Executive function has been conceptualized as a "supervisory attentional system" which plans, prioritizes, allocates attention, and recognizes corrective feedback to guide appropriate decisions (Norman and Shallice 1986).
We prioritized chemicals by whether we anticipated widespread exposure, there was suggestive evidence of breast cancer risk in epidemiological studies, or they were prioritized for attention by governmental agencies.
The selective nature of visual attention prioritizes objects in a scene that are most perceptually salient, those relevant to personal goals, and animate objects.
Participants were significantly faster in detecting changes to agents than to objects or the environment (ts > 3.65, ps < 0.002), replicating the finding that attention prioritizes animate things (New, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2007).1 Importantly, for the purpose of our study, there was no effect of search tool and no interaction, Fs < 0.11, ps > 0.897.
The significant interaction of display size by target type suggests that the longer item was prioritized and captured attention.
Changes in the background go more unnoticed than foreground changes, possibly because attention prioritizes processing of foreground/near stimuli.
Reasons for or against benefit selection included fairness, necessity, need for prioritizing, personal experience, attention to family needs, holistic health outlook, preference for comfort, freedom of choice, and beliefs about the proper role of government.
The reasons that study participants gave to justify their benefit selections included arguments for the following: fairness, necessity, need for prioritizing, personal experience, attention to family needs, holistic health outlook, preference for comfort, freedom of choice, and beliefs about the proper role of government.
