by Matt Richtel
“It turns out that he was Pasternak’s nephew,” Dr. Treisman recalls, laughing. The subject professed great familiarity with his uncle’s work. She surmised that even when we are trying to actively ignore something, we might be paying attention to it somewhere in the recesses.
“More monitoring may be going on than we realize,” Dr. Treisman says. “Even this reduced, unintended message will trigger recognition if the subject is important, relevant, or highly probable.”
DR. TREISMAN’S WORK VERIFIED the limits of the attention filter. It also provided a key building block in one of the most crucial, emerging principles of the science of attention: There is a tension going on inside the brain. It is a tug-of-war between two different aspects of the attention system, one called “bottom-up attention” and the other called “top-down attention.”
Top-down attention is what we use to direct our focus, say, on a work project, or listening to Lord Jim through headphones, or when driving on the road. Top-down attention allows us to set our objectives and focus on them.
Bottom-up attention is different. It is what allows our attention to be captured instantly, without our control, say, by the sound of our name, or a bird flying by, or the ring of the phone. Bottom-up attention operates unconsciously, automatically, driven by sensory stimulus and contextual cues.
Top-down and bottom-up attentions are both essential to survival, and so is the balance between them. If we had no top-down attention, we couldn’t direct our focus on important goals. But without bottom-up, we wouldn’t be alerted to new stimuli, including danger. Imagine a caveman being so focused on building a fire that he never heard the lion coming through the bushes.
Before Dr. Treisman and her peers, there was a sense that people could control the direction of their attention, even if their reaction times weren’t instantaneous. What Dr. Treisman and her peers began to realize and define was a powerful clash going on inside the brain.
BACK AT THE GAZZLOFT, another First Friday is about to begin. And so is Patrick, the magician. He asks if he may borrow some money from the audience. A woman produces a $20 bill which Patrick examines with approval and just a hint of the magician’s sense of drama. He stretches the bill, snaps it a couple of times, showing that it is, in fact, just a standard Andrew Jackson, nothing fancy, no tricks.
He stands beneath the tree that bisects the middle of the loft. Outside, neon light from the neighborhood leaks in from the big window. Some new music plays on Dr. Gazzaley’s many speakers. But for the five partygoers who are earliest to arrive, all eyes are on Patrick. Specifically, on his hands.
With his right thumb and finger pinching the $20 bill, he reaches his left hand into his left pocket and pulls out a lighter. He holds the flame up to the bill. It seems to straighten a bit, get “crispy,” as he puts it, though it doesn’t catch fire. He’s making a gentle show of his openness. Just a lighter and a bill. Just an ordinary guy. He puts the lighter back in his pocket; he must assume all eyes are trying to watch for any sleight of hand.
He shows the warmed-up bill to the woman who gave it to him. She approves of its ordinariness.
Then he balances the bill on his fingers. Then his palm. Then on three fingers. And then he turns his hand upside down so that the bill sticks to his fingers even as they’re pointed downward, seeming to defy the pull of gravity for it to drop to the ground.
“This is not magic,” Patrick says. “It’s science.”
It’s impossible not to think that he had some substance on his hands, some chemical that is causing the bill to stick.
And then he takes both hands away from the $20 bill.
And it appears to float in the air.
There is a gasp or two from the small group.
After a few seconds, Patrick blows on the bill and it floats to the ground, landing at the feet of the woman who initially handed it to him. He watches the audience look on in amazement. The woman leans down and picks up the money and shows everyone that, yes, it’s just a plain old American twenty, unaltered, not sticky. There’s nothing that would seem to make this bill float in the air.
Dr. Gazzaley professes to be a little conflicted by what he’s seen. Like others there, he wonders whether something magic has happened and marvels at Patrick’s artistry. He’s also seeing the trick through another lens, a scientific one. It shows the fragility of our attention systems. Somehow, Patrick has mastered it without our awareness that he’s done so. He’s overtaken our top-down attention. He’s got his audience thinking less and less about whether he’s pulling a fast one and more about the marvelous thing they’re about to see. He’s transformed his goals into our goals. How will this drama end?
But, at the same time, he’s perhaps toying with our bottom-up system. Somehow. By simple movements—a look here, a redirection there—he plays to the reptilian parts of our brain that can’t resist novelty, maybe important stimulation. Does a movement cause us to look away from a sleight of hand at just the right second? Does he prompt a laugh that makes it hard to focus on ferreting out the mystery?
This demonstration set the stage for the next wave of attention science, and the new discoveries as the twentieth century wore on.
“We’re both interested in the same thing, but we’re going at it in different ways,” Dr. Gazzaley tells Patrick. “We both want to understand how attention works. I’m trying to do it by looking inside the brain.”
The magic trick also hints at why technology plays so powerfully to our brains, and our attention systems.
In the latter half of the century, as technology moved from the military and corporate settings into our businesses and homes, the devices grew masterful at capturing our attention. It’s not that they necessarily stole it from us or pulled a fast one. But the reasons we’re so swept up, researchers began to understand, is because personal communications devices are unprecedented at capturing both our top-down and bottom-up attention systems, even without our awareness.
