Local psych prof talks research into attention
By William Crooks
Local Journalism Initiative
In a July 30 interview, Dr. Jonathan Carriere, a psychology professor at Bishop’s University, shared his expertise on the complexities of attention and cognitive psychology. With a solid academic foundation in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience from the University of Waterloo, Carriere’s research delves into understanding how everyday distractions and psychological factors like boredom and depression influence attentional capacities in the general population.
Carriere explained his focus on the broader population rather than clinical groups, stating, “I study cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, but my main application is attention research, specifically inattentiveness in the typical population.” This includes looking at how well people can maintain attention in everyday situations and what individual differences exist. His work uses a combination of questionnaires and experimental tasks to explore these areas.
One of the primary tools used in Carriere’s research is the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). This task involves participants responding to a sequence of numbers displayed on a screen, for instance, pressing a button for every number except ‘3’. “[It] is quite short—about five minutes most of the time,” Carriere noted. The task is deceptively simple: participants must press a button for each number except ‘3’, requiring them to override an automatic response developed through repetition. “The idea is that because you’re pressing the button frequently, it becomes very automatic, and you need to pay sufficient attention to withhold the response when a ‘3’ appears,” Carriere elaborated. This challenge makes the SART a useful tool for assessing the ability to sustain attention, revealing how different people handle the task’s monotony and the effort required to resist automatic responses.
