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STATEMENT OF PURPOSE The purpose of this research is to further understand how well computer users can control attention when given two tasks to complete simultaneously. We are going to manipulate the display (flash, fade) and importance (related, unrelated) characteristics of a peripheral word. Previous research has looked at how attention is exogenously and endogenously oriented (Muller & Rabbitt, 1989), however little work has applied this knowledge to the design of graphical displays. This study seeks to investigate the effects of peripherally presented information with different display types and related types on users while they perform a main central task (e.g., tic-tac-toe game). The goal of this experiment is to ultimately provide design guidelines for interaction designers that increase the usability of information rich interfaces. We hope to find evidence that users will select information that is relevant (using endogenous attentional orienting) without the designer having to demand the users’ attention (depending on an exogenous orienting). STATEMENT OF RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Participants will be asked to read and sign an informed consent. Further, they will be requested to report general information such as: gender, handedness, vision and native language. Participants will be read an orientation script explaining the experiment, asked if they understand and if they have any questions. Participants will be interacting with a computer running either Morea or E-Prime experimental presentation and recording software (i.e., capturing accuracy and response times). The participants will be presented a brief set of instructions and a context building scenario on the computer screen. Participants will then sit at a computer and perform two tasks using a mouse and keyboard. The first task is to complete a tic-tac-toe game, with the goal being to achieve the highest score possible within a given period of time. The second task will be to click on a button appearing in a flashing or fading format. The participant has to determine if the button is a (related) target or distractor (unrelated). The experiment will not take longer than 50 minutes to complete. ANTICIPATED RISKS AND BENEFITS This study has little risk to participants. The risks associated with this experiment would be those normally associated with using a computer for 50 minutes. The benefits of this experiment would be developing new design guidelines that allow designers to present information to a user without causing an exogenous orienting of attention, while at the same time, allowing information important to the user to still be attended to. SUBJECT SELECTION Participants will be volunteer students from psychology 101 course at Missouri Western State University. Students will be given extra credit for participation. CONFIDENTIALITY Participants will be asked to sign an informed consent. However, all data from their experiment will only be assigned to a subject number which will not be associated with any information on the informed consent. This ensures that all data and results will remain anonymous. Informed consents will be kept in a secure location to keep records of participation confidential. PRIMARY SUPPORTING DOCUMENT Click for Word Document Extension Request on 09-27-2010 We would like to continue this IRB for another year. Extension Request on 09-17-2011 Extension Request on 09-16-2012