A Demonstration of Tunnel Vision: Foveal Load and Instructional Set are Both Important

Abstract

The present study demonstrated that an Increase in foveal cognitive load can have a substantial detrimental effect on the processing of information from para- and perifoveal regions of the same display. Also, an instructional set which biased subjects to distribute most of their attentional resources to the foveal (primary) task resulted in much poorer performance on the parafoveal (secondary) task than an instructional set which biased subjects to allocate attentional resources over the entire display. Although reaction times on the secondary task became slower with increases in the eccentricity of the secondary task stimuli, the rate of reaction time increase was greatest for the condition that combined high foveal cognitive load with a foveal attentional bias. The results are interpreted in terms of a tunnel-vision model.