![\"Mens](\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/files\/2014\/11\/volleyball-580x639.jpg\")
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\u201cAttention is the holy grail, everything that you\u2019re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.\u201d David Strayer, a University of Utah researcher, made the importance of attention very clear in this quote from a 2010 New York Times article<\/a>. However, attention is not static, it can be focused, divided, shifted, widened and narrowed. With a narrowing of attention, very apparent changes or entire objects (even gorillas) can be completely missed even if you are looking directly at it (don\u2019t believe me? Watch this<\/a>). There are many ways to narrow your attentional breadth, or the \u201cspotlight\u201d of your attention in which you can notice stimuli with high accuracy. But what about the possibility of having a larger attentional spotlight, to be able to be aware of what is happening in a larger spatial area?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n First, we\u2019ll review what is already known about attentional spotlights. One of the most common analogies for the attentional spotlight is that of a zooming lens; it trades accuracy and highly detailed resolution for the size of the field of vision, so when you extend your field of vision, you are less likely to see the small details than if you focus intently on one object. We also know that attentional abilities vary from person to person. Some of these abilities include dividing your attention (multitasking), how quickly you can shift your attention between stimuli, and how widely you can distribute your attention across your visual field.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The researchers of the recent study The Size and Shape of the Attentional \u201cSpotlight\u201d Varies with Differences in Sport Expertise<\/a> investigated individual differences in the ability to distribute attention across your visual field by using expert athletes of different types and comparing them to novices. The main idea was that athletes, especially in team sports with many different stimuli that require attention, might be better at seeing things that are farther apart. More specifically, they believed that athletes who practiced sports like hockey, soccer, and handball would have a wider spotlight on the horizontal plane, because these sports require a very wide field of vision to take in everything that is going on. For sports like volleyball and basketball, they predicted that expert athletes would have an extended visual spotlight on the vertical axis due to the large amount of airborne stimuli (click here<\/a> for more on factors that effect spatial attention).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The researchers defined expert athletes as people that practiced for at least eight hours a week and participated in competitions in their sport. Participants were then shown a series of slides (see below) with instructions to focus on the center of the screen. Next, two sets of stimuli consisting of different numbers of triangles of different shades of gray were briefly displayed. These stimuli varied on their distance apart as well as on which axis they laid (horizontal or vertical). Participants were then asked how many light gray triangles were present in each group, and correct responses were only scored if the numbers for both sides were correct. The researchers defined the boundaries of the attentional spotlight as the maximum distance separating the two stimuli sets where the participant had 75% accuracy in his or her answers.<\/p>\n So what did they find? Just as they had expected, athletes who were more practiced in horizontally oriented sports (soccer, hockey, and handball) had significantly wider attentional spotlights compared to both the control group of novices as well as the vertically oriented athletes (basketball and volleyball players). These vertical athletes had better vertical attentional spotlights compared to the other two groups. The differences found were actually rather large. The largest difference was between the horizontal athletes compared to the novices for the horizontal axis, a difference of about eight degrees for a total horizontal visual attentional spotlight of about 43 degrees out of 360.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So who cares? What does a measly four degrees on either side do for you? Well, imagine you are Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese soccer player, and you are running as fast as you can with the ball at your feet. With a single glance upwards you need to be able to know where the defenders are, where your teammates are, where the goalie is in relation to the net, and not to mention where you are in relation to the field! Those extra four degrees could be the difference between making a perfect cross to a teammate and thinking you have no other option than to take it yourself and eventually lose the ball. Now imagine you\u2019re Cristiano and your driving your Ferrari up I-95 to visit your friend Chris at Colby College. You\u2019re driving along, looking at the road, when suddenly a deer jumps out from the side towards you. That extra four degrees of visual attention could easily be the difference of being able to avoid that deer and ruining your Ferrari (for more on how not to wreck your Ferrari look here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don\u2019t go running out onto the field just yet though. This study was correlational, which means that we aren\u2019t sure which way the relationship works. The athletes may have developed this widened attentional spotlight from extensive practice, or they may have gotten to be experts at their sport because they already had that enhanced breadth of attention. Another possible shortcoming of these findings is that the researchers mapped a three dimensional attentional field onto two dimensions. It is likely that the horizontal axis in this study maps onto the horizontal field in three dimensions, but it is possible that the vertical field used in this study (which they took to mean up or down) could represent depth of vision instead of vertical vision.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even with these shortcomings, it leaves you thinking, can we train ourselves to have a larger attentional spotlight? It might be worth a try.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n H\u00fcttermann, S., Memmert, D., & Simons, D.J. (2014). The size and shape of the attentional \u201cspotlight\u201d varies with differences in sport expertise. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20<\/em>, 147-157.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cAttention is the holy grail, everything that you\u2019re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.\u201d David Strayer, a University of Utah researcher, made the importance of attention very clear in this quote from a 2010 New York Times article. However, attention is not static, it can be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4504,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216],"tags":[129793],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4504"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1670"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5421,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670\/revisions\/5421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Untitled\"](\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/files\/2014\/12\/Untitled-580x424.png\")
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