As humans, we have exquisite abilities to focus attention on a variety of visual
properties to efficiently find what we seek. While decades of research have well
characterized our abilities, much less work has investigated whether and how
people strategically apply these abilities. Understanding strategy is vital because
abilities are only useful to the extent that they are put into service in the right
scenarios. Do people use their attentional systems optimally? According to my
labʼs work in this area, the answer is “a lot less than you might expect.ˮ I will
share a series of studies designed to understand and characterize the use of
attentional strategy. We have found that optimality varies widely across
individuals and tasks. I will also share a variety of failures to pin down factors
predicting optimality, and then I will focus on the critical roles of learning and
cognitive demand avoidance. Taken together, the results prompt a conceptual
reframing of what attention is for and how it actually functions. I propose that our
cognitive control and sensory systems work hand in hand to balance our
hierarchical goals to achieve satisfactory behavioral outcomes in everyday life.
Event
Chandler Ullmann 118
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