Washington, Sep 8 (IANS) Paying attention to keep a close watch may quite have the reverse effect. It actually distorts perception of where things are in relation to one another, says a research.


"Figuring out where objects are in the world seems like one of the most basic and important jobs the brain does," says Yale University cognitive psychologist Brandon Liverence, who led the study.

"It was surprising to discover that even this simple type of perception is warped by our minds," adds Liverence, the journal Psychological Science reports.

Liverence and Brian Scholl of Yale studied such distortions when people had to focus their attention on some particular objects, but not the others, according to a Yale statement.

When they did this, Liverence explains, the "attended objects" were seen as closer together than they really were, while the other items were seen as farther apart than they really were.

The findings add to a growing body of cognitive psychology that destabilizes our trust in what we think we know for sure and how we think we can know it more surely.

"Attention is the way our minds connect with things in the environment, enabling us to see, remember, and interact with those things," says Liverence. "We tend to think that attention clarifies what's out there. But it also distorts."