Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, King Henry I Street, Portsmouth, PO1 2DY, UK.
Department of Psychology, University of Winchester, Winchester, SO22 4NR, UK.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2018 Jan;235(1):309-315. doi: 10.1007/s00213-017-4772-9. Epub 2017 Nov 2.
Inattentional blindness (IB) is the inability to detect a salient yet unexpected task irrelevant stimulus in one's visual field when attention is engaged in an ongoing primary task. The present study is the first to examine the impact of both task difficulty and alcohol consumption on IB and primary task performance.
On the basis of alcohol myopia theory, the combined effects of increased task difficulty and alcohol intoxication were predicted to impair task performance and restrict the focus of attention on to task-relevant stimuli. We therefore expected increases in breath alcohol concentration to be associated with poorer primary task performance and higher rates of IB, with these relationships being stronger under hard than easy task conditions.
This hypothesis was tested in a field study where alcohol drinkers in a local bar were randomly assigned to perform a dynamic IB task with an easy or hard visual tracking and counting task at its core (Simons and Chabris in Perception 28:1059-1074, 1999).
Increasing the difficulty of the primary task reduced task accuracy but, surprisingly, had no impact on the rate of IB. Higher levels of alcohol intoxication were, however, associated with poorer task performance and an increased rate of IB, but only under easy primary task conditions.
Results are consistent with alcohol myopia theory. Alcohol intoxication depletes attentional resources, thus reducing the drinker's awareness of salient stimuli that are irrelevant to some ongoing primary task. We conclude that this effect was not observed for our hard task because it is more resource intensive, so leaves no spare attentional capacity for alcohol to deplete.
注意力集中于进行中的主要任务时，人会无法注意到视野中显著但意外的与任务不相关的刺激，这种现象被称为疏忽性盲视。本研究首次考察了任务难度和酒精摄入对疏忽性盲视和主要任务表现的综合影响。
根据酒精近视理论，预计增加任务难度和醉酒会损害任务表现，并将注意力集中在与任务相关的刺激上。因此，我们预计随着血液酒精浓度的增加，主要任务表现会下降，疏忽性盲视的发生率会增加，而且在困难任务条件下，这些关系会更强。
该假设在一项现场研究中得到了检验，当地酒吧的饮酒者被随机分配在核心任务为简单或困难视觉跟踪和计数任务的动态疏忽性盲视任务中（Simons 和 Chabris 在《感知》28:1059-1074，1999）。
增加主要任务的难度会降低任务准确性，但令人惊讶的是，对疏忽性盲视的发生率没有影响。然而，较高的酒精醉酒水平与较差的任务表现和更高的疏忽性盲视发生率相关，但仅在简单的主要任务条件下如此。
结果与酒精近视理论一致。酒精醉酒会消耗注意力资源，从而降低饮酒者对与某些正在进行的主要任务不相关的显著刺激的意识。我们得出结论，对于我们的困难任务，这种影响没有被观察到，因为它更需要资源，因此没有多余的注意力容量可供酒精消耗。
