Pizzighello Silvia, Bressan Paola
Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Università di Padova, via Venezia 8, I 35131 Padua, Italy.
Perception. 2008;37(6):859-66. doi: 10.1068/p5723.
When engaged in a visual task, we can fail to detect unexpected events that would otherwise be very noticeable. Here we ask whether a common auditory task, such as that of attending to a verbal stream, can also make us blind to the presence of visual objects that we do not anticipate. In two experiments, one hundred and twenty observers watched a dynamic display while performing either a visual or an auditory attention task, or both simultaneously. When observers were listening to verbal material, in order to either understand it or to remember it (auditory task), their probability of detecting an unexpected visual object was no higher than when they were counting bounces of moving items (visual task), although in the former case the observers' eyes and attention could move around the display freely rather than remaining focused on tracked items. Previous research has shown that attending to verbal material does not affect responses to lights flashing at irregular intervals, suggesting that driving performance is not hampered by listening. The lights, however, were expected. Our data imply that listening to the radio while driving, or to a portable audio player while walking or biking, can impair our reactions to objects or events that we do not expect.
当我们从事视觉任务时，可能会忽略原本会非常引人注目的意外事件。在此，我们要探究一种常见的听觉任务，比如专注于一段言语信息流，是否也会使我们对未曾预料到的视觉物体视而不见。在两项实验中，120名观察者在执行视觉或听觉注意力任务，或同时执行这两项任务时，观看了一个动态展示。当观察者在听言语材料以理解或记住它（听觉任务）时，他们检测到意外视觉物体的概率并不高于他们在数移动物体的弹跳次数（视觉任务）时，尽管在前一种情况下观察者的眼睛和注意力可以在展示区域自由移动，而不是一直聚焦在被追踪的物体上。先前的研究表明，专注于言语材料不会影响对以不规则间隔闪烁的灯光的反应，这表明驾驶表现不会因听东西而受到妨碍。然而，那些灯光是在预料之中的。我们的数据表明，开车时听收音机，或者走路或骑自行车时听便携式音频播放器，可能会削弱我们对未预料到的物体或事件的反应能力。
