Impact of Screens on Change Blindness and Attention

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The use of screens and the exposure to multiple things happening on screens have potentially impacted people's abilities in detecting change blindness. It is suggested that the current generation, especially digital natives, may be better at handling specific visual tasks due to the extensive exposure to screens. There is also a notion that people today may have a greater suspicion of being tricked, potentially influencing their attention and perception of visual illusions.

David and Tamler are back for the new year and one of our resolutions was to do more episodes on William James. Today we talk about his account of ‘Attention’ from his 1890 volume The Principles of Psychology – another remarkably prescient chapter that still feels more than relevant today. What is attention and how does it function in the mind? What accounts for the different ways that we attend to things? Does attention help to shape or construct our reality? What is attention’s connection to the will? Does James anticipate predictive coding theory?

Plus we discuss the removal of the head of a renowned university for reasons that have nothing to do with the mission of higher learning.

Episode Links

Chancellor of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Fired [nbc.com]

William James chapter on Attention from Principles of Psychology (1890) [yorku.ca]