How Does Hands Affect Attention?
Introduction
The brain receives a vast amount of information from an environment. Not all of the sensory information can be processed at once. Broadbent created the filter theory, stating that individuals are able to selectively attend to relevant information and ignore irrelevant information. In some instances, humans will experience attentional shift which can be endogenous or exogenous. Endogenous attention (top-down) refers to when an individual directs their attention voluntarily. Exogenous (bottom up) attention refers to when attention is automatically drawn to a stimulus or external event. Hands can cause attention to be automatically drawn to an external event. Recently scientists have discovered a link between vision and hands; numerous …show more content…
Either the participant or the friend were asked to put one hand near a target location to determine whether another individual’s hand would facilitate the detection of a target. They also conducted the experiment with a participant’s own hand on the screen in one condition, and with no hands on the screen as the control. The results conveyed that participants were quicker at detecting targets with their own hands near the target rather than away from the target t(29) = −2.330, p = 0.027. However, no differences in reaction time were found when a friend placed their hands on the screen or with no hands on the screen. They concluded that individuals would be quicker to detect targets appearing next to their own hands and therefore one’s own hand affects the prioritization of attention. However, the space near a friend’s hand was not prioritized (Sun & Thomas, …show more content…
The programme “Audacity” was used to obtain verbal responses. The stimuli presented were either 4 or 8 black letters against a white background. The white measured 84.2 cd/m2 and the black measured 0.3 cd/m2. The target letters were ‘S’ and ‘H’ and the letters ‘U’ and ‘E’ were the distractors. When the display was viewed from roughly 40cm, each measured approximately 3.8 in height. The stimuli used in the present experiment was the same as stimuli used in a previous study (Abrams et al, 2008). Search efficiency per item was calculated using the
The brain receives a vast amount of information from an environment. Not all of the sensory information can be processed at once. Broadbent created the filter theory, stating that individuals are able to selectively attend to relevant information and ignore irrelevant information. In some instances, humans will experience attentional shift which can be endogenous or exogenous. Endogenous attention (top-down) refers to when an individual directs their attention voluntarily. Exogenous (bottom up) attention refers to when attention is automatically drawn to a stimulus or external event. Hands can cause attention to be automatically drawn to an external event. Recently scientists have discovered a link between vision and hands; numerous …show more content…
Either the participant or the friend were asked to put one hand near a target location to determine whether another individual’s hand would facilitate the detection of a target. They also conducted the experiment with a participant’s own hand on the screen in one condition, and with no hands on the screen as the control. The results conveyed that participants were quicker at detecting targets with their own hands near the target rather than away from the target t(29) = −2.330, p = 0.027. However, no differences in reaction time were found when a friend placed their hands on the screen or with no hands on the screen. They concluded that individuals would be quicker to detect targets appearing next to their own hands and therefore one’s own hand affects the prioritization of attention. However, the space near a friend’s hand was not prioritized (Sun & Thomas, …show more content…
The programme “Audacity” was used to obtain verbal responses. The stimuli presented were either 4 or 8 black letters against a white background. The white measured 84.2 cd/m2 and the black measured 0.3 cd/m2. The target letters were ‘S’ and ‘H’ and the letters ‘U’ and ‘E’ were the distractors. When the display was viewed from roughly 40cm, each measured approximately 3.8 in height. The stimuli used in the present experiment was the same as stimuli used in a previous study (Abrams et al, 2008). Search efficiency per item was calculated using the