Flanker effect

The Flanker effect is a psychological phenomenon where people's ability to focus on a specific task, like identifying a central target, is affected by surrounding distracting stimuli, called "flankers." When the flankers are similar or conflicting with the target, they can slow down responses or cause errors. For example, if you're asked to identify a letter "A" in the middle of other letters like "A" or "H," your reaction time is influenced by whether the neighboring letters support or interfere with your task. This effect reveals how our attention can be pulled in different directions when processing multiple stimuli simultaneously.