Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics: Investigating the Role of Eccentricity in Visual Distraction

Tristan Gray-Le Coz Colorado State University

Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

There may be no slipperier concept to define in modern psychology than attention. It has been said that everyone knows what attention is (James, 1892) but, simultaneously, that no one can adequately define it. What we can comfortably say about attention, however, is that it is limited in capacity, is vulnerable to intrusions from unattended sources, can be directed, and is necessary for encoding information and events going on around us (Kim & Hopfinger, 2009). Vision has long held a special relationship in regards to attention: how many of us has been admonished to look at me when I am speaking, has fallen victim to tunnel vision and neglected to understand another, has failed to see the point, or has looked into something he does not understand? These common aphorisms speak to the deeply entangled nature of vision and attention, and all seem to further attest to the fact that it is necessary to direct attention to relevant information in order to properly act on that information later, and that this focus is most easily achieved by way of our dominant sensory modality: vision. Just as pervasive as the need to pay attention to a stimulus are distractions, those uninvited and undesired sensory intrusions which can, and often do, momentarily reorient our attentional focus disrupting the theretofore cogent encoding of information. The nature of these distractors is diverse and in constant flux, globally speaking, though it has been reliably shown that when given a task, sensory intrusions activating the same sensory modality as the task lead to a decrement in performance (Wicker & Holley, 1971; Pellegrino et al., 1976). Furthermore, in the case of vision, it has been shown that the appearance of a new object in the visual field is significantly more likely to result in a distraction than is a simple change in the luminance of the presentation or of presentations within the visual field (Kim & Hopfinger, 2009; King et al., 1992). We aim to extend the findings in this domain by investigating how the size of a distracting stimulus presented in the periphery effects attention, and more precisely, how it affects recall of a target stimulus. Past studies by Storm and Hernandez (2007) have gone so far as to imply that mere eye lateralization is sufficient to affect target processing and retrieval; specifically, that inducing a subject to view the target in the right field of view can lead to reliably better performance versus presenting targets in the

Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

left field of view. In our investigation, we also aim to assess this claim by presenting distracting stimuli to the left and right fields of view during encoding of target stimuli and later testing for memory of those stimuli. While Storm and Hernandez (2007) presented their target stimuli to each respective field, it is our belief that incidental reorientation of the eyes in conjunction with presentation of a distracting stimulus leads to similar overall lateralization patterns, and thus to similar patterns of recall performance among subjects. In this experiment, we proposed that by presenting subjects with tri-syllabic word stimuli for a limited (.75 sec.) time, attentional capacity would be completely consumed, allowing us to present effectively distracting stimuli to the left and right peripheral visual fields. By varying the size of these distractors to maintain salience and presenting them at 30-40, 50-60, and 70-80, we hoped to investigate whether the size and position of a new object (as described in Kim and Hopfinger, 2009) is related to the distraction it causes, as evidenced by a decrement in performance on a word-completion task comprised of the presented tri-syllabic stimuli. In presenting distractors to the left and right visual fields, we aimed to investigate if this lateralization has any reliable effect on recall of the stimuli, as found by Storm and Hernandez (2007). We believed that we would find a decrement in recall across all subjects proportional to the size of the distracting stimulus, with a lesser decrement for stimuli paired with right visual field distracters. Methods Participants Participants were 15 male and female students from an undergraduate Sensation and Perception course at Colorado State University. Students received course credit in exchange for participation, having provided consent prior to experimentation. Materials Four different orderings of the same target stimulus list were drawn by randomizing the 104 trisyllabic word target list in order to control for list-order effects. These target words were matched for

Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

Kucera-Francis written frequency (1-392), concreteness (205-644), and imageability (441-599), generated by the MRC Psycholinguistic database (Wilson, 1988). Eighty monosyllabic three-letter distractor stimuli were generated from the same database, and were matched on the same dimensions within those same levels. These stimuli were be displayed in yellow font on a black background via PowerPoint (Microsoft, Inc., Redmond, WA.) on one 15 LCD computer monitor (Right Visual Field presentation) and one 17 CRT monitor (Left Visual Field presentation) both at a resolution of 1280x800 pixels linked to one N-vidia graphics card. Stimuli were scaled to maintain salience using a modified M-Scaling procedure (Rousselet et al., 2007; also see Koulakov, 2010; Dougherty et al., 2003; and Anstis, 1998) further described below. M-Scaling Given neural convergence, photoreceptor size, and scarcity of photoreceptors increase with eccentricity, it is necessary to magnify the intensity of a stimulus presented peripherally to compensate for the loss of discrimination as eccentricity increases. MScaling is the procedure used to determine the amount of magnification (M) needed to maintain stimulus salience over eccentricity, and is generally derived from inverting the Cortical Magnification Factor (CMF) to determine gross neural convergence by eccentricity, and then applying the inversion over the eccentricity retinotop to determine the relative salience of a stimulus at any given point within the field of view (Anstis, 1998; Koulakov, 2010). M-scaling is calculated as M=A/(E+2e) where: Magnification (M) is equal to the cortical scaling factor (A) divided by the sum of the eccentricity of presentation in degrees (E) and twice the eccentricity at which stimulus intensity is reduced to half of its intensity by CMF (e) (Rousselet et

Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

al., 2007).These values have been calculated empirically in humans (Dougherty et al, 2003; Rousselet et al., 2007) resulting in fixed A of 29.2 and 2e at 3.67. Because M is calculated as a linear function describing the visual field equidistant from an observer, M-Scaling only holds over an arc encompassing the visual field. In our experiment, the visual field will be bounded by two computer screens placed at 45 to the observer, thus it is necessary to modify the M factor by the ratio of the distance from the observer to the screen versus the distance of the visual arc, in order to compensate for the changing distance between observer and stimulus. This transform is accomplished by multiplying the M-Scaling factor by [(D-(D sinE))/D] over eccentricities between 0 and 45 and [(D-(D cosE))/D] for eccentricities between 45 and 90; where D is the distance from observer to target at 0, and E is the eccentricity of presentation. See figure 1 for a pictorial description. Procedure Participants were presented with 104 target words calculated to cover the central 10 of field of view. These words were presented for 750ms, and were separated by a field of fixation xs over the same central 10 for 500 intervening milliseconds. At every fifth presentation on average, a distractor stimulus was presented for 500m s in conjunction with the target stimulus. These 20 distractors were pseudorandomly presented to the right or left visual fields at 30-40, 50-60, or 70-80 from center (0). After presentation of all stimuli, participants engaged in a two minute mixed-problem math filler task. Upon completion of this 2-minute time period, participants had five minutes to attempt a word completion task where every third letter of each target word had been replaced with a blank. The order of words at test differed from word order at presentation. Results To quantitatively investigate the role of distractor size and position on visual attention we used a word completion task to gauge retention of presented words. We used strict scoring criteria in our test phase, requiring that the target word be spelled correctly in the word-completion task. On average, 43.8% of all target words were successfully recalled, and 44.9% of words presented without distractor

Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

were recalled. These averages serve as baselines against which to compare recall by distractor condition, and that comparison serves as our measure of visual distraction. Overall, we found few reliable differences. Of some interest, however, is our finding that presentation of a distractor to the +30-40 Right Visual Field (RVF) showed the highest recall (50%) and, paradoxically, the next most remembered condition was presentation of a distractor to the +50-60 Left Visual Field (LVF) (46% recall). These particular results show only equivocal support for the Storm and Hernandez (2007) hypothesis that distraction in the RVF leads to better recall than distraction to the LVF. Recall was poorest for +50-60 (33.3%) Right and +70-80 Left (32.1%). Unfortunately, the small number of participants (n=8) precludes our ability to make any suggestions as to the generalizability or reliability of our results. This small n also precluded us from being able to adequately test for word-order effects, as three of our four conditions only had two respondents, and the fourth had only three. As can be seen from the figure below, recall performance across all conditions was fairly poor, and followed no discernable pattern.

Percent Recalled by Distractor Condition

0.6 PercentRecalled 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0
+70-80 Left +50-60 Left +30-40 Left 0 Center +30-40 Right +50-60 Right +70-80 Right

46.15% 32.14%

42.42%

44.88%

50.00% 41.67% 33.33%

Distractor Condition

General Discussion Our aim in this investigation was to investigate whether the size and position of a distractor shifted visual attention sufficiently to effect recall of presented target stimuli. The paucity of data points in our experiment precludes us from engaging in robust analyses and our data itself only presented mixed

Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

results in regards to our proposition. Upon initial investigation, it appears that the size/position of distractor stimuli are correlated with a difference when compared to the null condition. This having been said, there emerged no discernable pattern in results, specifically we were unable to support our conjecture derived from Storm and Hernandez (2007) that distractor presentation to the right visual field (RVF) would produce less decrement than presentation of distractors to the left visual field (LVF). This supposition, drawn from the thought that a distractor in the RVF would cause saccades in a readingappropriate direction, and therefore better encoding of the target than distractor presentation to the reading-opposite saccades to visually engage the LVF distractor, seems to be unfounded. Our null results suffer greatly, as we have said, from inadequate data collection. Presentation of four word lists to a mere eight subjects, while providing important experimental safeguards against wordordering effects, hobbled our ability to analyze a relevant amount of data in comparison with the desired statistical power of our design. Acquisition of more participants would have permitted us to make more robust and confident conclusions on this complicated design. Even having addressed this problem, analysis our data reveled defects in our experimental design related to the composition of target-word lists, both type and number. The surprisingly low overall performance on our word-recall task calls into question the composition of the target-word lists. These lists were carefully counterbalanced for word frequency, number of syllables, concreteness, and imageability, but we neglected to match the number of letters. This is an important factor in regards to this design, as varying the number of letters (but not the visual angle being taken up by those letters) could have inadvertently manipulated both the salience of and reading time for target words. The length of our word lists, required to garner a reasonable number of distractor conditions per word list (20 distractors per 104 word list) may easily have overwhelmed the encoding of these words, a factor evidently not compensated for by our relatively easy recall task. Providing a shorter list of words, perhaps 55, and extending the time of presentation to 1 second could have reduced

Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

cognitive load enough to reveal differences in encoding driven by distractor presentation, assuming that learning the list of 104 targets in under 3 minutes overwhelmed participants abilities. Various other designs could be applied to this question which could potentially shed light on this question such as using Remember-Know-Guess, Go-No Go, or 2-AAFC recall/recognition paradigms which would better bootstrap the basic priming effect on which our paradigm is based. While this is certainly not an exhaustive list of the various tools that could effectively be brought to bear on this question, by using one of these investigative methodsour strict criterion condition and bias could be eliminated in favor of a method that yields more recognition-based results. Recognition has generally been found to be easier than recall, and would likely have suited our paradigm better than the more recall-oriented word completion task we used. This panoply of design shortcomings suggest numerous avenues of further research that need to be conducted before the questions addressed here are answered. The core of this design could easily be used to investigate other experimental questions as well such as language-processing lateralization, ocular dominance, and might provide a novel measure of distractibility or reading ability as individualdifferences factors. Even in the face of what we consider to be fundamental short comings in our experimental design, it is possible that Storm and Hernandez (2007) work reflected an aberration, or was victim to a statistical artifact. Our data seem clearly to show that peripheral distraction is unrelated to the ability to recall a word presented to the fovea, and clearly dont support Storm and Hernandezs hypothesis. Given the everyday frequency of visual distraction in our periphery, especially in activities as routine and dangerous as driving, operating heavy equipment, and walking through a crowd, it seems important to investigate the effects of visual distraction by investigating other overlearned cognitive processes. A process like reading of single words is a complex cognitive process requiring the direction and maintenance of attention, memory, and focus, whose mechanics are a matter of near reflex in most

Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

literate people. This provides a facile analog to other overlearned processes as described above and, in our opinion, a better analog than other cognitive manipulations. Attention is a slippery concept, both to define and to measure. Because we cannot find anything such as attention in the brain, we are left to rely on performance on simple tasks as proxy measures of attention, and our investigations are consequently left with the doubt of second-hand information, and the potential ignorance of any number of veiled intervening variables. Attention does seem to be a global property of the cognitive system; it is important in every cognitive task we engage in, and may thus be best studied by using a method that more adequately can investigate the systemic functioning of the brain. The use of imaging technologies, especially fMRI and MEG, would likely be far more informative than any behavioral measure, and would provide more appropriate information on global activation levels in the brain. It is perhaps this kind of data that would be most useful for investigating such an ill-defined, yet somehow defining, element of cognition and consciousness as attention.

Tristan Gray-Le Coz

Pay No Attention to the Eccentrics

10

References Anstis, S. (1998). Picturing peripheral acuity. Perception, 27,.817-825. Dougherty, R.F., Koch, V.M., Brewer, A.A., Fischer, B., Modersitzki, M., & Wandell, B.A., (2003). Visual field representations and locations of visual areas V1/2/3 in human visual cortex. Journal of Vision, 3, 586-598. Kim, S., & Hopfinger, J.B. (2009). Neural basis of visual distraction. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(8), 1798-1807. King, S.M., Dykeman, C., Redgrave, P., & Dean, P. (1991). Use of a distracting task to obtain defensive head movements to looming visual stimuli by human adults in a laboratory setting. Perception, 21, 245-259 Koulakov, A.A. (Retrieved 10/24/10). On the scaling law for cortical magnification factor. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1002.4368 Pellegrino, J.W., Siegel, A.W., & Dhawan, M. (1976). Differential distraction effects in short-term and long-term retention of pictures and words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 2(5), 541-547. Rousselet, G.A., Husk, J.S., Bennett, P.J., & Sekuler, A.B. (2005) Spatial scaling factors explain eccentricity effects on face ERPs. Journal of Vision, 5, 755-763. Storm, B.C., & Hernandez, A.E. (2007). Cognitive consequences of asymmetrical visual distraction. The Journal of General Psychology, 134(4), 415-434. Wicker, F.W., & Holley, F.M. (1971). Distraction modality and stimulus modality in paired-associate learning. Psychonomic Science, 25(4), 218-220. Wilson, M.D. (1988). The MRC Psycholinguistic Database: Machine Readable Dictionary, Version 2. Behavioural Research Methods, Instruments and Computers, 20(1), 6-11. Accessed 10/15/10 at http://www.psy.uwa.edu.au/mrcdatabase/uwa_mrc.htm