Attentional Blink Research Paper

Attentional Blink

Beth Boardley

01/28/2015

Cognitive Psychology

Argosy University

Abstract

Attentional blink occurs when there is “a brief slow-down in mental processing due to having processed another very recent event” (Ashcraft & Radvansky, 2009, p. 137). During this timeframe, allotting your attention to the first stimulus deprives you of the attention required for the next stimulus. The types of objects or targets presented can have an effect on the brain’s focus. Stimuli that one associates as emotionally charged can cause the brain to focus more. Less emotional stimuli can cause a forgetting response. The study of the attentional blank is important to consider for many reasons including which occupations could be adversely affected

They often work in fast paced environments and handle large amounts of currency a day. The importance of keeping track of all the types of currency, the amounts, and the values is essential for people and the bank. Attentional blinks could cause tellers to miscount money. When dealing with large amounts of cash, each mistake can have a large effect on the banks totals. For example if a teller counted twenty stacks of fifty dollar bills and missed one bill per stack, the bank would be missing one-thousand dollars. Now imagine if two tellers did it, even it was different sized bills or change. The loss would affect the bank

Many studies have been conducted in the use of HUD devices in automobiles, aircraft, and marine vehicles. Some argue that since we are accustomed to looking down at the dash for the gages therefore a HUD device would be distracting. According to a study conducted by Liu & Wen, 2004, “the results showed no significant difference between drivers using HUD and HDD; the drivers, using both displays, completed the two tasks with very high rates of accuracy (goods delivery task: 100% for both displays; navigational task: head-up: 95.8%; head-down: 96.3%).” With both types of display there is a chance that the driver could suffer from an attentional blink. This can be caused by taking their eyes off the road to look down at the gages, or by focusing on the projected information in front of the driver. It is possible to miss warning signs, pedestrians, animals and other environmental issues. With the HUD device one could also argue that a driver’s attention would constantly be divided as the images are projected constantly. This could lead to the driver trying to focus on the road and the information at the same