The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Chase Artopoeus will present Master’s research titled, A Look Into How Inhibition and Stress Influence Visual Orienting on 03/03/2025 at 10:00 in 540 McCallie Ave. Room 357. Everyone is invited to attend.
Psychology
Chair: Bret Eschman
Co-Chair: Jill Shelton
Abstract:
Abstract Our experience is often a product of the allocation of attention to a specific object in a given visual field. Commonly referred to as selective attention, it acts as the driver for our perception of the world. Selective attention involves two main processes, visual orienting and inhibition. Visual orienting is the act of visually attending to a specific object, while inhibition is the act of suppressing any outside noise that isn’t the current object of focus. The Posner paradigm effectively measured visual orienting and inhibition together in adults and has been viewed as a foundational measure of these two processes. Years later, the infant orienting with attention (IOWA) task was created and successfully shown to reliably measure visual orienting in infants. By demonstrating the IOWA task can accurately measure orienting in adult populations as well, the current study hopes to bridge the gap between adult and infant measures of attention by providing (a potential) longitudinal measure of an individual’s orienting using the same task. In addition, the current study aims to measure how perceived stress influences both orienting and inhibition. Using eye tracking technology to measure orienting via reaction time and accuracy values, we expect an adult population using the IOWA task to produce similar trends compared to those attained in the original Posner task. Furthermore, a significant relationship between stress and orienting ability is anticipated. Participants with higher levels of perceived stress will experience slower reaction times and accuracy compared to participants with lower levels of perceived stress.