Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
Spring 2013
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Department
Department of Psychology
Advisor(s)
Krisztina Jakobsen
Jeffrey Dyche
Jeffrey T. Andre
Abstract
Previous research suggests that the human face captures attention more quickly than objects. Based on neurophysiological and behavioral studies, we would expect that the human body would also capture attention efficiently. We used a passive viewing adaptation to the visual search paradigm to examine how quickly whole human body, isolated human face, and isolated human body stimuli capture attention across three array sizes (9, 16, 25 stimuli). Our results suggest that the isolated human face captures attention most efficiently in the two smaller arrays, but no more efficiently than the whole human body and isolated human body in the largest array. Thus, it appears that the isolated human face loses its attention capture properties when compared to other evolutionary relevant stimuli in complex environments.
Recommended Citation
Perta, Angela Marcelle, "The processing of evolutionarily relevant stimuli" (2013). Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019. 461.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors201019/461
