Effects of Task Intensity on Attention

1. CS MQP 2008 Effects of Task Intensity on Attention Daisuke Abe Corey Christous Advisor - Emmanuel Agu Co-Advisor - Cliff Lindsay

2. Effects of Task Intensity on Attention • Hypothesis • Background • Experiment Design • Data Analysis • Conclusions

3. Hypothesis • As a task becomes more difficult, the user performing the task will notice less unrelated objects that they see. • Users with more expertise will notice more objects, because they require less attention on their task. • If we are able to show this, our results can be used to increase the efficiency of graphics rendering by eliminating details that are likely to be unnoticed. • Alternatively, our results can be used to judge what level of task intensity is appropriate when game designers want the players to appreciate the graphics.

4. Effects of Task Intensity on Attention • Hypothesis • Background • Experiment Design • Data Analysis • Conclusions

5. Background • Saliency – the property of an object to stand out in comparison to its surroundings • Attention Based Saliency – the property of an object to stand out because of its inherent contrast to its surroundings • Task Based Saliency – the property of an object to stand out because it is related to the task at hand • If our hypothesis is correct, task based saliency would dominate attention based saliency as the task becomes more difficult. • Players would only notice objects that are related to their task.

6. Attention Based Saliency ExampleColors and Illumination

7. Task Based Saliency ExampleGame Objective

8. Effects of Task Intensity on Attention • Hypothesis • Background • Experiment Design • Data Analysis • Conclusions

9. Experiment Design • Designed a Doom 3 map with ten pick-up items, a few objects consistent with the environment, and a few objects inconsistent with the environment including images of famous figures • Varied the task difficulty by having one map without monsters (easy), one map with slow monsters(medium), and one map with fast monsters(hard) • Asked participants to answer a few questions about themselves, including gaming experience • Asked participants to collect all of the items as fast as they could, avoiding enemies • Placed objects such that participants would see almost all of them regardless of what route they took • Randomly assigned participants to each of the maps • Asked participants to list the objects they saw in the map

11. Effects of Task Intensity on Attention • Hypothesis • Background • Experiment Design • Data Analysis • Conclusions

12. Data Analysis:Pictures Seen vs Self-Rating graphs • Players who thought they were more proficient at first person shooting games noticed more pictures in the map • Self rating was accurate • While we saw some trends, our results are not statistically significant. However, we believe that increasing the difficulty differences will produce statistically significant results.

13. Data Analysis • Experienced players ignored objects that were natural in the map because of previous experience • Most objects the player sees in a FPS don’t do anything • Inexperienced players looked at everything • Participants who spent more time in the map noticed more objects • More experienced players noticed more images in the map • The players’ skill level affected perceived difficulty for the map

14. Effects of Task Intensity on Attention • Hypothesis • Background • Experiment Design • Data Analysis • Conclusions

15. Conclusions • Task intensity had an effect on performance and visual attention • Skill levels had an effect on perceived task intensity • Long term experience has more impact than current hours spent • Some participants used to play FPS games but stopped playing • Question about hours played might have produced inaccurate results

16. Suggestions for the Future • A thorough pre-experimental test to more accurately group participants into appropriate skill levels • Increase the difference in the difficulty levels in order to see statistically significant differences • Try other genres