Elsevier

Cognitive Psychology

Volume 7, Issue 4, October 1975, Pages 480-494
Cognitive Psychology

Selective looking: Attending to visually specified events

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Abstract

Subjects looked at two optically superimposed video sccreens, on which two different kinds of things were happening. In the principal condition, they were required to follow the action in one episode (by pressing keys when significant events occurred) and ignore the other. They could do this without difficulty, although both were present in the same fully overlapped visual field. Odd events in the unattended episode were rarely noticed. It was very difficult to monitor both episodes at once. Performance was no better when the two episodes were presented to different eyes (dichoptic condition) than when both were given binocularly. It is argued that selective attention does not involve special mechanisms to reject unwanted information, but is a direct consequence of skilled perceiving.

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The paper itself was written while the senior author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA.

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