A recent study by Fuminori Ono and Katsumi Watanabe has shown that these attentional effects are even more complicated than this theory suggests. Their experimental design perfectly mirrored that of Suzuki & Cavanagh, except that sometimes the attention-tracking cue could occur after the presentation of the vertical lines. Surprisingly, this post-attentional cue still distorted the perceived location of the upper line, causing it to be perceptually shifted toward the region where attention had been cued— an attentional attraction effect. In other words, attention can distort the perceived location of objects even after they are no longer physically present.
In fact, it turns out that attention seems to dramatically reorganize the spatial relationships between objects throughout our visual field. One of us (Brandon Liverence) conducted a study together with Brian Scholl at Yale University in which participants had to pay attention to two particular circles (the targets) on a computer screen, while also selectively ignoring two other identical-looking circles (the distractors). During what is called a multiple-object tracking (MOT) task, participants had to keep track of the targets as they moved haphazardly among the distractors, and then re-identify them many seconds later.
At the end of the trial, the objects all disappeared and participants used the mouse to indicate the objects’ last perceived locations. Their responses revealed two striking effects: they misperceived the targets as being closer together than they really were, and the distractors as further apart than they really were. That is, attention simultaneously compresses perceived space between targets (as if they are attracting each other) and expands perceived space between distractors (as if they are repelling each other). Given that everything in the visual world ultimately consists of objects and space, these findings have far-reaching implications for how we perceive just about anything we can see. Since we are almost constantly paying attention to space and objects, this means that space and objects are almost constantly being distorted perceptually.
Another (perhaps disturbing) implication of this research is that we can’t completely trust our eyes to give us a true reflection of the world. This realization creates quite a philosophical conundrum, if not a practical one. It’s a bit like finding out that all along you’ve been seeing the world through a pair of “distorting glasses.”
These studies suggest a fundamental revision to our naïve concept of attention: even though we experience attention as a spotlight that enables perception, it may be more accurately described as a distorting zoom lens — both sharpening and warping our perception of the visual world.
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3 Comments
Add CommentI think this is not any discovery; I think we know this intuitively. You see it in art, in descriptions, in your own experience. I've been aware of this since I was about 10; basically it's why we can make the moon look so big, because in our mind, it is big. Sunsets and moonrises are especially easy to use to experience this; take a picture, then stare at the real landscape, fix the size of the Sun/Moon, maybe later make a quick sketch and then go look at the photograph - you will see a very small object compared to your perception of it. This becomes evident also when you think about the surfaces we view images on (flat) and the shape of both our outer eye and optical nerve (curved). You can see a similar effect in a movie when panning a zoomed lens; watch the sides and things will "distort" back towards their real shapes as they approach the center, and distort as they move away. We see biggest and best at what we focus on with the center of our eyes, it's so obvious, it is overlooked.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisperhaps these "distortions" are relative truths as with everything. what is the difference between reality and perceived reality?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree largely with promytius, but would add that taking a picture with a camera is not that simple at all as it sounds. camera of what size, what kind of lens? to replicate our mind zooming position, you need to find the respective camera-lens zooming set up. the more precise you try to be, the more difficult it becomes. if you use a telephoto lens of let's say 500mm on a 35mm camera, won't the moon probably be larger than the moon on our drawing of the moonrise?
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