Attention! Attention! Where is your attention?: The Effect of Arousal on the Currently Dominant Style of Breadth of Attention

Research into visual attention is important to understand individuals’ interpretation of their perceptive world. Studies have shown that arousal affects visual attention, such as improved performance. Moreover, arousal seems to affect the breadth of attention. There are various theories about the direction of this arousal effect. On the one hand, researchers have found evidence that supports the hypothesis that arousal narrows the breadth of attention. But, on the other hand, research shows that there is a potential modulating effect of arousal on breadth of attention. This led us to our research question: How does arousal influence the currently dominant style of breadth of attention? We expected to find one of two hypotheses, namely: 1) arousal narrows the current style of breadth of attention, or 2) arousal amplifies the currently dominant style of breadth of attention. Using a within-subject design, we conducted an experiment including 27 participants. In this experiment,...Show moreResearch into visual attention is important to understand individuals’ interpretation of their perceptive world. Studies have shown that arousal affects visual attention, such as improved performance. Moreover, arousal seems to affect the breadth of attention. There are various theories about the direction of this arousal effect. On the one hand, researchers have found evidence that supports the hypothesis that arousal narrows the breadth of attention. But, on the other hand, research shows that there is a potential modulating effect of arousal on breadth of attention. This led us to our research question: How does arousal influence the currently dominant style of breadth of attention? We expected to find one of two hypotheses, namely: 1) arousal narrows the current style of breadth of attention, or 2) arousal amplifies the currently dominant style of breadth of attention. Using a within-subject design, we conducted an experiment including 27 participants. In this experiment, participants’ breadth of attention was induced by utilizing the global motion task. After this induction, participants’ performance was measured with a visual search task, called the ellipse task. Half of the block of trials include an arousal manipulation using white noise. The main statistical analysis using a repeated-measures ANOVA showed no arousal effect on breadth of attention. The further exploratory analysis illustrated a potential modulation effect of arousal on the breadth of attention. To conclude, arousal did not seem to influence the breadth of attention to a large extent. Consequently, the arousal effect is potentially smaller than expected. Considering the limitations, including a lack of statistical power, more research should be conducted to uncover any (modulating) effect of arousal on breadth of attention.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Attention! Attention! Where is your attention? The Effect of Arousal on the Currently Dominant Style of Breadth of Attention