Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation's Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (OMA) awarded The Ohio State University $615,666 under the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences program (CFDA 47.075) for a three-year project running from June 1, 2026 through May 31, 2029. This Project Grant supports fundamental research investigating how attentional disruptions affect human perception, memory, and decision-making processes. The research employs behavioral experiments, neuromodulation techniques, and computational analyses to examine the mechanisms by which spatial distractions disrupt both external attention filters and internal working memory encoding processes.

The primary products and services delivered through this award include empirical research findings on the consequences of attentional disruptions, research datasets generated through controlled experiments, and computational models elucidating the relationship between dynamic attention decisions and cognitive processing. The research has direct applications to the development of artificial intelligence systems and wearable biotechnology designed to support human decision-making in complex, dynamic environments. Findings from this work are intended to advance understanding of human cognitive control and inform the design of more effective human-machine interfaces, such as AI-powered smart glasses, that can better account for how attentional processes influence perception and memory encoding.