From phone notifications and flashing alerts to crowded screens and busy workspaces, modern life is full of visual distractions competing for our attention. While people often talk about focus as a matter of willpower, Rice University psychologist Kirsten Adam is interested in what’s happening beneath the surface — specifically in the brain — when attention slips and when it recovers.
“At any given moment, there’s far more information in the world than our brains can process,” Adam said. “Attention is what determines what reaches our awareness and what doesn’t.”
With support from the $600,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Adam is investigating how irrelevant visual information interferes with our ability to stay on task and why certain distractions slow us down more than others. Her work aims to clarify how attention is captured, how it lingers on distractions and how the brain works to get back on track.
The highly competitive five-year NSF grants are given to early career faculty members who demonstrate the potential to serve as academic models and leaders in research and education.
“Kirsten is a valued member of the School of Social Sciences, and we are thrilled that she has been awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER,” said Rachel Kimbro, dean of social sciences. “Because distractions continue to increase all around us, her research is timely and imperative to understanding their widespread impacts on the human brain.”
In Adam’s lab, participants complete simplified visual search tasks while their brain activity is recorded using electroencephalography, or EEG. The technique allows researchers to measure attention shifts in real time, capturing the moment attention is drawn away from a goal and the effort it takes to disengage and refocus.
By combining precise brain measurements with subtle changes in behavior, especially moments when people slow down the most, Adam is testing long-standing theories about distraction. One possibility is that attention must be pulled away from irrelevant information before it can return to the task at hand. Another is that distractions compete directly with relevant information for limited mental resources.
Although the research is rooted in basic science, the questions it addresses have clear real-world relevance. Failures of attention play a role in high-stakes settings such as medical imaging, airport security screening and driving, where missed details can have serious consequences. Understanding the limits of attention may also help inform the design of technologies intended to support human decision-making rather than overwhelm it.
The CAREER Award also supports Adam’s commitment to education and training. The funding will be used not only to conduct the research but also to train graduate students in advanced cognitive neuroscience methods, expand access to tools such as EEG and promote open, collaborative science through public data sharing and mentorship.
“We’re not trying to make attention limitless,” Adam said. “We’re trying to understand how it actually works, so we can stop designing environments and expectations that fight against it.”
She said that understanding those limits is especially important as researchers and designers explore tools, including artificial intelligence-assisted technologies, that aim to support human attention.