Attention and Value

Keys to Understanding Museum Visitors

Stephen Bitgood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781611322620
• eBook ISBN: 9781315433431
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

How can museums capture visitors' attention? And how can their attention be sustained? In this important volume, leading visitor researcher and educational psychologist Stephen Bitgood proposes a model—the attention-value model—that will help museum practitioners create more effective museum environments. A major advance beyond earlier efforts, the attention-value model shows how both personal and exhibit design variables influence the capture, focus, and engagement of attention. Bitgood also offers extensive background in the visitor attention literature, details of his extensive testing of the attention-value tool, and guidelines for its application. Balancing theory, research, and practical application, Attention and Value is a must-read for exhibition developers at all levels—from students to seasoned practitioners.

Part 1

What We Know about Visitor Attention

chapter 1
Introduction

▷ Key Ideas ◁

• Visitor attention is a critical concept for scholars and museum professionals.

• Visitor attention needs to be defined in a comprehensive way using the key concepts of attention and value.

• This book uses psychology and visitor studies to explain how and where museum visitors pay attention.

• The attention-value model described in this book will help museum professionals promote engaged attention.

Key Questions about Visitor Attention

Much has been written about visitor attention, yet a comprehensive treatment of the subject still does not exist. Given the importance of this topic, both scholars and museum professionals need more careful research and reflection to understand better how attention phenomena relate to viewing exhibitions. To tackle this challenge and understand the psychological processes of attention inherent in the visitor experience, we must answer these five key questions (Bitgood, 2010):

1. What is "visitor attention"? What are the elements of a comprehensive definition of visitor attention? In what ways has it been defined? How has it and/or how should it be measured? How does it relate to other phenomena such as learning and fatigue?

2. To what do visitors pay attention while viewing exhibitions? How do visitors distribute their attention in exhibit environments? What factors are effective in capturing attention?

3. Why do visitors pay attention? What is the motivation for paying attention? What factors contribute to the motivation to pay attention or not?

4. How do the processes or mechanisms of attention work? Processes such as visual searching or scanning the exhibit environment, making decisions about where to focus and engage attention, and "museum fatigue" need to be understood if we are to design experiences that adequately manage visitor attention.

5. What factors interfere with paying attention to exhibits? How do phenomena such as "fatigue," "satiation," "competition," and "distraction" influence visitor attention, and how can these factors be minimized or eliminated?

These questions are our framework for studying visitor attention. This book answers them by describing the attention-value model of museum visitors and by exploring its implications for theory and practice.

Why Study Visitor Attention?

The key to understanding visitors in museums, zoos, science centers, and other types of exhibition centers is discovering how the processes of attention work together with the exhibition and social environments to create the museum experience. Of critical importance is understanding why, when, and how people are motivated to pay attention to exhibits and programs. In this book I focus on museum exhibitions, but the analysis can be applied to museum programs and audience research problems.

Learning is a primary concern of museum professionals, but learning is not possible until visitors' attention is focused and engaged on the objects and messages inherent in the museum experience. Learning is a byproduct of attention. Focusing exclusively on learning processes is putting the horse before the cart. To understand learning we must first understand attention.

A basic part of any exhibition design is a model for managing visitor attention. This model may be either explicit or implicit: it exists even if the designers are not aware of it. The model may assume that attention is primarily the product of visitor interest, knowledge, agenda, and other person¹ factors. Some may argue that visitors are capable of extracting whatever meaning they want from an exhibition relatively independent of exhibition design factors. Others argue that setting factors play the primary role in paying attention. In this book I suggest that an understanding both of person and setting, as well as their interaction, is necessary to truly understand visitor attention. Placing too much emphasis on either person or setting factors by themselves gives an incomplete understanding and is inconsistent with years of research in visitor studies and psychology

What does it mean to "manage visitor attention"? To effectively manage attention, exhibit developers and designers must understand how attention is captured and focused, how it is motivated, and what factors impede visitors from paying attention. I believe that psychological knowledge of how attention works is fundamental to successful exhibitions.²

Exhibition design is both an art and a science. The best exhibitions incorporate healthy doses of both. Though artists and designers may speak to the artistic elements of exhibitions, I speak for the science of visitor studies. The science of visitor studies prevents us from the misapprehension that our exhibitions are more effective than they really are. It can help us improve the impact of our exhibitions by applying lessons learned from research. It can provide objective evidence to tell us when we are doing our job effectively and allow us to take pride in our work.

Purposes of the Book

This book has several purposes:

1. To describe a model of the visitor experience that I call the attention-value model.

2. To review research on attention and provide evidence in support of the attention-value model.

3. To offer guidelines for applying what we know about visitor attention to exhibition development and improvement.

4. To provide enough information that, if applied, will prevent your visitors from walking away muttering a line from a Rolling Stones song: "I can't get no satisfaction!"

It is my hope that, collectively, these chapters form a cohesive picture of visitor attention and offer readers tools to better manage visitor attention in museums. Most of the chapters are original writing; some are expansions of conference presentations, and a few are updated versions of previous publications. I also review relevant research on visitor attention from many other sources.

The Concept of Attention

Ashcraft and Radvansky (2010) described attention as "one of cognitive psychology's most important topics and one of our oldest puzzles." As far back as the nineteenth century, William James (1890), in what seems a very modern treatment, recognized the complexities of the concept of "attention" in his much quoted book Principles of Psychology.

