Culture and Divided Attention study

Researchers: Jiyun Mun & Lisa Jefferies

Thank you for participating in this study!

Below is some information to let you know what the study was about and what we found.

The research topic: Divided attention

Have you ever wondered how, while driving, an individual can efficiently track the many other cars on the road while avoiding being distracted by irrelevant information such as trees by the side of the road? The answer is that we use a selective process known as attention. Attention can be described like a spotlight – if you pay attention to an object like a car (shine the spotlight on it), you will be able to clearly see and respond to it. If you don’t pay attention to something (like an irrelevant tree by the side of the road), you won’t see it clearly and you won’t respond to it. Given this, it is very important for us to understand how where we pay attention changes over time.

Research has shown that it is possible for us to split a unitary (single) attentional spotlight into two separate spotlights, each of which can then be directed to different objects or locations (see Figure 1 below). In the research you took part in, we are examining what factors influence the likelihood that we will split the attentional spotlight and how quickly we can split the spotlight.

The research question: Does culture affect the rate of splitting attention?

In processing visual information, people raised in Western cultures often have a bias towards processing the small details of a scene (the proverbial “trees” in the forest; this is what we call a local bias). People raised in Eastern cultures, on the other hand, often have a biased towards processing the bigger picture and seeing how things fit together (i.e., focus on the forest; this is what we call a global bias). We hypothesized that this bias towards global or local processing would influence the rate at which people could split the attentional spotlight.

How did we test the research question?

We used a research methodology adapted from previous research (Jefferies & Witt, 2019), which presented rapidly-displayed sequences of letters (targets) and digits (distractors). If the targets were processed accurately (our dependent variable was accuracy), this means the location at which they appeared was attended. By systematically manipulating the location of the targets (our first independent variable), we could track the distribution of attention and determine whether it was unitary or divided. By systematically changing when the targets were displayed (our second independent variable), we could also track how the distribution of attention changed over time.

What did we find?

We found that people raised in Eastern cultures (individuals with a local bias) were faster to divide the attentional spotlight than individuals raised in Western cultures (individuals with a global bias). How much faster? About 50 milliseconds (thousandths of a second). That doesn’t sound like much, but for a vehicle travelling 100 km/hour that means breaking about 1.4 meters sooner. As you can imagine, in an emergency driving situation, this could mean the difference between a collision or not!

What are the next steps?

Before we can be confident in our findings, we need to eliminate some alternate explanations of the results and control for some confounding variables. For example, in our research the majority of the people raised in Eastern cultures were bilingual, but the majority of people raised in Western cultures were monolingual (they spoke only English). So, our results could be due to bilingualism, and not due to culture. We are currently undertaking additional experiments to test this.

If you have questions about the research, please contact L.Jefferies@griffith.edu.au

Reference

Jefferies, L. N., & Witt, J. B. (2019). First unitary, then divided: the temporal dynamics of dividing attention. Psychological research, 83, 1426-1443. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1018-3

Curious to learn more about attention or visual cognition? Here are some books that you might enjoy:

• Chabris, C. F., & Simons, D. J. (2010). The invisible gorilla: And other ways our intuitions deceive us. Harmony.

• Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. Penguin. (Available as an e-book in the City of Gold Coast public library via Overdrive)

• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan. (Available as an e-book in the City of Gold Coast public library via Overdrive)

• Gladwell, M. (2006). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. (Available as an e-book in the City of Gold Coast public library via Overdrive)