An Invisible Gorilla: Is It a Matter of Focus of Attention?

How to evaluate users' attention level in a video task is a challenge. One of the conventional methods is to link users' focus of attention to their performance undertaken in a video. However, this is not always true in a video environment, as users' poor performance may be resulted from some other reasons rather than a lack of focus of attention. In this article, we demonstrated our assumption by using an Electroencephalography (EEG) sensor, which measured the users' attention level in a video task. Our results showed one case that some of the users with a poor performance in the video task had the same level of attention compared to those users with a good performance. In particular, an interference object in the video, aimed for distracting the users' attention, had no impact on some of the users' focus when they were already involved in the video task.