Applied Attention Theory

This book is about the relationship between laboratory and real life research on attention. Up until about 1980 research on applied aspects of human performance went hand in hand with the development of basic theory. As acknowledged in the preface of Wickens and McCarley’s book, the origins of modern attention theory in the 1950s and ’60s lay in real life problems (watchkeeping, communication, pilot error) and the same people were interested in both sets of issues. This has long been a concern of mine, so I had high expectations of the book. Anything by Chris Wickens is always worth reading and this is a topic on which he has very much to contribute. The various editions of his Engineering Psychology and Human Performance volume (latest edition by Wickens & Hollands 1999) still, in my view, provide the best grounding for young ergonomists who are serious about understanding the empirical foundations of the discipline. I have to start with a query over the title, since the book is not really about attention per se, but the broader domain of human performance: it cannot help but cover the neighbouring topics of workload, choice and decision making, working memory and human error. Of course, a case could be made out for treating attention as the central theoretical construct in performance, though I could find no evidence for such a position being taken here. This probably contributes to my difficulty in identifying a clear rationale for the approach adopted in the book. I had assumed that a volume on Applied Attention Theory would take one of two forms: either that basic theory would be summarised, shown to be limited with regard to effective application, and then revised appropriately; or, that all theory would be reviewed from the practical perspective, essentially giving a renewed vigour to a traditional and flagging literature. In practice, neither of these seems to be the case. Rather, for domains where attention theory has been well developed within applied contexts (aviation, automation, visual displays, driving), the strategy seems to be to summarise the specific literature(s) and extend it by including the (often omitted) application-relevant research. This is done well, particularly in earlier chapters, but I cannot detect much of a development of attention theory per se. So what do Wickens and McCarley claim that they do? First, they clearly wish to draw together the two poles of research on attention; highly-controlled, fundamental (lab-based) studies vs. research that addresses the messy real-world situations of work and practical tasks. Second, they want to examine how well results of fundamental research stand up to being ‘scaled up’ to these real-world problems. Will the typically small (though highly significant) laboratory effects hold up in such circumstances? Is theory able to predict and solve real-world performance problems such as threats to safety and productivity? Above all, the authors wish to encourage basic researchers to extend the boundaries of their laboratory into the wider applied world. In general terms, the book achieves these goals quite well, by selectively reviewing basic literature and extending the coverage into more obviously applied areas. The reader will certainly learn a lot from it, but what they learn will be in terms coverage of research rather than theory. I was hoping that the authors would try to develop a new integrated theory across the whole field of attention by incorporating neglected features of the real-world context that make applied tasks different from laboratory tasks: the general higher level of complexity; the ecological framing of problems; the meaningful nature of real work; the intrinsic motivation and consequences of error that help air traffic controllers maintain task goals under pressure. While ecological issues are referred to in places (mainly in relation to ecological interface design), there is no more than passing reference to other such issues, nor does the book draw out their implications for the development of attention theory. What the authors actually do (and do quite well, with lots of useful material and even occasional insights and new perspectives on old ideas) is to summarise and integrate a disparate set of research findings. The 11 chapters deal with various aspects of attention, based on the five properties/types outlined in the introduction: sustained; focused; selective; switched; divided. They cover research on the single channel theory and its relation to automaticity, attention control, visual search, spatial displays, effort and workload, time sharing, executive control, individual Ergonomics Vol. 52, No. 2, February 2009, 270–272