Alexandra Jesse writes:
This is a reminder that Jeff Moher (Brown) is giving a talk this week in the Cognitive Psychology Brown Bag (Wednesday, Tobin 521B, 12-1:15).
The title of the talk is "Distractor suppression in attention and action".
The abstract is:
Human behavior is frequently interrupted by distractions, from billboards to noisy neighbors to email notifications. I will present work that addresses how and when distractor suppression mechanisms improve task performance by minimizing interference from task-irrelevant objects. Using a variety of methodologies including eye tracking, 3D reach tracking, and electroencephalography, we have found evidence for multiple distinct distractor suppression mechanisms that may be implemented through both implicit learning and explicit cueing. In some cases, even interference from perceptually salient distractors can be mitigated. Together, these data highlight the critical role that distractor interference and distractor suppression play in both attention and goal-directed action.
