Significant Stimuli On Performance example essay topic

Introduction The research article being reviewed is Dissociation of Personally Significant and Task Relevant Distractors Inside and Outside the Focus of Attention: A Combined Behavioral and Psychophysiological Study. The research conducted in the article was supported by the Israel Foundation Trustees, and performed by Nur it Gronau, Asher Cohen, and Gershon Ben-Shekhar, all from the department of psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. The article was published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology in December of 2003. The article is comprised of seven experiments. The purpose of the research being conducted is to examine whether stimuli outside the focus of attention interferes with task performance, and the question of whether unattended personally significant stimuli are processed is fundamental for understanding the operation of selective attention. Study The research consists of seven experiments in total.

The participants are as follows, in experiments one and two there were thirty-two undergraduate students with normal or corrected to normal sight, all were native Hebrew speakers. In experiments three to seven there were thirty-two undergraduate students who again were all native Hebrew speakers with normal sight. The research design consisted of the participants sitting at a table facing a computer screen. Each participant had a microphone attached to the collar of his shirt. In addition to this two electrodes were used to measure the SCR's. The main results of this research revealed that a difference between the effects of significant distracters inside and outside of the focus of attention.

The results document two obvious dissociations between task relevant and personally significant stimuli. On one hand, task relevant stimuli demand visual attention, and on the other hand personally significant stimuli do not. Another important factor is personally significant stimuli affect the OR, however; task relevant stimuli have little influence on the OR both inside and outside of the focus of attention. The significance of these findings related to the topics explored in this study are that the influence of personally significant distracters found on the inside or outside of the focus of visual attention on responses to central targets and also the relation between the OR and shifts in visual attention. The researchers concluded that the influence of personally significant stimuli on performance when the stimuli were presented inside and out of the focus of visual attention. The results yielded a clear picture, according to which outside significant stimuli elicit an OR and get in the way of task performance when presented inside the focus of attention.

Significant stimuli which appeared in an unattended peripheral location yielded no attentional capture. The task relevant stimuli captured attention even when presented in an unattended location but outside the attentional beam. A dissociation between the OR and visual attention processes were noted but it was not the OR capturing attention by interference with task performance. This means that the task relevant stimuli may be unique in the ability to capture attention. The research done is not of significant importance. It is not a crucial experiment.

It is important though to collect data which has consistent results. Results from previous studies of attentional capture by personally significant stimuli have produced inconsistent results, mostly due to improper control of the attention of the participants. The participants in the study were appropriate, although they may have found a contrast in results had they conducted the study with a variety of participants rather than solely the undergraduate students from the university. The results probably cannot be used to answer the research question due to the fact that different responses will be elicited from different people at different times. Since only undergraduate students were used there was not enough variation in participants. The conclusions are significant on the grounds that they summed up what the research told about the study conducted.

Course Concepts The course concept that most relates to my research paper is scientific method. The researchers had a question, developed a hypothesis, tested the hypothesis, and analyzed the data collected. After completing all this the researchers reported the findings and made them public. Conclusion In this research paper I discussed who conducted the research, where it took place and the method that was used in the experiments. The participants, the research design and the significant results were all included in the paper as well.

Bibliography

Gronau, N., Cohen, A., Gershon, B. (2003).
Dissociations of Personally Significant and Task-Relevant Distractors Inside and Outside the Focus of Attention: A Combined Behavioral and Psychophysiological. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 132,512-529. Retrieved November 14, 2003 from EBSCO Host database.
Passer, M., Smith, R., Atkinson, M., Mitchell, J., Muir, D. (2003).