How long does it take you to spot the hidden T in this puzzle – making sure to ignore the colour red?
A new study by John Hopkins University has proven that when people are given time to learn what’s possible to ignore, they were able to search faster and more efficiently.
This might sound obvious, but the results actually contradict previous research which stated that by ignoring irrelevant information, people were slower in making their final decisions.
Researchers took two separate groups, asking participants to search for certain letters on a computer screen.
The subjects were asked to locate either a capital ‘B’ or ‘F’ amongst other letters all in differing colours. Sometimes the participants were told the ‘B’ of ‘F’ would not be a certain colour (such as red in the above sample), where other times they were given no colour hints.
The study found that when a respondent was given one colour to consistently ignore throughout the experiment, their reaction time would slow at first, but after extended practice they were able to locate target letters “significantly faster than participants who weren’t given a colour to eliminate. In fact, the more information participants were able to ignore, the faster they found the target.”
The results, published in Psychological Science, will now be used to help workers in visually challenging jobs to react quicker to their stimulus – e.g. security checking baggage at the airport.
Speaking about the results, lead author Corbin A. Cunningham, a graduate student in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Attention and Perception Lab explained:
“Individuals who explicitly ignore distracting information improve their visual search performance, a critical skill for professional searchers, like radiologists and airport baggage screeners. This work has the potential to help occupations that rely on visual search by informing future training programs.”
