See It: Divided Attention / Scenic Memory

Aim of the Training

The training person is eyewitness to a street scene. The surroundings and the events happening (visual and acoustic stimuli) have to be memorized.

After a short period, the events seen and things heard have to be reproduced from memory. Using multiple choice, individual contents and events are reviewed.

Different aspects of attention and memory are trained.

Aspects of attention:
selective attention (high concentration on the street scene over a longer period of time)
divided attention (the whole screen has to be observed, without stopping at a stimulus; when training “with sound”, the attention has to be divided between visual and acoustic stimulus)
neglect (the scene has to be scanned as a whole; all areas of the screen have to be involved)

Memory: the short-term memory is trained when memorizing a street scene

Reading and Understanding: the user needs a certain reading ability to understand the questions and to choose the correct answer

Settings

With the first button “Sound”, one can set whether to train with or without acoustic stimuli.

Sound off: only visual stimuli during the scene

Sound on: a siren and/or music can be heard additionally

With the other three buttons, the training can be started at the difficulty degrees “Easy”, “Medium” or “Hard”.

Limit training duration “off”: New tasks are randomly generated until the “Back” button (or Esc) is pressed by the user.

Limit training duration “on”: A slide control “Stop training after X scenes” appears. The number (X) of scenes can be set between 4 and 15 (8 by default). The training automatically ends after the user has finished the set number of tasks.

Watching a scene and answering the following questions takes approx. 5 to 10 minutes – depending on the working speed and difficulty degree.

With answer “I do not know” off: The user has to answer all questions.

With answer “I do not know” on: The user can answer “I do not know” if he/she can’t remember. This setting reduces the stress during training for patients with a limited memory capacity. However, this option should be disabled again if the therapist notices that this answer is chosen too often by the user. In case of some users, this possibility leads to less effort when memorizing (acquisition).

Course

After starting the training – by pressing the button “Easy”, “Medium” or “Hard” –  a street scene is shown. With increasing difficulty, the number of details within the scene also increases. The program determines the amount of time given to the user to memorize all details.

Immediately following the scene, 10 to 16 questions are asked. Those have to be answered by means of multiple-choice. The number and details of the questions depend on the difficulty degree.
The user receives a feedback after each answer. A green checkmark in case of a correct – and a red cross in case of an incorrect answer.

When all questions about a scene are answered, the percentage of correct answers is calculated.

Percentage correct answers < 50%: If less than 50% were achieved twice, the difficulty degree is decreased.

Percentage correct answers between 50% and 90%: The user continues training at the same degree of difficulty.

Percentage correct answers >= 90%:  If 90% or more have been achieved four times consecutively, the difficulty degree is increased.