Can Limitations of Visuospatial Attention Be Circumvented? A Review

Wahn, Basil; König, Peter

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01896

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…For navigational tasks, acquiring spatial knowledge is crucial to orient and navigate in space without losing the way (Montello, 2005; Siegel & White, 1975). However, the formation of mental spatial representations is demanding and limited by humans’ attentional capacities (Downs & Stea, 1973; Münzer et al, 2006; Siegel & White, 1975; Wahn & König, 2017; Weisberg & Newcombe, 2018). Therefore, we often use a navigational aid to support the cognitive processes required to navigate as optimally as possible in an unknown environment (Ludwig, Müller, & Ohm, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How does navigation system behavior influence human behavior?

2019

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Navigation systems are ubiquitous tools to assist wayfinders of the mobile information society with various navigational tasks. Whenever such systems assist with self-localization and path planning, they reduce human effort for navigating. Automated navigation assistance benefits navigation performance, but research seems to show that it negatively affects attention to environment properties, spatial knowledge acquisition, and retention of spatial information. Very little is known about how to design navigation systems for pedestrian navigation that increase both navigation performance and spatial knowledge acquisition. To this end, we empirically tested participants ( N = 64) using four different navigation system behaviors (between-subject design). Two cognitive processes with varying levels of automation, self-localization and allocation of attention, define navigation system behaviors: either the system automatically executes one of the processes (high level of automation), or the system leaves the decision of when and where to execute the process to the navigator (low level of automation). In two experimental phases, we applied a novel empirical framework for evaluating spatial knowledge acquisition in a real-world outdoor urban environment. First, participants followed a route assisted by a navigation system and, simultaneously, incidentally acquired spatial knowledge. Second, participants reversed the route using the spatial knowledge acquired during the assisted phase, this time without the aid of the navigation system. Results of the route-following phase did not reveal differences in navigation performance across groups using different navigation system behaviors. However, participants using systems with higher levels of automation seemed not to acquire enough spatial knowledge to reverse the route without navigation errors. Furthermore, employing novel methods to analyze mobile eye tracking data revealed distinct patterns of human gaze behavior over time and space. We thus can demonstrate how to increase spatial knowledge acquisition without harming navigation performance when using navigation systems, and how to influence human navigation behavior with varying navigation system behavior. Thus, we provide key findings for the design of intelligent automated navigation systems in real-world scenarios.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How does navigation system behavior influence human behavior?

2019

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“…Participants performed the visual search task faster when receiving the viewing information via the tactile or auditory modalities as compared to the visual sensory modality. This multisensory benefit has been explained by the larger availability of attentional resources across sensory modalities compared to within one sensory modality . These results suggest that an already existing collective benefit in joint visuospatial tasks can be enhanced by exchanging information between coactors via other sensory modalities than vision.…”

Section: Joint Visuospatial Tasksmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…Besides these directions for future research, there are also a number of applications of group benefits research. In particular, studying group benefits in joint perceptual tasks has the potential to circumvent processing limitations within individuals and thereby reduce the risk of errors and accidents. For instance, research on visual search showed that humans perform poorly on searches, in which the prevalence of targets is low .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Group benefits in joint perceptual tasks—a review

Wahn

Kingstone

König

2018

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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In daily life, humans often perform perceptual tasks together to reach a shared goal. In these situations, individuals may collaborate (e.g., by distributing task demands) to perform the task better than when the task is performed alone (i.e., attain a group benefit). In this review, we identify the factors influencing if, and to what extent, a group benefit is attained and provide a framework of measures to assess group benefits in perceptual tasks. In particular, we integrate findings from two frequently investigated joint perceptual tasks: visuospatial tasks and decision-making tasks. For both task types, we find that an exchange of information between coactors is critical to improve joint performance. Yet, the type of exchanged information and how coactors collaborate differs between tasks. In visuospatial tasks, coactors exchange information about the performed actions to distribute task demands. In perceptual decision-making tasks, coactors exchange their confidence on their individual perceptual judgments to negotiate a joint decision. We argue that these differences can be explained by the task structure: coactors distribute task demands if a joint task allows for a spatial division and stimuli can be accurately processed by one individual. Otherwise, they perform the task individually and then integrate their individual judgments.

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“…These studies show that responding jointly reduces the interference of competing stimuli in a multisensory setting (Wahn & König, 2017 ). The results seem at odds with a recent tradition of research showing that acting jointly increases the interference of irrelevant stimuli, presumably due participants co-representing each other’s tasks besides their own (Sebanz, Knoblich, & Prinz, 2003 , 2005 ).…”

Section: Non-visual Senses Enhance Visual Joint Attentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordinating attention requires coordinated senses

2020

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From playing basketball to ordering at a food counter, we frequently and effortlessly coordinate our attention with others towards a common focus: we look at the ball, or point at a piece of cake. This non-verbal coordination of attention plays a fundamental role in our social lives: it ensures that we refer to the same object, develop a shared language, understand each other's mental states, and coordinate our actions. Models of joint attention generally attribute this accomplishment to gaze coordination. But are visual attentional mechanisms sufficient to achieve joint attention, in all cases? Besides cases where visual information is missing, we show how combining it with other senses can be helpful, and even necessary to certain uses of joint attention. We explain the two ways in which non-visual cues contribute to joint attention: either as enhancers, when they complement gaze and pointing gestures in order to coordinate joint attention on visible objects, or as modality pointers, when joint attention needs to be shifted away from the whole object to one of its properties, say weight or texture. This multisensory approach to joint attention has important implications for social robotics, clinical diagnostics, pedagogy and theoretical debates on the construction of a shared world.

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Can Limitations of Visuospatial Attention Be Circumvented? A Review

Cited by 12 publications

References 110 publications

How does navigation system behavior influence human behavior?

How does navigation system behavior influence human behavior?

Group benefits in joint perceptual tasks—a review

Coordinating attention requires coordinated senses

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