Visual attention:
a psychologist’s perspective
Dr Chris Atherton
School of Psychology,
University of Central Lancashire

your brain is lazy,
shallow, and easily
distracted.

(but ultimately,
also hackable)

So what do you do?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephangeyer/3020487807/sizes/o/

“so are you analysing me
now, then?”

thinking
perception
attention
memory

University of Central
Lancashire

Preston

Andy

Where is the
educational merit ...
• ... in row after row of bullet points?
• Students are expected to sit there for
two hours
• I get antsy if I don’t check Twitter for
10 minutes

education as endurance event
http://www.flickr.com/photos/infomatique/1800877044/

education needs to
embrace
instructional design!

disclaimer: ‘education’

technical
communication needs
to embrace psychology

modern psychology
http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/webimages/gallery_1850_gents.gif

Gestalt grouping
principles

continuity

similarity

proximity

9-dot problem

3
2 4
1
start here

there is no square!

we group objects faster
based on proximity ...

... than we do based on
colour or shape
(Quinlan & Wilton, 1998)

for what/where
decisions, the brain
hacks itself!

what/where pathways
where?
visual
cortex
what?

farming out tasks to
separate pathways buys
more processing power

“attentionomics”

Experiment :

gloat
sprout
bring
their
bench
stock
train
whole

black
trap
strap
slack
crack
flap
wrap
wrack

glack
sprut
slaff
blup
prib
kreeb
frall
sowl

the “magic number 7”
(± 2)
(Miller, 1956)

magic number 4 ?
(Cowan, 2001)

subitization

subitization

subitization

max. working
memory load:
4-5 things

working memory
capacity is limited
— but hackable.

cognitive load
= amount of work
needed to understand
or learn something

intrinsic cognitive load:
how inherently difficult
something is

C
B
D B C
A
A
F
E

extraneous cognitive load:
extra work imposed by
the thinking/learning
environment

A has a reciprocal relationship
with B and with C.
B C B has a reciprocal relationship
with A but only receives incoming
information from C
A
C has a reciprocal relationship
with A but not with B, to which it
feeds forward.

good instructional design
is all about reducing
extraneous load

the hack: farm out
work to the brain’s
different pathways

visual/auditory pathways
visual
cortex
auditory
cortex

we LOVE audiovisual stimulation!
http://moviescreenshots.blogspot.com/

so why isn’t this any good?

does
pictures
does language
(spoken or written)

Death by PowerPoint:
bored
overloaded

... our research

http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html

“why can’t education be
like that?”

not just aesthetic!

study 1
(in the lab)

traditional bullet-points with occasional diagrams

sparse text only

sparse text with diagrams

identical auditory track
in each condition

MCQ performance

9. If an advertising campaign has 60 Gross
Rating Points (GRPs), the advert could
reach: traditional
(a) 60% of the target audience once,
or 15% of the audience four times
(b) 30% of the target audience once,
or 15% of the audience two times
sparse text
(c) 30% of the audience twice,
and 40% of the audience four times
(d) 60% of the audience once,
and 10% of the audience four times
sparse text, graphics

... no difference
between groups

Essay answer
performance

What do you remember about the main part of the
presentation? Please write as much as you can ...
How advertising can be useful to a product but that there is a fine line
between successful and negative advertising. Identified key factors
affecting the success of advertising, such as exposure and an adverts
relation to the product.
Frequency of exposure can have a detrimental effect on the success of an
advert. Consumers should be made aware of a product but not
bombarded. Advertisers must concern themselves with selecting suitable
mediums to reach desired audiences at the right frequency of risk the
advert not affecting the consumer

number of themes written about * = significant difference

In other words, slides that look like this:
help students learn better than slides that look like this:

study 2
(in the lecture theatre)

Again, students either saw slides like this ...
... or slides like this:

MCQ performance
= same

Essay answer
performance

significant (p < .05)
no. of themes written about
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
traditional sparse
slides slides

either ...
(a) sparse slides lead to
fewer competing
attentional demands

or ...
(b) sparse visual cues
lead to better encoding
of information

implications for
instructional design
and tech comms?

less is more!
max. working
memory load:
4-5 things

split the load
pictures
words

make the brain’s native
skills work for you

your brain is lazy,
shallow, and easily
distracted.

(but ultimately,
also hackable)

finiteattentionspan.wordpress.com
Twitter: @finiteattention

Thank you to:
Dr Andy Morley
Olivia Mitchell
Simon Bostock
TCUK 2009 committee