They bring us stories like Patrick the magician, engaging the top-down systems that want to find answers, complete tasks, follow narratives. They are the narrative of our lives, our work, our relationships. How will things turn out? How are we doing at work? How are things going with our spouse, or partner, or children?
And the devices do it with lights and sounds that capture us beyond our ability to control. They buzz with incoming information, chime, change colors and images that call to us. This can reinforce our goals —alerting us to important information—but also capture our attention even when we don’t want it to, even when it’s dangerous, like when we’re behind the wheel.
Plus, Dr. Gazzaley notes, the technology companies who build the magical gadgets have every incentive to make them our irresistible companions.
“Technology companies are trying to get more of our brains per unit time. It’s as close to a business model as you can imagine. The more engaged you are in what they create, the more successful they are.
“They’re driven to figure out how to engage us as immersively as possible, as deeply.”
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, scientists like Dr. Gazzaley, following the footsteps laid down by 150 years of pioneers, are using technology to hone in on how our attention systems work, and they are doing so, like their predecessors, in no small part because they realize technology is putting heavy pressure on those systems, challenging the ability of its human creators to keep up.
And there is another critical piece, and another key scientist. His name is Dr. David Strayer. He’s a friend and collaborator of Dr. Gazzaley. He’s from Utah. And he has become the most prominent researcher to apply 150 years of attention science to a new question: How does all this technology impact the ability of drivers to focus when they’re behind the wheel?
CHAPTER 12
REGGIE
IN LATE OCTOBER, REGGIE took a job. It was at Murdock Chevrolet, a dealership two minutes from his house. That’s where the family had purchased the Chevy Tahoe Reggi
e had been driving the day of the accident, though he didn’t much think of that fact.
He’d gotten the position through his childhood baseball coach, Alan Williams, who worked as a salesman at the dealership. They had a position for a car detailer because one of the regular guys, Tyson, was about to leave on a mission.
Even though it was winter, Reggie wore gym shorts and a ratty, brown, hooded sweatshirt. Tyson, the outgoing detailer and a former running back and football teammate of Reggie, explained the ropes. In a small garage on the dealership property, the detailers used little blue rags to make spotless the used or new cars and ready them for sale. Brushes, screwdrivers, and spray bottles hung on small hooks along the walls.
They had an old blue power washer for the outside that was supposed to heat up the water, but it didn’t. And it was unwieldy, like two hundred pounds, and so the detailers couldn’t really move it. It was always humid, the steam unable to escape from the small room. Moisture damage caused the tiles on the ceiling to erode or fall off. Even in the dead of winter, Reggie tried to keep the garage door cracked to let in cool, breathable air.
But he wasn’t really focused on his comfort. He was feeling deeply lost. If Tyson was there, the pair would talk, but when he left, Reggie would listen to the radio and totally zone out, sometimes drying the same spot for five minutes.
Occasionally, he’d walk across the parking lot to Feldman’s & Bear River Printing. It was owned and run by an older couple. Reggie and his friends would joke that you could go there and ask for a copy and then wait forty minutes for it; in the meantime, you’d order an ice cream and get so impatient watching the woman try to dig out a scoop for ten minutes that you’d want to go behind the counter and help. These days Reggie could also be just fine with sitting there, glazed over.
His brain was lost on Valley View Road, prompting the inquiries of his state of mind.
“Are you okay?” someone would ask, maybe Alan or one of the other detailers.
“Of course.”
Stay busy, he told himself. Eventually, I’ll work my way out of it.
KEITH’S WIDOW, LEILA, RETURNED to her bookkeeping job at Tec Electric, a local electrical contractor. The company had an insurance agent named Joe and he’d heard about the accident and told Leila that she should consult with an attorney before accepting any insurance payment. Just to make sure she was getting the best possible deal and not accepting anything less than she deserved.
There was a big firm in town, relatively big, called Hillyard, Anderson & Olsen. The first principal, Lyle Hillyard, was a state senator. The third principal, Herm Olsen, was known as one of the best criminal defense lawyers going.
Leila called and got an appointment at the converted residence that the firm used for an office. Herm Olsen, tall and thin with salt-and-pepper hair, sat across his desk and started listening to Leila’s story. But not far into her recounting of the accident that killed Keith, Olsen said: “I know all about it.”
“You do?”
“The Shaws have already approached me to represent Reggie. Twice.”
The attorney explained that, shortly after the accident, he’d been approached by Reggie’s parents. But he turned down the case. The parents made a second attempt to retain him but he declined.
Leila was confused. “I’m thinking: ‘This is just an accident. Why is Reggie looking for an attorney?’ It was so incongruous.”
But she didn’t think much more about it than that. Olsen then listened patiently and told her there wasn’t much to be done. A lawsuit probably wouldn’t make much sense; Reggie didn’t have a lot of money and there wasn’t any clear finding of fault. The lawyer suggested that Leila keep him apprised of anything happening in the case, such as it was.
