on IB and action video game

on inattentional blindness (IB)

IB, the failure to see highly visible objects, is an intriguing phenomenon, possibly due to the limited-capacity of perception. This paper points out several research issues on IB. Some questions on them: First, I’m not quite clear about the relationship between IB and priming, a phenomenon that the first exposure affects (usually speeds) subsequent act. In priming, are people aware of the first exposure? Is the first exposure, which is unconsciously perceived, exactly an IB phenomenon?

It reminds me of a commercial scheme, where the advertisers insert some suggestive images or words into their ads video. Usually a video is played at about thirty frames per second. If one or two of them contains the suggestive object, people are not aware of this, but may be led to, for example, purchase a product tagged with the same object. This seems to be a reverse phenomenon of IB because the suggestive objects are hidden beyond human’s visual capacity. Is this also an instance of priming?

As I read the conflicts between perception and attention, and between sensory input and semantic analysis, it turns out all signals are possibly perceived, attended and analyzed, and there is a mechanism to prioritize or discard these signals at each level. Just like there are many procedures running in the foreground or background on our computer, and from time to time we get programs lagged or not responded at all :p

on effects of action video game

This paper shows that action-video-game playing is capable of improving the performance of visual attention. However, it remains question whether the improvement resulted from the increase of attentional bottlenecks, the speed-up of perceptual processes, or better management of multiple simultaneous tasks. Regarding to the “improvement,” I’m wondering if it’s possible that the video-game players are more familiar with the testing interface since it is somehow similar to the game interface. For example, at lower level, they used to detecting objects through monitor and using mouse to respond, and at higher level, they used to the game-like representaion and test. I'm curious what kinds of abilities are needed in the test, at what extends these abilities can be shifted to other problem-solving tasks?

If the perceptual capacity relates to the interface, that is, after some training, people enhance their perceptual capacity with respect to specific interface, could we explore some effective interface components that require less training?

Ref.

Mack, A (2003) Inattentional Blindness: Looking Without Seeing. Current Directions in Psychological Science. Volume 12(5). Pages 180-184.

Green, C. S. and Bavelier, D. (2003). Action Video Game Modifies Visual Selective Attention. Nature. Volume 423. Pages 534-537.