Presenter: Ava Archer − Psychology
Co-Presenter(s): Ethan Scott
Faculty Mentor(s): Dare Baldwin
(Virtual) Oral Panel—Health and Social Science
People witnessing identical streams of information can experience that information very differently. This phenomenon was strikingly documented in a famous psychological experiment: one group of research participants watching a video of a crowded area failed to notice a man in a gorilla suit meander across the room, although another group described the man in the gorilla suit as the most salient aspect of the video. How do we account for such diversity in experience? My research investigates this general question via a new technique: the dwell-time paradigm, in which viewers advance at their own pace through slideshows depicting dynamic events while the time they spend looking (dwelling) at each image is measured. As dwell time is an emerging technique within the field of attentional work, there are many new insights that can be gained from collecting data in this manner. We hypothesize that patterns of dwelling across time will clarify which aspects of events viewers are prioritizing in their processing, and thus we will be able to predict—well in advance— who will subsequently report salient features of interest (such as a man in a gorilla suit). If this is confirmed, these findings will hold considerable real-world significance. Specifically, it will be possible to utilize dwell-time patterns across a range of situations where monitoring the focus and adequacy of people’s attention is crucial.