TY  - JOUR
TI  - On the Metacognitive Regulation of the Dead Zone of Attention
T2  - Psychology. Journal of Higher School of Economics
IS  - Psychology. Journal of Higher School of Economics
KW  - attention
KW  - strategy
KW  - dead zone of attention
KW  - change blindness
KW  - metacognitive regulation
AB  - One of the leading trends of fundamental and applied research on attention is its allocation in space. Though there is a large amount of studies in this area, performed on a simple material of psychophysical tasks (where on the homogeneous field limited sets of simple objects are presented), it is relatively little known about the allocation of spatial attention during the perception of natural scenes. The dead zone of attention refers to a remarkable inability to notice perceptual events occurring around "the centre of interest" (an object that draws intense attention). The effectiveness of perceptual processing of objects and events in this area is declined to such extent that the observer demonstrates stable ignoring of the marked changes of these objects - "blindness to change" - and the intensity of this blindness significantly exceeds the intensity of analogous mistake of attention on the farther periphery. The two experiments compared the speed of search and accuracy of detection of visual changes near and far from "the centers of interest". In both experiments, observers had preliminary knowledge about the dead zone of attention. In the first experiment the second change was either near or far, whereas in the second experiment in addition to already found central change not one, but two peripheral changes were provided: both near and far. Results were then compared to the ones from our earlier experiments (Utochkin, 2011) where no preliminary information was provided. It was found that preliminary knowledge has no effect on the speed of search for changes but increases the likelihood of change detection and correct recognition within the dead zone. The results are discussed in terms of metacognitive regulation and strategies of visual inspection of scenes.
AU  - Igor Utochkin
AU  - Yulia Stakina
UR  - https://psy-journal.hse.ru/en/2012-9-3/63318764.html
PY  - 2012
SP  - 131-139
VL  - 9