A trade-off between relying on WM and gathering information from the outside world. and Our implicit metric for working memory (WM) usage: Copying each object requires that its identity and location (attribute) information be stored in memory. Counting successful retrievals (i.e., identity attribute used) and locations (i.e., location attribute used) between model fixations provided a metric for the number of attributes used in WM. b Average number of attributes used in WM in both movement effort conditions as a function of distraction, c Distribution of attributes used in WM (%). Error bars show the standard error of the mean (N = 30). The lines show the data of individual participants. N indicates the number of total sequences included in the analysis The symbols *, ** and *** in the figure indicate statistical significance with p values ​​less than 0.05, 0.01 and 0.001, respectively. Credit: Kumle et al. (Psychology of Communication, 2024, Springer’s Nature).
Humans are innately well equipped to perform procedural tasks such as following a recipe and assembling furniture. However, when performing these tasks, people may sometimes encounter visual distractions, such as irrelevant ingredients in the same cabinet as those listed in the recipe.
Ignoring these distractions, focusing on relevant objects, and successfully completing a task is usually easy for people, but their presence can still affect how tasks are completed. Investigating the potential effects of visual distractors during extended tasks in experimental settings has so far proven challenging.
Researchers from the University of Oxford and Goethe University Frankfurt recently set out to investigate these effects using virtual reality (VR) technology. Their findings, published in Psychology of communicationsuggest that visual distraction has some consequences, namely slowing down people’s on-task movements and forcing them to perform multiple actions.
“Visual distraction is a ubiquitous aspect of everyday life,” wrote Levi Kumle, Melissa LH Võ and their colleagues in their paper. “However, studying the consequences of distraction during time-extended tasks is not manageable with traditional methods. We developed a virtual reality approach that segments complex behavior into cognitive subcomponents, including encoding, visual search, working memory use, and decision making.”
Kumle, Võ and their colleagues recruited 30 participants and asked them to take part in two experimental trials approximately one week apart. During these trials, participants were asked to complete a task in VR, wearing the HTC Vive Tobii Pro VR headset and the HTC Vive controller.
Participants walked through two different virtual environments, called a classroom and an exam room. After confirming that they could effectively use the VR equipment in the instruction room, they were allowed to proceed to the test room where they completed a simple task.
This task involved selecting 8 target objects from a resource pool containing 24 objects, some of which were task-irrelevant and thus visually distracting. On the model display, participants could see the target objects they were supposed to select and how they were supposed to arrange them in the workspace.
Their task was to reproduce the configuration of the objects on the display by picking up the objects from the resource pool and placing them on the workstation, all within a limited time. The researchers varied the location of the model display and the opacity of the objects in the resource pool (i.e., made them more difficult or easier to identify) to determine whether this affected participants’ performance on the task.
“Participants copied the model view by selecting objects from the resource pool and placing them in the workspace,” the researchers explained. “By manipulating the distractibility of the objects in the source pool, we discovered disruptive effects of distraction across different cognitive sub-components.”
Interestingly, the researchers found that the visual distraction affected the sensory-mnemonic decisions of the study participants. This affected their ability to coordinate their working memory and encode information while trying to complete a task, which was reflected in slowing down their actions and making more costly body movements.
“We successfully traced the consequences of distraction from overall task performance to decision-making processes that limit memory use,” the team said. “Distraction slowed behavior and increased costly body movements. Importantly, distraction increased encoding demands, slowed visual search, and reduced reliance on working memory.”
Overall, the findings suggest that visual distractions, when people are performing natural goal-directed behaviors, do not necessarily prevent them from reaching the goal, yet have cascading consequences, slowing their movements and increasing the effort necessary to complete the task. In addition to shedding new light on the effects of visual distractions, their study highlights the potential of using VR paradigms to conduct psychological and behavioral experiments.
More information:
Levi Kumle et al, Multifaceted consequences of visual distraction during natural behavior, Psychology of communication (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-024-00099-0
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