or the everyday conceptualization of first- and third-person perspective is multi-faceted. Our investigation revealed the latter. By applying a cognitive ethology approach we were able to determine that a) peoples’ everyday understanding of perspective is diverse yet reliable, and b) a lab-based investigation that applies these diverse understandings in a controlled setting can accurately predict how people will perform. These findings provide a ‘proof of concept’ for the cognitive ethology approach. Moreover, the present data demonstrate that previous lab-based studies, that often had very different understandings of first- and third-person perspective, were each in and of themselves valid. That is, each is capturing part of a broader understanding of perspective in everyday life. Our results also revealed a novel social factor not included in traditional conceptualizations of first-person third-perspective, that of eye gaze, i.e., eye contact is equated strongly with first-person perspective and the lack of eye-contact with third-person perspective.

Knowing and avoiding: The influence of distractor awareness on oculomotor capture

Kramer, Hahn, Irwin, and Theeuwes (2000) reported that the interfering effect of distractors is reduced when participants are aware of the to-be-ignored information. In contrast, recent evidence indicates that distractor interference increases when individuals are aware of the distractors. In the present investigation, we directly assessed the influence of distractor awareness on oculomotor capture, with the hope of resolving this contradiction in the literature and gaining further insight into the influence of awareness on attention. Participants completed a traditional oculomotor capture task. They were not informed of the presence of the distracting information (unaware condition), were informed of distractors (aware condition), or were informed of distractor information and told to avoid attending to it (avoid condition). Being aware of the distractors yielded a performance benefit, relative to the unaware condition; however, this benefit was eliminated when participants were told to actively avoid distraction. This pattern of results reconciles past contradictions in the literature and suggests an inverted-U function of awareness in distractor performance. Too little or too much emphasis yields a performance decrement, but an intermediate level of emphasis provides a performance benefit.

From gestures to gaming: visible embodiment of remote actions.

Teleoperation is the act of controlling an object that exists in a space, real or virtual, physically disconnected from the user. During such situations, it is not uncommon to observe those controlling the remote object exhibiting movement consistent with the behaviour of the remote object. Though this behaviour has no obvious impact on ones control of the remote object, it appears tied to ones intentions, thus, possibly representing an embodied representation of ongoing cognitive processes. In the present investigation, we applied a natural behaviour approach to test this notion, (a) first by identifying the representational basis for the behaviour and (b) by identifying factors that influence the occurrence of the behaviour. Each study involved observing participant behaviour while they played a racing video game. Results revealed that the spontaneous behaviour demonstrated in a teleoperation setting is tied to ones remote actions, rather than local actions or some combination of remote and local actions (Experiment 1). In addition, increasing task demand led to an increase in the occurrence of the spontaneous behaviour (Experiment 2). A third experiment was conducted to rule out the possible confound of greater immersion that tends to accompany greater demand (Experiment 3). The implications of these results not only suggest that spontaneous behaviour observed during teleoperation reflects a form of visible embodiment, sensitive to task demand, but also further emphasizes the utility of natural behaviour approaches for furthering our understanding of the relationship between the body and cognitive processes.