6-Attention

Question 1

What makes a stimulus capture attention?;

Answer 1

Sudden onset; intense; unexpected in the situation; what we are looking for or trying to do

Question 2

What has evidence shown to be more likely to capture attention?

Answer 2

Stimuli that shares features with targets (e.g. red moving object when looking for friend in a red jacket)

Question 3

According to contemporary text, what is attention?;

What about in the language of cognitive psychology?

Answer 3

The concentration and focusing of mental effort;

Selecting what is relevant from sensory input & processing it for appropriate action

Question 4

Attention is not an entity that exists separately from cognitive processes. Instead, what does it refer to?

Answer 4

The organisation of these processes in line with our goals (or prioritising of cognitive operations)

Question 5

We have limitations on what can be processed at any one time. Even if we have enough limbs to perform actions for two concurrent tasks, what can’t we do?

Answer 5

Decide on what response to make for one task without causing a delay in the response selection for the other task

Question 6

What metaphors are used for attentional limitations in relation to structure?;
What metaphors are used in relation to process?

Answer 6

Bottlenecks, gates, stores, boxes & arrows;

Capacity, resources, types of task demand

Question 7

According to Neumann & Allport, attentional limitations are the byproducts of the need to what?;
In what way do attentional limitations serve an adaptive function, according to Neumann?

Answer 7

Co-ordinate action and ensure that the correct stimulus information is controlling the intended responses;
We avoid the behavioural chaos that would result from an attempt to simultaneously perform all possible actions

Question 8

What tasks in the labs are often used to test selective attention?;
How is this test usually made more difficult?

Answer 8

Participants respond to a relative stimulus & ignore a currently present irrelevant stimulus;
By switching which stimulus is relevant or irrelevant; must select a stimulus from two strongly competing alternatives (e.g. stroop effect)

Question 9

How do researchers often test divided attention?;

What gets manipulated?

Answer 9

Participants divide their attention over two or more concurrent tasks;
The priority of tasks & the temporal overlap of various task components ( one task is done & other has to wait)

Question 10

We need to maintain or sustain attention in many tasks, but we must be flexible enough to what?

Answer 10

Shift attention when required

Question 11

In regards to shifting attention, describe the difference between Endogenous control & Exogenous control

Answer 11

Endogenous is voluntary & directed by current goals (e.g. tuning out of a dull conversation & tuning into another); Exogenous is an automatic response to an important stimulus (hearing your best friend’s name in a conversation)

Question 12

Experiments have been done where objects or clothes are changed in a scene, or a person carrying a billboard changes, and participants fail to notice. What are these examples of?

Answer 12

Change blindness

Question 13

Recent neurophysiological evidence suggests separate systems for processing “what” vs. “where”. At what level does attention usually operate at?;
So what do change & inattention blindness tell us?;
Which metaphor then, is limited in its view?

Answer 13

The level of objects, not just regions of space (e.g. gorillas in the basketball game not attended to despite being in the field of vision);
Attention is more than where the eyes are directed;
Spotlight metaphor (e.g. everything in view is illuminated)

Question 14

In dichotic listening tasks, what can be reported about the unattended message?

Answer 14

Physical features, such as speech vs. music, gender, pitch & tone of voice

Question 15

What did early evidence from dichotic listening tasks reveal about the meaning of the unattended message?

Answer 15

Couldn’t detect that unattended message was in a different language, or report meaning of unattended message, but could sometimes hear their own names

Question 16

Describe Broadbent’s filter theory;

Describe his Early selection structural model

Answer 16

Perceptual features (voice, etc) used to filter out irrelevant message;
Filter stops information flow through the system (select what’s relevant early on based on a minimal amount of processing)

Question 17

How did later evidence through Mackay’s homograph experiment contradict Broadbent’s early selection model?;
What does this suggest?

Answer 17

When presented with a homograph containing the word “bank”, participants were more likely to choose river meaning (rather than money) if it had occurred in unattended message;
They must have processed the meaning of river, even though they couldn’t say they had heard it.

Question 18

Explain the Late Selection theory

Answer 18

The unattended material is processed all the way to meaning access before being discarded

Question 19

Treisman & Geffen had participants tap when designated target words appear in either shadowed or unattended message. Target detection in attended ear was 87% vs. 8% in unattended ear. Which theory does this seem inconsistent with?;
What did inconsistent evidence about this suggest?