A FEW DAYS LATER, Leila mustered the courage to return to the scene of the accident. It was a beautiful day, midmorning. She pulled onto a side road, not far from the wreck site, that led to a gun range. Most of the accident debris had been cleared away, but signs of violence remained: blue paint from Jim’s car on a bent post on the right side of the road; fragments of glass and taillights in the gully where the car came to rest; skid marks.
Leila, though somewhat in a daze, noticed something else: There was no shoulder on the road, no easy place for her to walk; no room for the cars to safely swerve. It seemed dangerous to her, even if she didn’t quite put so fine a point on her observation. Just a passing thought.
She started to sob.
A man in a sedan pulled over.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t, of course. A few days later, on October 19, she woke up vomiting. She was so weak she could barely get to the door to open it for her daughter, who took Leila to the emergency room at Cache Valley Specialty Hospital. It didn’t seem like the flu or any obvious bug. It was grief. Leila was having trouble standing up. In the emergency room, they used an IV to give her five liters of saline.
A WEEK OR SO later, Jackie Furfaro, Jim’s widow, took her own symbolic, difficult step. She revived Moonrise, a night elf hunter.
To do so meant going down to the basement and turning on one of the two personal computers, hers. The other of the pair belonged to Jim, and the couple often used them in tandem to play World of Warcraft together. Jim’s chief character was Twinger, a gnome mage. Jackie favored Moonrise.
In the game, even as they sat at different computers, they palled around, hanging out mostly together, going on virtual quests. Jackie had now returned alone, seeking comfort in the virtual world.
Not long after Jackie logged on that night, she got a “whisper”—a message from another player. It was from Gary Maloney, an old friend of Jackie and Jim’s from the Colorado School of Mines. He’d been Jim’s best man. In the game that night, he was a human mage, a wizard; in the real world, he worked at a motorcycle repair shop in Indiana.
He asked how Jackie was doing.
Not great. But she wasn’t telling people that. She was still grieving in her private moments, in the shower, late at night, or in the morning. She was becoming resolute that Jim, who had such a zest for life, would’ve wanted her to forge ahead.
That night, in World of Warcraft, her natural first reaction was to ask how Gary was doing with Jim’s death. Then, for whatever reason, she let down her guard a touch.
“I’m feeling alone,” she recalls writing to him. “I’m having a hard time doing it all.”
Gary wrote back: “You are not alone.”
A part of her, the engineer side, was still looking for some explanation; was there anything Jim could’ve done to avoid the wreck? Could he have swerved?
And adding to her irritation was the suggestion—the insane proposition—that somehow Jim had been at fault. That’s an idea that came to her a week or so earlier when she’d gotten a visit from a local sheriff, Sergeant Tony Hudson. He was helping Trooper Rindlisbacher on the case.
Jackie had called the sheriff’s office because she needed a copy of the police report from the accident to process Jim’s life insurance policy. “Of course, come by and pick it up,” they’d said. But to get to the office meant she’d have to drive on Valley View Drive, and Jackie, as much as she was determined to move ahead with her life, wasn’t ready to drive past the place where her “first true love” had taken his last breath.
Sergeant Hudson was sympathetic and agreed to bring the accident report to Jackie’s office at Utah State. As he handed the document to her, Hudson told Jackie that Reggie Shaw had “lawyered up.” And, moreover, he said Reggie seemed to suggest that it might’ve been Jim who had been the one who crossed the yellow divider. Something was starting to smolder inside her—why couldn’t Reggie just call and say he was sorry?
CHAPTER 13
HUNT FOR JUSTICE
A LOCAL POLICE DETECTIVE named Mark Robinson lived in Rindlisbacher’s neighborhood. A few days after the accident, he’d gotten a call from the trooper.
“Hey, Mark, can I trouble you with
a question?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“How do I subpoena cell phone records?”
“I can help you. But it’s a pain. Why?”
“I’m working a fatality. I think the driver who caused it was texting.”
“It can be done. It’s not easy.”
RINDLISBACHER’S JOB WAS SUPPOSED to be finished at this point. When cases went a little cold, or were going to take time from a trooper’s day job, they got passed along to a full-time investigator. In this case, the investigator was a guy named Stan Olsen.
According to a memo that Bunderson, Reggie’s attorney, wrote to himself, Olsen called him on October 25. Bunderson confirmed he was representing Reggie and that his client would not be talking to law enforcement.
The memo reads: “Olsen seemed fine with that, but he did say that the trooper is really pushing the matter.”
BUNDERSON HAD ASKED THE Shaws if Reggie was texting. Reggie had told his mother he wasn’t on the phone. He seemed sure of that. That’s what she told Bunderson. Per Bunderson’s request, she got a copy of the phone bill. It was early November.
The bill wasn’t easy to parse. There were four phones attached to the account. As she read the bill, though, there didn’t appear to be any records of the texts. The bill seemed only to include phone records. She took that as evidence that there hadn’t been any texts.
This looks okay, she thought.
“We didn’t really question whether this was all of the bill,” she says in retrospect. And, she adds, there wasn’t much critical questioning of Reggie on her part.
She gave the bill to Bunderson. He didn’t note any problems with it. She was mollified, mostly.
“You want to trust your kids,” she says, looking back.
