![\"CogBlog](\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/files\/2013\/11\/CogBlog-image-1.png\")
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The participants were asked to press one of two buttons as quickly as possible to indicate which direction the central arrow (shown above) was facing, something that is\u00a0 more difficult to do when the central arrow is pointing in a different direction than the outside arrows. Each participant completed this task 480 times. In each trial either the distance between the central arrow and the outer arrows was changed or the vertical placement of the central arrow was changed. With each trial the degree of separation between arrows and the reaction time of the participants was measured. Their results showed that spatial attention was more focused in traditional Himba than in urbanized Himba.<\/p>\n
A second experiment was performed exactly as the first except for that the participants were placed into four groups: traditional Himba with a high cognitive load, traditional Himba with a normal cognitive load as in the first experiment, urbanized Himba with a high cognitive load, and urbanized Himba with a normal cognitive load. The high cognitive load was added by having participants memorize three numbers before beginning the experiment and then having them repeat those numbers every couple of trials.\u00a0The two groups with no added cognitive load showed that the traditional Himba had more focused spatial attention than the urbanized Himba. The two groups with the additional cognitive load, however, showed different results. In this case both the traditional and urbanized Himba had equally unfocused spatial attention. This experiment showed that by mimicking urbanization, adding information that required attention, the spatial attention of the traditional Himba became just like that of the urbanized Himba.<\/p>\n
Many studies show that a person can only pay attention to and remember limited amount of things at any one time.\u00a0 Based on these studies one hypothesis about the way urbanization effects attention is that urban environments deplete this attention and memory more than remote environments where there are less people. This would mean that an urbanized person\u2019s ability to remember a span of digits should be worse than a person who lives in a remote area. A third experiment was run in order to test this hypothesis. Participants listened to a series of digits then were asked to repeat what they heard. Their accuracy was recorded and then a new set of digits was presented. The trials were repeated with varying numbers of digits. Results in this experiment did not support the initial hypothesis.<\/p>\n
Another hypothesis that Linnell et al. tested was that increasing how involved or engaged attention is on a task would increase focus on that task meaning that if urbanized Himba were able to better engage their attention on the task then their focus would be like that of the traditional Himba. They tested this by repeating the task in experiment 1, this time using upright and inverted black and white faces instead of arrows, as shown in the images below.<\/p>\n