Practise has a very slight effect on the range of attention, explicable by habituation and grouping tricks rather than any expansion of the range itself¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · causal r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 1910 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? One to two hundred or more effortful exposures produce only a curiously small effect on the range of attention. → Whipple 1910 q2 i? The small practise effect is attributed to habituation to experimental conditions and to development of grouping devices; if eliminated, the practise-effect would be negligible or absent. → Whipple 1910 (2)

Evidence¶

Whipple 1910¶

Whipple, G. M. (1910). The effect of practise upon the range of visual attention and of visual apprehension. The Journal of Educational Psychology. https://books.google.com/books?q=Whipple+effect+of+practise+range+of+visual+attention+apprehension

q2 · i? · causal · r1

Practise analysis of Table 2 from the short-exposure experiment: four observers received from 124 to 250 and more exposures each, with scores compared across first, middle and last periods. The article reports a "curiously small effect" upon the range of attention.

"The effect of practise is indicated by the summarized data of Table 2, examination of which will suffice to con- vince the reader that attentive and effortful observation"

Whipple 1910 (2)¶

Whipple, G. M. (1910). The effect of practise upon the range of visual attention and of visual apprehension. The Journal of Educational Psychology. https://books.google.com/books?q=Whipple+effect+of+practise+range+of+visual+attention+apprehension

q2 · i? · causal · r1

The authors' interpretation of the practise data: the small gain is due to habituation and to development of a device of forming groups of letters as bases for report, not to any change in the range itself.

"If these two factors were eliminated, the practise-effect would be negligible, if not altogether absent."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Visual Processing — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• Individual differences in quick visual apprehension are striking and material-specific, negating the notion of a general ability to apprehend visually — related
• Systematic practise gives little warrant for markedly improving adults' quick visual perception; the slight poetry gain is attributed to familiarity with the poem — related
• The average range of visual attention for isolated letters lies between 4 and 5 letters (4.82), with only slight individual differences — related
• Longer exposures barely increase apprehension of nonsense material and objects, but materially increase perception of quickly assimilable sense-material such as poetry — related
• Practice effects in visual reproduction are specific: they transfer to new conditions only in proportion to identical ability-conditioning factors. — related
• Practice increases observers' ability to reproduce briefly exposed visual material, with final-over-initial gains ranging from 6% to 44% (average 22%). — related