How the Brain Filters Distractions to Stay Focused on a Goal

An new attention model reveals how the human brain allocates limited perceptual resources to focus on goal-relevant information in dynamic environments. Researchers developed “adaptive computation,” a system that prioritizes important visual details—like traffic signals over flashy cars—based on task relevance.

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A person's capacity for attention has a profound impact on what they see, dictating which details they glean from the world around them.

As they walk down a busy street, the focus of their attention may shift to a compelling new billboard advertisement, or a shiny Lamborghini parked on the curb.

Attention, however, can be fleeting. When that person reaches a busy intersection, for instance, details of the billboard or sportscar disappear. The person's attention instead becomes focused on approaching or stationary traffic, the flashing walk sign, and other pedestrians they'll need to avoid in the crosswalk.

This shows a person on a busy street.

The model also helps make sense of what's sometimes considered a “human quirk”: the ability to make perceptions of non-task-oriented objects — such as the billboard or the sports car—disappear while crossing the busy street. Credit: Neuroscience News

Most research on attention has concentrated on what happens when we notice the new billboard or shiny car.

But in a new study, Yale psychologists instead focus on what happens when our attention shifts to a specific goal, such as navigating the busy intersection.

Writing in the journal Psychological Review, the researchers unveil a human attention model that explains how the mind evaluates what is task-relevant in complex, dynamic scenarios - and apportions computational capacity in response.

"We have a limited number of resources with which we can see the world," said Ilker Yildirim, assistant professor of psychology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and senior author of the study.

"We think of these resources as elementary computational processes; each perception we experience, such as the position of an object or how fast it's moving, is a result of exerting some number of these elementary perceptual computations."