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.... It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which...is called "distraction" (James, 1890, p. 403).

This elegantly simple description of attention suggests that when we concentrate our attention on something we must narrow our focus on that thing and ignore other things. Thus, attention is selective; it is limited in its capacity because, in most cases, we can only seriously attend to one thing at a time; and it takes mental effort (concentration). The problem of understanding attention is very relevant to the museum experience. Viewing exhibitions is an exercise in paying attention! We must understand the psychology of visitor attention if we are to design the most effective exhibitions and programs in terms of both visitor satisfaction as well as educational impact.

Attention and Value as Organizing Concepts

The basic thesis of the attention-value model (Chapter 5) is simple: (1) at the core of exhibition success is the management of visitor attention; and (2) the primary (but not the only) motivation for paying attention is perceived value (utility or benefit divided by cost). Visitor attention can be conceived as a three-stage continuum involving capture, focus, and engagement. Learning (or any other deeply engaged experience) is an outcome of paying attention and is closely connected to the attention process rather than independent of it. Managing attention requires addressing all three stages and recognizing that each stage is influenced by a different set of factors, different mechanisms or processes, and a different set of outcome measures or indicators.

While I think that several factors play a role in what motivates visitor attention to exhibitions, value (defined as a ratio of utility or satisfaction or benefit divided by cost such as time, effort, or money) appears to be the most important motivator when attention is directed at something like an exhibit element. Visitors appear to compute (usually without conscious awareness) the perceived value (potential benefits divided by costs) of approaching, viewing, and engaging with an exhibit element (e.g., Bitgood, 2010; see also Chapter 5). The result of this perceived value ratio is to pay attention (or not) to the object or element depending on how large or small the ratio of benefits to costs. Similar decision-making processes have been studied in humans and animals as documented by the literature of temporal discounting (e.g., Critchfield & Kollins, 2001; Frederick, Loewenstein, & O'Donoghue, 2002), optimal foraging theory (e.g., Rounds, 2004), and several other psychological theories. The value ratio combines personal and psychological factors (e.g., interest level in exhibit content, agenda for a particular museum visit, decision-making processes, perceptual processes, state of energy level) with environmental or setting variables (e.g., exhibit, social influence, architectural design) to predict what and how much attention will be given to exhibit elements.

Rationale for a Theoretical Model

Why do we need a theoretical model of visitor attention? A scientific theory or model helps us understand the meaning of the collective research findings. A scientific theory is not simply a wild guess; it must be consistent with the facts. More generally a good theoretical model serves a number of important functions:

1. It provides a meaningful way to organize or make sense of the research literature. Factual information makes more sense when it is part of an interrelated conceptual framework.

2. Scientific models help explain empirical research findings in an objective, reliable, and valid way. Or, put another way, a good scientific model provides the best explanation for the facts or data available.

3. A model may allow us to make new predictions. It often provides new ways to look at an old problem. It allows connections between and among facts and phenomena that may not have been noticed before.

4. A model should be parsimonious, explaining all the known facts while invoking a minimal number of explanatory concepts.

5. A model should identify important questions relevant to phenomena under study (for example, how do visitors sequence their attention from one element to another within an exhibit display?)

6. An effective model of visitor attention should offer guidance to the exhibit developer by providing easy-to-follow principles that are easily translated to design elements.

7. A model should also provide a holistic view of visitor attention. Instead of focusing on a single stage of attention (engagement) as many viewpoints seem to do, a model should identify the steps (capture and focus of attention) leading to engagement.

8. An effective model should enumerate the relative importance of principles and variables. Since the exhibition experience includes numerous variables, it is important to understand the relevant importance of each. For example, limiting the number of words in an exhibit label is critical; however, the specific type of font used is less important as long as it can be easily read. A good model should reflect these differences in relative importance.

9. A model should provide an explanation of the psychological processes rather than simply provide a "laundry list" of variables and principles. For example, rather than list utility/satisfaction and cost as part of a list of influential variables, I have suggested that utility and cost work together as a ratio with utility as the numerator and cost as the denominator (e.g., Bitgood, 2010; Bitgood, Dukes, & Abby, 2007; see also Chapter 5). 10. A model should have social validity. That is, it should be acceptable to a large number of practitioners and other consumers of the model.

At this point it may be helpful to make a distinction between a "theory" and a "model." Both are logically deduced from empirical studies. However, there are conflicting definitions of the terms in science and economics. I take the position that "theory" involves a broad, conceptual approach, while a "model" is an "application of a theory to particular settings ..." (Goldfarb and Ratner, 2008, p. 97). The attention-value model proposed in this book is specifically applied to visitors in museums. A more general attention-value theory may also apply to human behavior in all situations, but I am not ready at the moment to defend this position.

Framework for a Theoretical Model

To minimize misunderstandings caused by ambiguity in terminology, I will outline what I mean by a theoretical framework for visitor attention. Table 1.1 outlines my framework, which, in general, is consistent with a theoretical approach found in the scienc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• PART 1: WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT VISITOR ATTENTION
• PART 2: UNDERSTANDING VALUE AND MOTIVATION
• PART 3: WAYS TO PROMOTE ENGAGED ATTENTION
• PART 4: PROMOTING ENGAGED ATTENTION THROUGH EXHIBIT DESIGN
• APPENDICES
• References
• Index
• About the Author