The goal of this workshop was to advance the understanding of how cognition and action systems are integrated and operate synergistically. This knowledge of how humans efficiently interact and navigate in complex environments is vital for generating a comprehensive understanding of human behavior and will help shape the design of everyday objects and training and working environments. One poignant example is computer technology. Human-computer interfaces equipped with gestural and tangible technologies are becoming increasingly accessible and ubiquitous in educational, leisure, and work settings. A thorough understanding of the interactions between cognition and action is needed help designers engineer devices and environments that maximize the functionality and usability. Thus, the workshop will bring together a diverse group of scholars in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, kinesiology, and human-computer interactions to share and critically evaluate their cutting-edge theoretical, empirical, and translational developments.
Note: Some videos from this workshop may appear slightly altered to protect the privacy of individuals pictured in presentations.
Fluctuations in Focused Attention During Goal-Directed Action
Jeff Moher, Connecticut College, USA
Our ability to stay focused on the task at hand fluctuates from moment-to-moment. Whether we are driving, typing, or trying to read a conference abstract, our minds often wander. I will discuss recent work that explores these fluctuations in focused attention in the context of goal-directed action. There are (at least) two distinct advantages to this approach. First, reach movements can be broken down into meaningful subcomponents, providing a more fine-grained measure for subtle changes in behavior. Second, the spatial properties of hand movements allow us to distinguish instances when someone is pulled towards or moves away from a distracting non-target object - an important nuance that is often lost with more traditional keypress approaches.
I have found that the trajectory of a hand movement towards a target in a simple search task can vary widely over time, despite no changes in the task or stimulus properties. Increased deviation towards a non-target distractor on one trial appears to indicate a lack of focus that sustains into subsequent trials. These effects are not limited to motor priming, as similar patterns are observed when participants switch between goal-directed action responses and keypress responses. The results of these studies hold promise both for furthering our understanding of the dynamics of attention and for practical implementations that could detect drifts in focus during high-stakes situations (e.g., driving) and send alerts to prevent costly errors.
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