4. ATTENTION Flashcards
What is attention?
The ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment
What are the different types of attention?
- Selective Attention
- Divided Attention
- Overt Attention
- Covert Attention
- Exogenous Attention
Define Attentional capture
- a rapid shifting of attention
- usually caused by a stimulus such as load noise, bright light or sudden movement
Define Distraction.
one stimulus interfering with the processing of another stimulus
What is filtering?
Dumping away unwanted information
What are distractions?
One stimulus interfering with the processing of another stimulus?
Define Selective Attention.
- attending to one thing while ignoring others
- we do not attend to a large fraction of info in the environ
- we filter out some info and promote other info for further processing
- different models of SA proposed that the attention filter comes in different periods of processing
What are the main models of Selective Attention?
- Broadbent’s filter model of attention
- early selection model - Treisman’s Attenuation theory
- intermediate selection model - McKay’s late seletction model
- late selection model
What are the concepts related to Broadbent’s filter model of attention?
Dichotic task:
- presenting different stimuli to left and right ears
Shadowing:
- procedure of repeating the words they heard
Cocktail party effect:
- the ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli
- this is because at noisy parties people are able to focus on what one person is saying
- this is despite there are many conversations happening at the same time
Explain Broadbent’s filter model of attention.
- designed to explain the results by Colin Cherry (1953)
- used dichotic listening to study attention
- parti had to focus on the message in one ear (attended ear)
- and then repeat what he heard out loud (this is known as shadowing)
- RESULTS:
- they could easily shadow a spoken message (by attended ear)
- they could also report whether the unattended message was spoken by male/ female, sound or noise
- BUT they couldnt report what was being said in unattended ear (language, words, regardless of repetition)
- this is known as the cocktail party effect
Broadbent’s theory:
- Sensory memory holds all of the info for a frac of second
- it then gets transferred to the filter - Filter identifies the msg being attended
- based on physical characteristics
- eg. tone, pitch, accent
- then lets attended msg pass through
- ALL other messages are filtered out
- this is to prevent overloading of the limited capacity of filter - Detector processes the info from attended msg
- to determine higher lvl characteristics like meaning
- becos only imp, attended msg has been let thru, detector processes ALL of it - The output of detector is STM
- holds the info for 10-15 secs
- then transfer info to LTM
Explain the rationale behind Treisman’s Attenuation theory.
- Moray did a dichotic listening task with partis
- dichotic task + shadowing
- but when he presented parti’s name in their unattended ear, 1/3 detected it
- this was in contradiction to Broadbent’s theory (it is supposed to only let one msg thru, based on phy charac!!!)
- ALSO, Treisman conducted a Dear Aunt Jane experi
- attended ear received message: dear 7 jane
- unattended ear: 9 aunt 6
- however rather than reporting dear 7 jane, they reported dear aunt jane
- this means that their attention jumped from one ear to the other
- this means they were taking in the MEANING of the words into account
- hence Treisman made a modi of Broadbent’s model
The Attenuator- analyzes the incoming msg in terms of 1) phy charac, 2) language 3) meaning
Treisman’s Attenuation theory:
- Attended and unattended message are identified
- Both pass through the attenuator
- Attenuated msg goes thru at full speed
- Unattended msg is attenuated (it is present, but weaker then AM)
- Some of the UM gets through the attenuator
- this is why it is called the leaky filter model
- the final output is determined here - Message is analyzed by the dictionary unit
- DU contains words stored in memory
- each word has a threshold for being activated
- threshold: smallest signal strength that can barely be activated
ACCORD to Treisman, words that are common/ imp (our names) have low thresholds so a weak signal in the unattended channel can activate the word (we can hear our name from across the room). Uncommon words have higher thresholds.
HENCE IN THIS MODEL, THE ATTENDED MSG GETS THRU ALONGSIDE SOME PARTS OF THE WEAKER, UNATTENDED MESSAGE.
Explain the rationale behind McKay’s late selection model.
Late selection model- selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after information has been analyzed for meaning. They disagreed with Treisman.
Donald McKay’s experi:
- made parti listen to an ambigous senence
- ‘they were throwing stones at the bank’
- this could be interpreted as a riverbank or a financial institution
- this ambi sentence was presented to attended ear
- meanwhile unattended ear either heard ‘river’ or ‘money’
- after hearing a no. of ambi sentences, they were presented with pairs of sentences
1. they threw stones toward the side of the river yesterday
2. they threw stones at the savings and loan association yesterday - they were then asked to indicate which had closest meaning
- RESULTS: if they heard the biasing word ‘money’ they were likely to pick 2., if not 1.
- McKay proposed that the meaning of ‘river’ or ‘money’ was affecting the partis judgements, the words must have been processed to the level of meaning tho it was unattended
- HENCE, they proposed most of the incoming info is processed to the level of meaning BEFORE the msg to be fur ther processed IS SELECTED.
Describe Treisman and Geffen (1967)’s experiment
- they wanted to compare the attenutation vs late selection theory
- in shadowing task, they were asked to tap whenever they heard a target word fr either ear
- prediction: AT: detection shd be better in attended ear
- prediction: LST: detection should be equal in both ears
- RESULTS: show that 87% was detected in the attended ear and 8% in unattended ear
What is Processing Capacity and Perceptual Load? Give an eg. which can demonstrate this.
Processing capacity:
- amount of info people can handle
- sets a limit on their ability to process incoming info
Perceptual Load:
- related to the difficulty of a task
- some tasks (easy/ well practiced ones) have low perceptual loads
Foster and Lavie (2008)
- partis had to respond as quickly when they identified a target as X or N
- they pressed one key when they saw X and another key when they saw N
- the task becomes harder when X or N are surrounded by different letters as compared to only small ‘o’s earlier.
- RESULTS:
- they take longer RT in the hard task
- however, when a unrelated cartoon is shown, responding slows for the easy task > hard task
What are low load tasks and high load task?
Low load tasks:
- use up only a small amount of a person’s processing capacity
High load tasks:
- tasks that are difficult/ not well practised
- uses more of a person’s processing capacity
