Distractibility trait predisposes some to attentional lapses

People vary according to different personality traits, such as extraversion or conscientiousness, and new UCL research suggests that they also vary according to a particular cognitive trait: distractibility. The findings are published in Psychological Science , a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "We all know from personal experience that some people appear to be more prone to lapses of attention than others. At the same time, we know that inattention and distractibility characterize people with a clinical diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)," says study author Professor Nilli Lavie (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience). "This led us to hypothesize that there might be an attention-distractibility trait that all of us have to some degree, and the clinical end of the spectrum is seen as ADHD." To investigate whether such a continuous trait exists, Lavie and co-author Sophie Forster had a healthy sample of 174 adults complete computerized tasks that measured their distractibility. The participants searched brief computerized displays for a "target" letter among a circle of letters, pressing a key as soon as they found it. On 25% of the 384 trials, a distracting image of a well-known cartoon character appeared above or below the circle of letters.