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Religion and attention allocation

Posted on the October 12th, 2010 under - Cognition by

Religion and attention allocation
The Netherlands and UK researchers reported their results of attention task studies (Religion and the Attentional Blink: Depth of faith predicts depth of the blink. Frontiers in Cognition, September 2010). They worked with two groups similar in cultural upbringing, with no group differences for age, mood, personality traits and IQ. One groups consisted of Atheistic, the other of Dutch Calvinists. The tool researchers measured what they called “Attention Allocation” was Attention Blink (AB):
Participants had to identify and report two digits presented in a rapid stream of letter distractors. The second digit was presented wither immediately after the first, or could be separated by several distraction cards.
The First digit was reported equally well by both groups with more correct results when the two digits were separated by longer time lags. However, the second digit, though equally well reported by short and long lags, was correct in 75% presentations in the Atheist group but only in 60% presentations in the Dutch Calvinists group.
The authors offer a very interesting discussion from the standpoints of East-West, collectivistic-individualistic, and wholistic-reductionistic cognitive differences between theri experimental groups.

The Netherlands and UK researchers reported their results of attention task studies (Religion and the Attentional Blink: Depth of faith predicts depth of the blink. Frontiers in Cognition, September 2010).

They worked with two groups similar in cultural upbringing, with no group differences for age, mood, personality traits and IQ. One groups consisted of Atheistic, the other of Dutch Calvinists. The tool researchers measured what they called “Attention Allocation” was Attention Blink (AB):

Participants had to identify and report two digits presented in a rapid stream of letter distractors. The second digit was presented wither immediately after the first, or could be separated by several distraction cards.

The First digit was reported equally well by both groups with more correct results when the two digits were separated by longer time lags. However, the second digit, though equally well reported by short and long lags, was correct in 75% presentations in the Atheist group but only in 60% presentations in the Dutch Calvinists group.

The authors offer a very interesting discussion from the standpoints of East-West, collectivistic-individualistic, and wholistic-reductionistic cognitive differences between theri experimental groups.