[Cryptography] fighting designs in habituation since 1883

[Ian G]

That which I once sarcastically referred to as click-thru syndrome is 
now apparently called habituation.  And it's being measured using MRIs:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/mris-show-our-brains-shutting-down-when-we-see-security-prompts/



MRIs show our brains shutting down when we see security prompts

This is your brain after repeated security warnings. Any questions?

by Dan Goodin <http://arstechnica.com/author/dan-goodin/> - Mar 20, 2015 
2:53 pm UTC
Ever feel your eyes glazing over when you see yet another security 
warning pop up on your monitor? In a first, scientists have used 
magnetic resonance imaging to measure a human brain's dramatic drop in 
attention that results when a computer user is subjected to just two 
security warnings in a short time.

In a paper scheduled to be presented next month at the Association for 
Computing Machinery's CHI 2015 conference <http://chi2015.acm.org/>, 
researchers will present data that maps regions of the brain responsible 
for visual processing. The MRI images show a "precipitous drop" in 
visual processing after even one repeated exposure to a standard 
security warning and a "large overall drop" after 13 of them. 
Previously, such warning fatigue has been observed only indirectly, such 
as one study finding that only 14 percent of participants recognized 
content changes to confirmation dialog boxes or another that recorded 
users clicking through one-half of all SSL warnings in less than two 
seconds.

Building a better mousetrap

The inattention is the result of a phenomenon known as habituation 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation>, or the tendency for 
organisms' neural systems to show partial or complete cessations of 
responses to stimuli over repeated exposures. Such repetition 
suppression, or RS, has long been documented in everything from sea 
slugs to humans. By directly measuring RS in the brains of people 
exposed to computer security warnings, the scientists were then able to 
test more effective ways that software makers can alert people to 
potential risks. The paper—titled "How Polymorphic Warnings Reduce 
Habituation in the Brain—Insights from an fMRI Study 
<http://neurosecurity.byu.edu/media/Anderson_et_al._CHI_2015.pdf>"—is 
one of two to be presented at CHI 2015 that studies people's responses 
to security warnings. A second paper is titled "Improving SSL Warnings: 
Comprehension and Adherence 
<https://adrifelt.github.io/sslinterstitial-chi.pdf>."






 From Cryptogram:  New research: "How Polymorphic Warnings Reduce 
Habituation in the Brain -- Insights from an fMRI Study."
http://neurosecurity.byu.edu/media/Anderson_et_al._CHI_2015.pdf
http://neurosecurity.byu.edu/chi_fmri_habituation/
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/mris-show-our-brains-shutting-down-when-we-see-security-prompts/ 
or http://tinyurl.com/pfqzume
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