Sun Yuechuan, Wu Sijing, Spence Ian
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2015 Jun 15;10(6):e0130611. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130611. eCollection 2015.
Many critical activities require visual attention to be distributed simultaneously among distinct tasks where the attended foci are not spatially separated. In our two experiments, participants performed a large number of trials where both a primary task (enumeration of spots) and a secondary task (reporting the presence/absence or identity of a distinctive shape) required the division of visual attention. The spots and the shape were commingled spatially and the shape appeared unpredictably on a relatively small fraction of the trials. The secondary task stimulus (the shape) was reported in inverse proportion to the attentional load imposed by the primary task (enumeration of spots). When the shape did appear, performance on the primary task (enumeration) suffered relative to when the shape was absent; both speed and accuracy were compromised. When the secondary task required identification in addition to detection, reaction times increased by about 200 percent. These results are broadly compatible with biased competition models of perceptual processing. An important area of application, where the commingled division of visual attention is required, is the augmented reality head-up display (AR-HUD). This innovation has the potential to make operating vehicles safer but our data suggest that there are significant concerns regarding driver distraction.
许多关键活动需要将视觉注意力同时分配到不同任务中，而这些被关注的焦点在空间上并未分隔开。在我们的两个实验中，参与者进行了大量试验，其中主要任务（点数斑点）和次要任务（报告独特形状的有无或其特征）都需要视觉注意力的分配。斑点和形状在空间上混合在一起，并且形状在相对较少比例的试验中不可预测地出现。次要任务刺激（形状）的报告与主要任务（点数斑点）施加的注意力负荷成反比。当形状出现时，主要任务（点数）的表现相对于形状不出现时会变差；速度和准确性都会受到影响。当次要任务除了检测还需要识别时，反应时间增加了约200%。这些结果与感知处理的偏向竞争模型大致相符。一个需要混合分配视觉注意力的重要应用领域是增强现实平视显示器（AR - HUD）。这项创新有可能使车辆驾驶更安全，但我们的数据表明，驾驶员分心是一个重大问题。
