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Abstract
In five experiments, we evaluated how secondary information presented on a heads-up display (HUD) impacts performance of a concurrent visual attention task. To do so, we had participants complete a primary visual search task under a variety of secondary load conditions (a single word presented on Google Glass during each search trial). Processing of secondary information was measured through a recognition memory task. Other manipulations included relevance (Experiments 1–4) and temporal onset of secondary information relative to the primary task (Experiment 3). Secondary information was always disruptive to the visual search, regardless of temporal onset and even when participants were instructed to ignore it. These patterns were evident in search tasks reflective of both selective (Experiments 1–3) and preattentive (Experiment 4) attentional mechanisms, and were not a result of onset-offset attentional capture (Experiment 5). Recognition memory for secondary information was always above chance. Our findings suggest that HUD-based visual information is profoundly disruptive to attentional processes and largely immune to user-centric prioritization.
Highlights
Our lives are being continuously and increasingly intermingled with technology
Because there was no secondary information to manipulate in the control conditions, we conducted two separate analyses of variance: one to evaluate whether there was a cost of secondary information to the primary visual search task compared with the control conditions that collapsed across the timing manipulation, and a second that omitted the control and set size conditions but included the timing manipulation
For the former, the overall response time (RT) data were similar to those derived from Experiments 1 and 2: RT costs were observed when secondary information was presented on the Google Glass (GG) (F[3, 61] = 3.95, p = .013, η2 = .160)
Summary
Our lives are being continuously and increasingly intermingled with technology (e.g., smartphones, wearable HUDs). While creating informationally rich environments might lead to productivity benefits in some contexts and convenience in others, designers, scientists, and users need to understand how technological integration might be harmful. We investigate this latter context in our present research, which contains a unique blend of theoretically relevant and practically applicable data that should be of interest to a wide audience, including psychologists, engineers, designers, policy makers, and the general public. For instance, have progressed from cell phones to wearable interfaces, leaving users in constant contact with their devices, regardless of whether they explicitly choose to engage with that device How does the adoption of various technologies remove a user from the present moment or task at hand, and at what cost (Starner, 2002)? Mobile technologies, for instance, have progressed from cell phones to wearable interfaces, leaving users in constant contact with their devices, regardless of whether they explicitly choose to engage with that device
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