4 – Attention 4 – Control over attention Flashcards
What’s the difference between exogenous and endogenous attention?
exogenous – drawn by the salience of stimuli outside
endogenous – by volition, effortful, coming from YOU, maps loosely onto controlled/central processes.
What is inhibition of return (Posner)?
A reduced probability of visual attention returning to a previously attended location or object.
When your covert attention shifts, if something appears in that location, for the next 200ms you are faster to respond to it. But after that, the location is INHIBITED: you’re less likely to detect sth that appears there.
arrow in text – _________ cue
someone bangs the desk –________ cue
arrow in text – endogenous cue
bang the desk –exogenous cue
What is stimulus onset asynchrony?
Lag between presentation of a cue and a target stimulus.
An endogenous cue requires ______, it requires __-____ _______ control
An endogenous cue requires attention, it requires top-down volitional control.
What is Eriksen’s Flanker Task?
We have a spotlight, but can we change the size of spotlight – we look at middle letter, see if RT is affected by letters surrounding SSSRSSSS.
Because of inhibition of return, by 300ms, a ____ trial will be slower than an ______.
Because of inhibition of return, by 300ms, a valid trial will be slower than an invalid.
How might the value of a predictive feature change across automatic and controlled types of search? And what does this mean?
In a consistent mapping trial, the predictive feature (colour of object) resulted in faster RT. In a feature conjunction trial, the predictive feature SLOWED performance.
The slower performance with predictive feature comes from additional processing time required for the control mechanism to REJECT the extra outcomes – even though those extra outcomes are giving you the same answer.
Top-down control can impair the otherwise automatic processing of stimulus and response information.
What’s the difference between pop-up and attentional capture?
Pop-up: you are being asked to look for odd one out.
Attentional capture: ‘Singleton’ or ‘odd one out’ is not the object of search.
How does exogenous capture differe between coloured targets and sudden-onset targets?
Sudden onset targets capture attention, resulting in lower RT than for neutral targets. This is bottom-up exogenous control.
If colour is irrelevant to search –say, if target is an E –then colour does not reduce RT. It does not result in exogenous capture. Control is not subservient to colour. If target is red E, no difference in RT than for black E.
Three theories why sudden onsets capture attention?
- Sudden change in luminance / contrast
- Sudden-onsets signal the appearance of the target display (Folk, Remington, & Wright, 1992)
- Sudden-onsets represent the appearance of a new perceptual object (Yantis & Hillstrom, 1994) New perceptual ‘objects’ require the creation of an ‘object file’ (Kahneman & Treisman, 1992)
How did Treisman (1990) demonstrate the integration of sensory information into a file on each object?
Integration of sensory information into a file on each object was tested by the motion of frames. Two frames appeared, then two letters were briefly flashed in the frames. The frames moved to a new location and a letter appeared in one of the two. The task was to name the final letter as quickly as possible. If the final letter matched the initial letter and appeared in the same frame, naming was faster, presumably because it takes more time to create or update a file on an object than it does to perceive the object a second time.
What evidence is there that a sudden change might capture the attention of some people more than others? And why is this the case? (Bressan et al., 2008)
Those who became religious based on personal experience were more disturbed by schema violations than weak believers (but were actually less aware of the disturbing event)
Bressan et al.’s explanation is that religious people have a stronger belief in the meaningfulness of
coincidences
How did Moore et al. (1998) provide evidence for object-based attention? And what model of attention does this challenge?
Reaction times were faster to targets that were on the same object as a cue than to targets that were equidistant from cue but on a different object. If attention is about selecting locations, then there should have been no difference between two targets. This challenges the attentional spotlight model, or Posner’s spatial cueing paradigm.
What are three explanations for the fact that we can track multiple objects?
- We can do this in parallel (Pylyshyn)
- Switching not sharing (i.e. serial not parallel)
- Single shape being morphed (Yantis). (And that’s why you can’t do it with 6 – very complex polygon)
