5. Attention: What is it?

Question 1

What are three areas in which attention is important?

Answer 1

1. Negative outcomes when it fails (e.g. education, workplace, driving)
2. Applied contexts (e.g. advertising, user experience)
3. Clinical contexts (e.g. ADHD, anxiety, schizophrenia, neglect)

Question 2

Attention is important because we receive too much ____. We can’t look at, listen to, feel and think about everything ____

Answer 2

Input
At once

Question 3

Evidence suggests that attention is associated with some kind of ____

Answer 3

Limitation

Question 4

What are the four different types of attention?

Answer 4

1. Selective attention
2. Sustained attention
3. Divided attention
4. Attention to different sensory modalities

Question 5

What is selective attention?

Answer 5

Focusing attention on certain info, whilst ignoring other info

Question 6

What is sustained attention?

Answer 6

Maintaining focused attention or ‘vigilance’

Question 7

What is divided attention?

Answer 7

Another way of looking at capacity limits (e.g. multi tasking)

Question 8

What is meant b y attention to different sensory modalities?

Answer 8

E.g. sight, touch, sound, smell
Visual attention has received most examination

Question 9

Visual attention has been studied through…

Answer 9

Eye movements

Question 10

What is one way covert spatial attention has been studied?

Answer 10

Reaction time (RT) experiments - assume attention takes time to move around

Question 11

What happens following an invalid cue in spatial cuing tasks?
What does this suggest?

Answer 11

Responses are typically slower following invalid versus valid cues
Suggests spatial attention moved to cued location

Question 12

Spatial cuing tasks work with both ____ cues and ____ cues. Covert spatial attention can be both ____ and ____

Answer 12

Endogenous
Exogenous
Voluntary and involuntary

Question 13

Fill in the gaps about visual search tasks
1. If target ____, increasing ____ doesn’t affect RT
2. But if target is a ____, RT ____ with number of non-targets…
3. … suggets ____ ____ is required

Answer 13

1. “pops out”, non-targets
2. conjunction, increases
3. Serial search

Question 14

What is meant by distractor effects?

Answer 14

We assume attention has been distracted by a stimulus if it slows us down when it is irrelevant

Question 15

What do you have to do in the Stroop task?
What does the outcome suggest?

Answer 15

Name ink colour of word
Suggest that we are unable to ignore the word meaning

Question 16

Responses are typically ____ when distractors are ____ compared to ____ or ____.
What does this suggest?

Answer 16

Slower
Incongruent
Congruent or neutral
Suggets even spatially separated distractors can’t be ignored

Question 17

What is meant by attentional capture?

Answer 17

We assume attention has been “captured” by a stimulus if it slows us down when it is irrelevant (or speeds up our responses when it is the target)

Question 18

Fill in the gaps about attentional capture research:
1. Color “____” target ____ search RTs
2. Taken as evidence of “____ ____” by ____ stimuli

Answer 18

1. “Singleton”, reduces
2. “Attentional capture”, salient

Question 19

Self-report measures are often used to test the effects of attention on what?

Answer 19

awareness
Also subjective phenomena such as mind-wandering

Question 20

People who report more mind-wandering also show more…

Answer 20

RT interference on measures of distraction
And more errors on sustained attention tasks

Question 21

Neural response is boosted for ____ attended stimuli

Answer 21

Covertly

Question 22

What are two regions known to respond selectively to specific stimulus categories?

Answer 22

1. Fusiform Face Area (FFA)
2. Parahippocampal place are (PPA)

Question 23

Covert attention to ____ increased Fusiform Face Area response

Answer 23

Faces

Question 24

Covert attention to ____ increased Parahippocampal place area response

Answer 24

Houses

Question 25

What are five ways attention can be measured?

Answer 25

1. Eye movements
2. Reaction time
3. Error rates
4. Self-report
5. Neuroimaging