Inconsistent seduction: Addressing confounds and methodological issues in the study of the seductive detail effect.

INTRODUCTION: The inclusion of interesting but irrelevant details in instructional materials may interfere with recall and application of the core content. Although this seductive detail effect is well researched, recent research highlights factors that may influence the effect size. OBJECTIVES: The current study discusses confounds and methodological issues in the study of seductive details and outlines strategies for overcoming them. These practices were then applied in a study that examined the role of learning objectives on the seductive detail effect. METHODS: Seductive details were selected on the basis of interest and importance level and matched for word count and reading level. The 3 × 2 between-subjects design presented 132 undergraduate students with a lesson on plate tectonics; participants completed tests on both recall and transfer. RESULTS: Results did not reveal a consistent detrimental effect of high-interest details on core content recall and transfer. On the recall test, contrary to expectation, the seductive detail effect obtained only when objectives were provided. A similar pattern emerged on the transfer task. CONCLUSION: These findings highlight the difficulty of consistently eliciting the seductive detail effect. We discuss outstanding issues that must be addressed in order to develop practical guidelines on the inclusion of seductive details in educational materials.

Great expectations: top-down attention modulates the costs of clutter and eccentricity.

An experiment and modeling effort examined interactions between bottom-up and top-down attentional control in visual alert detection. Participants performed a manual tracking task while monitoring peripheral display channels for alerts of varying salience, eccentricity, and spatial expectancy. Spatial expectancy modulated the influence of salience and eccentricity; alerts in low-probability locations engendered higher miss rates, longer detection times, and larger costs of visual clutter and eccentricity, indicating that top-down attentional control offset the costs of poor bottom-up stimulus quality. Data were compared to the predictions of a computational model of scanning and noticing that incorporates bottom-up and top-down sources of attentional control. The model accounted well for the overall pattern of miss rates and response times, predicting each of the observed main effects and interactions. Empirical results suggest that designers should expect the costs of poor bottom-up visibility to be greater for low expectancy signals, and that the placement of alerts within a display should be determined based on the combination of alert expectancy and response priority. Model fits suggest that the current model can serve as a useful tool for exploring a design space as a precursor to empirical data collection and for generating hypotheses for future experiments.

Auditory, visual, and bimodal data link displays and how they support pilot performance.

BACKGROUND: The design of data link messaging systems to ensure optimal pilot performance requires empirical guidance. The current study examined the effects of display format (auditory, visual, or bimodal) and visual display position (adjacent to instrument panel or mounted on console) on pilot performance. METHODS: Subjects performed five 20-min simulated single-pilot flights. During each flight, subjects received messages from a simulated air traffic controller. Messages were delivered visually, auditorily, or bimodally. Subjects were asked to read back each message aloud and then perform the instructed maneuver. RESULTS: Visual and bimodal displays engendered lower subjective workload and better altitude tracking than auditory displays. Readback times were shorter with the two unimodal visual formats than with any of the other three formats. Advantages for the unimodal visual format ranged in size from 2.8 s to 3.8 s relative to the bimodal upper left and auditory formats, respectively. Auditory displays allowed slightly more head-up time (3 to 3.5 seconds per minute) than either visual or bimodal displays. Position of the visual display had only modest effects on any measure. DISCUSSION: Combined with the results from previous studies by Helleberg and Wickens and Lancaster and Casali the current data favor visual and bimodal displays over auditory displays; unimodal auditory displays were favored by only one measure, head-up time, and only very modestly. Data evinced no statistically significant effects of visual display position on performance, suggesting that, contrary to expectations, the placement of a visual data link display may be of relatively little consequence to performance.

Modeling the control of attention in visual workspaces.

OBJECTIVE: The present study developed and validated a stochastic model of overt attention within a visual workspace. BACKGROUND: Technical specifications and recommended practices for the design of visual warning systems emphasize the role of alert salience. Task demands and display context can modulate alert noticeability, however, meaning that salience alone does not guarantee attention capture. METHOD: A stochastic model integrated elements from existing models of visual attention to predict attentional behavior in dynamic environments.Validation studies tested the predictions of the new model against scanning data from a high-fidelity simulator study and behavioral data from an alert detection experiment. RESULTS: The model accurately predicted the steady-state distribution of attention within a simulated cockpit as well as the effects of color similarity, eccentricity, and dynamic visual noise on miss rates and response times in the alert detection task. CONCLUSION: The model successfully predicts attentional behavior in complex visual workspaces with the use of parameter values selected by either the modeler or a subject matter expert. APPLICATION: The model provides a tool to test the effectiveness of visual alerts in various display configurations and with varying task demands.