4 - Attention Flashcards
Define attention
Cognitive mechanisms that combine to help us select, modulate, and sustain focus on information that might be most relevant for behavior
Attention is capacity limited - what does this mean?
Don’t have unlimited attention, some realistic limit/multiple limits at different stages
In what 2 ways can attention be directed?
Externally: ex. Person sticking out in crown
Internally: ex. Focusing on internal thoughts
What phenomenon do we observe in the dichotic listening task?
People can’t recall the semantic content of the ignored channel/ear but are aware of changes in physical features like pitch, volume, emotions, language (most info doesn’t get processed beyond physical features)
What exception do we see in the dichotic listening task?
Cocktail party effect (ex saying your name) or other meaningful words
Theories of attention need to be able to explain how we..
- inhibit new or unexpected distractors
- promote the processing of desired stimuli
How do we explain general insensitivity to the unattended channel and also information that leaks through?
- block unattended inputs with a filter
- inhibit distractors (everything in the right ear is distraction, the brain is actively suppressing info that comes into it so proper processing can happen in the attended ear)
- attended inputs are not filtered out (enhancement of processing of attended ear rather than benefiting from inhibition)
Define inattentional blindness
The failure to see a prominent stimulus, even if one is staring right at it
What experiment was done to study inattentional blindness?
Staring at the fixation point, told to tell the researchers if the cross changed at any point
-fixation point changed and most people didn’t notice
- no warning of the fixation point changing = basically no one noticing
- some warning= increased chance of noticing
What’s a real world example of inattentional blindness
Not being able to find an object in the fridge despite staring at it
Define change blindness
The inability to detect changes in a scene despite looking at it directly
Inattentional blindness could result from what 2 things?
A failure to perceive the stimulus
- early selection hypothesis
A failure to remember the stimulus
- late selection hypothesis
Describe the early selection hypothesis
- only the attended input is analyzed and perceived
- unattended information receives little or no analysis (never perceived)
** In the entire visual scene, only the thing you’re looking at is being analyzed/perceived
Describe late selection hypothesis
- all inputs are analyzed
- selection occurs after analysis
- selection may occur before consciousness or later (unattended info might be perceived, but is then forgotten)
**Attentional mechanisms select what to focus on once we identify everything in visual scene
What is the evidence for early selection?
Electrical brain activity for attended inputs differs from activity for unattended inputs within 80 ms
What happens in the brain during early selection?
Increased brain activity with any input, stronger neural activity in attended cortex
What’s the evidence for late selection?
Stimuli that are not attended to can nevertheless affect perception
What was used to discover late selection?
- muller-lyer illusion was placed on a grid of dots
- participants were not aware of the arrangement of black dots
- weren’t perceiving the arrowheads
Selective attention _ in favor of one stimulus over the others
Biases the competition
* Gives boost so specific stimuli are given higher priority, implied that everything in visual/auditory scene is competing for real estate in consciousness
Biased competition can occur due to _
Bottom-up selection and/or top down selection
Top down: goal in mind/looking for something makes biased processing detect something faster
Bottom up: find something that stands out
How can selection via priming occur?
Expectations or if experience can prime the appropriate detectors (eg. Specific stimulus, input channel, etc.)
What are the 2 types of priming we use for selection?
Repetition priming and expectation-driven priming
Define repetition priming
Priming produced by a prior encounter with the stimulus (seeing it more helps detect it)
Define expectation-driven priming
Detectors for inputs you think are upcoming are deliberately primed
(Helps stimulus stand out)
Define spatial attention
Your ability to focus attention on a specific location in dpace
What task is used to study spatial attention?
