The war of the senses

Our crowning glory as humans is our quirky minds, capable of processing fact and imaginings, of concentrating on the moment, remembering, thinking of the future, and even contemplate its own existence. But we know from experience that we cannot pay attention to everything all at once. On one hand, that is a big relief since I do not know what will become of my writing if, as I write this column, I could also notice all the gnawing that my dog, Gravity, is doing to a bone, the construction work going on next door, the wind blowing outside or even the spider spinning a web in the potted plant near my terrace door, in equal proportions. On the other hand, how do humans shift attention from what they are locked on to, to something that needs it urgently, such as the sound of doorbell?

How much is the human capacity for attention? If we lose one sense, do our other senses really get keener? And if we had all our senses available, do we really experience everything or do we lose some as well? For example, if you see more, would you hear less?  

We know from studies that people who were blind from birth scored better than sighted people in sound perception and sound location. Scientists found that the brain part of blind people in charge of processing visual inputs do not get decommissioned but it gets recruited to help process sound. This is what we often loosely refer to as “compensation.” But if your senses are all intact, there may be trade-offs as to what you can see versus what you can hear if you experience them at the same time.

I came across a published experiment by researchers in the University of Oxford entitled “Visual perceptual load induces inattentional blindness.” It appeared in the Journal Attention Perception Psychophysiology August 2011. In the experiment, the subjects were presented with an image of a cross both rendered as “high load” and low load,” depending on the visual detail it contained. Then a tone was introduced while these were being viewed. The results showed that 79 percent of those who paid attention to the high load visual did not notice the tone — significantly more than those who experienced the “low load” visual. The scientists called this “inattentional deafness.” It means you probably heard the sound but did not notice it.

Based on past studies, it seems that what you see and what you hear share some capacity in your brain for processing which leads to attention. In other words, they compete for processing power. And so far, studies have demonstrated that visuals overtake sounds. The question then is what kind of sound, in terms of kind and decibel, would be required to overcome this tyranny of sight? The answer to this may be relevant as we debate the installation of items in common places like billboards in highways. This kind of science, instead of haphazard opinion burdened by partisan morality, should be used by policy-makers in making sense of why or why not we should have those billboards that have appropriated airspace to commerce in spectacular proportions.

Attention wars happen not only between the senses but also within one sense. A famous Gorilla study in 1999 had subjects who were asked to view a video of people passing a basketball around and told to pay attention to the teams and the number of passes they made. At some point, a woman in a gorilla costume entered the scene. When the viewers were asked later if they saw the “gorilla,” very few said yes. This has implications as to how much visual distraction is needed to shift the attention of viewers engaged in a particular visual engagement. Thus, if a driver is glued to a larger than life-sized Aphrodite appeal of some sex bomb on a billboard in EDSA, how do you make him notice the unexpected such as a small car overtaking him?  

And what about the wars between seeing and touching, seeing and smelling or seeing and tasting? Do they also compete in your brain? We have, for the most part, been deluded to thinking that the “I” is the result of a coherent truce among our senses. I now suspect that it is a moment-to-moment, multi-directional tug-o-war. Epicureans — empirical masters of the senses — I would like to know your thoughts.

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