科学美国人60秒 SSS 你能留意到微小的细节吗?（在线收听）

Hi, I'm Scientific American podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here's a short piece from the July 2018 issue of the magazine, in the section we call Advances: Dispatches From The Frontiers Of Science, Technology And Medicine:

大家好，我是《科学美国人》播客编辑史蒂夫·米尔斯基。今天给大家介绍收录在本杂志2018年7月刊“进展：科学、技术和医学前沿快报”栏目中的一篇短文。

Eagle Eye by Simon Makin

《敏锐的目光》 作者：西蒙·马金

Our abilities to see things that appear fleetingly or in cluttered environments or outside our focus of attention are all determined by a single perceptual capacity trait that varies among people, that's the finding of a new study. Researchers involved say these results could one day help scientifically predict an individual's performance in jobs that rely on strong observational skills.

一项新研究显示，我们能看到短暂出现、或在杂乱环境中或在我们关注点之外的事物这一能力，都是由个体感知能力特性决定的，而这种特性因人而异。参与研究的研究者表示，这些结果有一天也许能为科学预测个体在某些工作中的表现提供帮助，而这些工作需要出色的观察技能。

Researchers at University College London tested participants on a range of visual tasks. One measured how well people could estimate the number of objects appearing on a screen for a tenth of a second—a capacity known as subitizing. Others measured the ability to notice small differences between two real-world scenes; to detect a change at a screen's edge while focusing on the center; and to track multiple moving dots among static ones.

伦敦大学学院的研究人员让参与者进行了一系列视觉任务测试。其中一项测试评估的是，人们对屏幕上出现十分之一秒的物体个数的估计准确性——这种能力被称为“数感”。其他测试评估的内容包括：人们注意到两种现实场景之间微小差异的能力；在注意力集中于屏幕中心时发觉屏幕边缘变化的能力；在静止圆点中追踪移动圆点的能力。

People who excelled at subitizing also tended to perform better on the other tasks. The team reported online in March in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

数感能力强的人往往在其他任务上的表现也更好。该团队将研究结果在线发表于《实验心理学期刊：人类感知和表现》3月刊上。

Theoretically, performance on any task that relies on this perceptual ability (not just those studied) could predict performance on any other. The researchers also demonstrated that perceptual capacity is distinct from general cognitive ability and ruled out other possible factors such as varying levels of motivation.

从理论上讲，就任何依赖于这种感知能力（不仅限于研究中的能力）的任务来说，人们的表现可以预测其执行其他任务时的表现。研究人员还证明了感知能力与一般认知能力不同，并排除了动机水平不同等其他可能因素。

The findings are interesting and plausible—but they are preliminary and need to be independently replicated in larger samples.

这项研究结果很有趣，同时又很有道理，但这些只是初步结果，还需要在更大的样本中进行独立的重复实验。

The scientists say their work could help develop tests to screen potential employees for safety-critical jobs in demanding visual environments, such as air-traffic controllers, security guards or military personnel. The team is already investigating whether measuring perceptual capacity can predict actual job performance in such roles.

科学家表示，他们的工作有助于开发测试，为苛刻视觉环境中的安全关键工作岗位筛选潜在雇员，这些岗位包括空中交通管制员、安保人员或军事人员。该团队已经开始研究测量感知能力是否能预测人们在这些岗位中的实际工作表现。

That was Eagle Eye by Simon Makin.

以上是西蒙·马金发表的文章《敏锐的目光》。