Posner cueing task
- has endogenous/exogenous/valid/invalid cues
Describe the Posner cueing task
- participant looks at middle of screen
- have to press a button as soon as the stimulus appears on the right/left
Describe the difference between exogenous and endogenous cues given in the Posner cueing task
Endogenous: symbol shows up and shows you where you should look
Exogenous: red box shows up in the area you should be paying attention to (grabs attention)
Describe changes in response time with no cue/invalid cues/valid cues
No cue = fairly fast response time
Valid cue = much faster when you move attention to target (in area you expected)
Invalid cue = increases response time, attention has to move 2x distance across the screen when stimulus is on wrong side
What is unilateral neglect syndrome?
Unable to attend the entire half of the visual world (trauma, etc)
What does unilateral neglect syndrome tell us about spatial attention?
Shows how space-based attention can become object-based
** If you rotate stimulus while they perceive it, patient can easily see both sides (before could only see 1)
**Break free from spatial attention and track object anywhere in space
- phenomenon disappears if there is a discontinuity, has to be perfectly continuous
What are the costs of selection?
Repetition priming : no cost
- effortless, built into nervous system
- already highly active cause of experience
Expectation-based priming : unexpected things suffer, requires mental resources
- have to readjust if you get something you weren’t expecting
- “spotlight metaphor”
The cost of expectations reveal the presence of a _
Limited capacity system
How can attention function as a spotlight?
- can be moved anywhere in visual field
- scope can be widened/focused (affects what is enhanced/supressed)
- attention can move independent of eyes (effects are faster than eye movements, overt vs covert attention)
Define covert attention
Attention to something you’re not looking at
Define overt attention
Attention that aligns with eye movement
The example of showing a picture and asking questions about it proved that what we attend depends on _
The goal
- eye movement shown by lines
- movement corresponds to question/goal
The spotlight metaphor is too simplistic for what we do… There are different mechanisms involved in paying attention, what are they?
Orienting system, alerting system, executive system
Describe the function of the orienting system
- disengage attention from one target
- shift attention to new target
- engage attention on the new target
Describe the function of the alerting system
Maintain alert state in the brain
Describe the function of the executive system
Controls voluntary actions
- engaging in behavior
How does attention solve the binding problem?
Attention allows us to bind the right features together
(If you pay attention to the entire field, you’d have a bunch of features coming in and would be likely to incorrectly bind some features - “conjunction error”)
What are the 2 parts of the feature integration theory?
1) pre-attentive stage
2) focused attention stage
Describe the pre-attentive stage of the feature integration theory
- parallel processing of the stimulus
- efficient (fast scan of visual scene)
- May not always need attention to detect something
Describe the focused attention stage of the feature integration theory
- expectation-based priming creates processing advantages for the stimulus
- “systematically scanning for something”/where’s waldo
Define divided attention
The skill of performing multiple tasks simultaneously
*More like rapidly switching between them
Our success in dividing attention is limited by _
availability and overlap of the mental resources
Give an example of limited divided attention
- Repeating list of words you hear = lots of errors cause speaking and hearing use the same resources
- Reading words out loud and being shown words = less overlap and remember more
- Replacing visual word with picture makes no requirement to engage language processing system in the perception of pictures, so you make even fewer errors
What effect does cell phone use have on reaction time, red light missed and highway navigation?
Lower rxn time, increased red lights missed, decreased success in highway navigation (overlap of mental resources)
Regardless of overlap in divided attention, there is only 1 executive control. Define executive control
The mental resources and processes that are used to set goals, choose task priorities, and avoid conflict among competing habits or responses
*Has to keep switching between tasks
Tasks will interfere with each other if their combined demand for a resource is
Greater than the amount of the resource that is available
Between-task interference increases as _
Task similarity increases
Interference is also evident when _
Concurrent tasks are quite different
Describe the effect of practice on use of resources
Practiced skills require fewer resources / less frequent use of resources (brain gets more efficient, uses fewer neurons)
- leads to a decrease in interference between tasks
- reduces the need for executive control
- well practiced tasks lead to automaticity
What happens to the stroop task with practice?
- stroop interference can be reduced with practice
- get better at it
(Name the colour of the word)
