Action words: Studying the involuntary capture of attention of action words

• Main Authors: Averin, Emina, Valderrama, Majorie
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Umeå universitet, Institutionen för psykologi 2011
• Subjects: Psychology; Psykologi
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-51974

This study’s aim was to examine how attention is affected by action words. Twenty participants performed a cross‐modal oddball task with a standard sound (a sine wave tone) and two recorded speech sounds as novel sounds (stop and press). The result showed that novel sounds captured attention and increased response time compared to standard. There was a significant difference between “press” and standard and “stop” and standard but not between stop and press. This showed that the participants could not block out the sound and focus on the focal attention task. Even though not significant, the response time for “stop” was the slowest since it may inhibit the involuntary response. The results might be explained by the fact that not enough subjects participated, and because of that same reason the result might not be generalized either.