Answer 19

Late selection;

That the idea of a single structural limitation was not viable, there must be other factors

Question 20

Rather than filters or structure, where did Kahneman suggest our limitations lie?;
According to this view, the number of concurrent tasks that can be performed depends on what?;
& the pool of available resources is increased under what?;

Answer 20

Processing; attention is the process of allocating resources to inputs;
Difficulty = resource demands;
Arousal (motivation)

Question 21

If two tasks can’t be done concurrently, then what?

Answer 21

One must be delayed

Question 22

What does capacity theory propose?;
Task difficulty is evident in resource demands under divided attention. How has this been assessed?;
Did this work out?

Answer 22

General resources;
By measuring relative task demands under different task combinations;
No, couldn’t get consistent estimates of task difficulty

Question 23

Name some contributions of capacity theory

Answer 23

It’s provided a useful idea of structural + processing limitations & how task demands decrease with practice (automaticity)

Question 24

Students trained for 6 weeks, 5 h per week, to read stories for comprehension while taking words to dictation, after training, what could they do?;
What does this suggesst?

Answer 24

Read as fast (and comprehend as well) with dictation as they could without dictation;
Extensive practice reduces capacity demands (by restructuring tasks, memorising solutions or establishing production rules for task)

Question 25

What’s the primary DV for simple visual tasks?;

What’s a better DV for difficult or time-pressured tasks?

Answer 25

Reaction time (increases with task difficulty);
Accuracy

Question 26

According to the Feature Integration Theory (FIT), how is processing of a stimulus into elementary features done?;
What do individual feature maps in the brain do?;
What’s required to bind features into an object?

Answer 26

Automatically, unconsciously & in a parallel way;
Give the location of specific features & project onto a single location map; activity in individual map can be read without focused attention;
Attention

Question 27

Why is Serial Processing known as inefficient?;

What happens when display size is increased in a conjunction search?

Answer 27

Because you must search for a conjunction of features in a display where all elements have some of the features of interest; have to search items one at a time;
It becomes more difficult

Question 28

Why is the RT in a feature disjunctive search less than a conjunctive search, and unaffected by search set size?

Answer 28

The target “pops-out”; have pre-attentively taken in; doesn’t require item by item search

Question 29

On average, when will a target be found in a serial search?

When the target is absent, what happens to the slope on a graph & why?

Answer 29

After half of the items have been examined;

Slope is typically doubled; all items are searched (exhaustive search)

Question 30

Describe some limitations of the Feature Integration Theory

Answer 30

Features don’t always “pop out” - you need to search for what’s different in change blindness scenes; sometimes configural patterns can over-ride basic features

Question 31

What two factors neglected in FIT, did Duncan & Humphreys find had large effects on RTs?

Answer 31

Similarity of target to distractors; heterogeneity of distractors: Search is much easier if distractors are similar to each other (homogeneous)

Question 32

Sudden changes, such as movements, looming stimuli, increases in brightness, can capture attention regardless of our intentions. What adaptive effect is this known as?

Answer 32

Exogenous

Question 33

What evidence shows that attention is more typically driven endogenously by our intentions?;
In this experiment, if the target is defined as a red object, what will a red cue do?;

Answer 33

Spatial cuing evidence, where a cue is given about the location of an upcoming target;
Capture attention, even if it has not been predictive of the target position, whereas a cue that suddenly appears or has a bright highlight does not capture attention (attention set for red objects)

Question 34

What does RSVP stand for?;

What is it?;

Answer 34

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation;

Extension of Treisman’s feature conjunction search, but there’s only a single location & is time-pressured

Question 35

What’s involved in an RSVP?;

What commonly occurs?

Answer 35

Letters, digits or words, visually displayed, one after the other at a rapid rate (typically 100ms); participants look for certain targets (around 15) & asked about them at the end;
Post-target intrusions (e.g. when presented with green Q, blue Y & red X, they’ll report blue X)

Question 36

Describe the Attentional Blink (AB);

When may the blink be smaller?;

Answer 36

When detecting 2 targets in the RSVP stream, there’s a failure to report T2 when it occurs a few 100ms after T1 (blink extends out to about T1 + 6);
At the T1 + 1 item;

Question 37

What happens when T2 occurs immediately after T1 & what’s this known as?

Answer 37

T1 & T2 processed as one event; it’s known as lag sparing

Question 38

AB is found if T1 & T2 are defined in what way?;

Does AB occur if you merely have to detect T1 without reporting its identity?

Answer 38

The same way (2 digits) or differently (red letter vs. digit); AB reflects demands of selecting & identifying T1;
Yes

Question 39

What reduces the AB?;

Answer 39

High discriminability of T1 from the distractors (e.g. T1 red, distractors black);

Question 40

Is AB just a recall problem?

Answer 40

No, interference is observed when a recognition test of targets is used (so not just memory)

Question 41

AB occurs only when other items precede and follow T1 and T2, or when what?;
What do adjacent items serve as?;
What are these commonly used for?

Answer 41

T2 is extremely brief ;
Pattern masks that curtail processing of the targets (compete with targets to engage perceptual processing);
To ensure that brief stimuli do not reach awareness (Participants say they didn’t see the masked word, but it may be processed sufficiently to affect responses in tasks)

Question 42

According to Chun & Potter’s 2 stage AB model, what’s the first stage?;
What’s required in the second stage?;
AB reflects limits on memory consolidation of T2 when what?

Answer 42

RSVP items are identified; stimulus is matched with its memory representation;
Consolidating an item in working memory so that it can be reported (limited in capacity);
When T1 consolidation is not yet completed

Question 43

What is Chun & Potter’s model consistent with?

Answer 43

Evidence for semantic processing of unreported T2s (e.g., EEG shows there is meaning even though they can’t report it)

Question 44

If the demands of getting T1 into working memory are the source of the AB, then what is the critical factor in the AB?

Answer 44

The difficulty of processing T1 (manipulating T1 difficulty does affect the AB)

Question 45

According to Burt, Howard & Falconer, when is the AB with word targets more severe?;
What is this approach called?

Answer 45

If T1 is a low-frequency/rare word (take longer to identify than common words);
Resource depletion account (high resource demands of processing T1)

Question 46

What do recent theories suggest the AB reflects?;

Answer 46

Difficulties in attentional control mechanisms (processing what is relevant and ignoring what is irrelevant)

Question 47

What is Attentional Set?;

What is Attentional Engagement?

Answer 47

Preparedness to select target features and reject distractors;
Locking attention onto targets

Question 48

A common idea is that attentional selection of targets involves increasing their activation, & also what?

Answer 48

Actively inhibiting or suppressing the activation of distractors

Question 49

Describe Olivers & Meeter’s Boost & Bounce model

Answer 49

The Boost process increases the activation of target; The Bounce process inhibits activation of distractors

Question 50

Explain the time lag in rise of the Boost & Bounce;

What does this then cause?

Answer 50

The distractor immediately after T1 gets some of the T1 boost and accesses working memory;
A strong bounce effect which persists long enough to affect T2 (thus the inhibition deployed to help target selection actually causes the AB)

Question 51

What does the boost & bounce model fail to explain?

Answer 51

Effects of T1 difficulty on the AB

Question 52

Some ideas about RSVP rely on a distinction between recognising an object and knowing about a particular encounter with it. In this regard, what is a Type?;
What’s a token?

Answer 52

A memory representation that is used to identify a stimulus (e.g. identifying a daisy)
A memory of a particular occurrence with a stimulus – related to episodic memory (e.g. memory of encounter with a daisy)

Question 53

What’s the core principle of Wyble’s Episodic Simultaneous Type Serial Token (ESTST)?;
According to this model, what causes the AB?

Answer 53

The AB reflects a cognitive strategy, not a resource limitation;
Encoding T1 into working memory suppresses concurrent attention to new items (distractors & T2) – similar to B & B model

Question 54

According to the ESTST model, suppression of attention allows T1 to be encoded as a separate/token event. If several target items are encoded together in WM, what cost occurs?;
So the suppression of attention is part of the mechanism for what?;
What has this model been applied to in RSVP?

Answer 54

They are bound into a single event, with a loss of order information;
Keeping track of events and the order of events;
Repetition blindness

Question 55

Which account explains all the AB results?;

Answer 55

None of them; there are multiple sources;

Question 56

In a nutshell, what factors seem to play a role on AB?

Answer 56

Resource depletion (i.e. capacity demands; effects of T1 difficulty; consolidation in WM) & attentional control mechanisms for discriminating between targets & distractors

Question 57

What do effects in severely time-pressured attentional tasks reflect?

Answer 57

The processing demands for attended stimuli;

Question 58

What do the nature of deficits like the AB tell us?

Answer 58

What aspects of the task are challenging under time pressure

Question 59

The AB evidence suggests that consolidation of targets in WM is an operation that can’t be done for what?

Answer 59

More than one target (or target-chunk) at a time (& may be associated with competitive or inhibitory effects for other stimuli)