8 - Attention

Question 1

What is attention?

Answer 1

“The process of focusing conscious awareness, providing heightened sensitivity to a limited range of experience requiring more extensive information processing” - Select certain things

Question 2

Why is attention necessary?

Answer 2

• Finding small targets, more than what can be processed - Allocating tensions - Nightclub -> Attention is the bouncer

Question 3

William James

Answer 3

“Attention is the taking possession by mind, clear and vivid form.. withdrawel from some things to deal effectively with others” - Objects can be allocated to physical objects and thoughts

Question 4

How does attention shape what we experience and what we don’t experience?

Answer 4

• Experts looking at useful information on a scan - Attention is limited and listening to road rules

Question 5

General model of attention

Answer 5

• Sensory input - Sensory memory with automatic and preattentive processing with the TOP DOWN CONTROL OF SELECTOR towards working memory - Attention is proposed as the gate between sensory processing and awareness - All sensory input enters the sensory memory store where it is processed pre-attentively - Some is selected to pass through the gate into consciousness

Question 6

How does attentional mechanisms affect us?

Answer 6

They decide what information reaches awareness and thus the focus of our thoughts and actions

Question 7

What is involved in the dichotic listening task?

Answer 7

Headphone played in two different ears. You are required to ignore one input and attend to the other input. A big consequence to the unattended ear, they do not notice as a switch in language, fowards/backwards but can detect male/female voice in sensory aspect - Inspired Broadbent

Question 8

What are key aspects of Broadbent’s (1958) Filter Model?

Answer 8

• Suggests information is selected based on early sensory properties - Input -> Sensory Store -> Selective filter (based on features) -> Higher Level Processing -> Working memory - Attention restricts information available for further processing - Info selected based on physical characters (PREATTENTIVE PROCESSING) - Complete annihilation of irrelevant stimuli

Question 9

What is preattentive?

Answer 9

Anne Treisman - finding slanted line and colour, orientation - Conjunction search with 2 features slows the target - Feature search can be done preattentively

Question 10

What is the feature integration theory?

Answer 10

• Where certain basic features are processed quickly in parallel - Attentions serves to bind simple features together i.e. colour and orientation - Binding process is slow and serial

Question 11

What are some problems with the Filter Model?

Answer 11

• Does not explain why hearing one’s name will grab attention - Participants shift shadowing between ears when it makes more (semantic) sense i.e dichotic - Information can be selected on the basis of non-physical features! - The Preattentive Semantic Analysis

Question 12

What is Treisman’s Attenuation Theory?

Answer 12

Sensory sore -> Attenuating filter -> Bottleneck reduces some stimuli -> Hierarchy of analysers -> Working memory Fire! Help! in an unattended channel. Would be attenuated, but would then be amplified due to semantic value.

Question 13

When is information filtered in attention?

Answer 13

• Early selection: physical features - Late: based on meaning, meaningfulness, semantics

Question 14

What is involved in the late selection model?

Answer 14

• All stimuli are processed to the level of meaning - Relevance determines further processing and action (when they become the focus of attention)

Question 15

Filter Models

Answer 15

• Early selection (broadbent) - Attenuation (treisman) - Late (Deutsh)

Question 16

What is the Capacity Theory of Attention

Answer 16

• Mental effort, attention as a capacity and resource - Attention is prescribed on difficulty of task
• Demanding: controlled processing - Undemanding: automatic processing

Question 17

What is the droop effect?

Answer 17

• Identifying coloour of letters, not the words - Effortful to block out automatic attention

Question 18

What is bottom up selection?

Answer 18

• Stimulus properties that capture your attention e.g. flash of light, loud noise

Question 19

What is top-down selection?

Answer 19

• Goal driven selection of information e.g. finding keys on cluttered desk, where’s wally

Question 20

How is visual attention guided?

Answer 20

• Space based - Bottom up - Top down - Feature based

Question 21

What are some failure of attentions?

Answer 21

Inattentional blindness video Change blindness - Colour changing card tgrick - Changes occurred off frame - Failure to retain/compare information - Videos - Abrupt changes attract attention - Observer must search for change

Question 22

Why does change blindness occur?

Answer 22

• Abrupt changes ie visual transients in the visual scene attracts attention BUT global disruption mask the visual transient corresponding to the sought-for-change

Question 23

How can we track attention?

Answer 23

In eye tracking study, Attention can move when eyes don’t - Overt and covert attention

Question 24

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 24

Failure to notice a fully-visible but unexpected event/object when attention is engaged on another - Allocating attention one task diverts others

Question 25

What is the effect of spatial attention?

Answer 25

• Count the number of times a certain type of shape crossed a midline? - On line, near, far, very far? - 47% detected unexpected object on-line - Spatial is not the complete account

Question 26

What is effect of feature based attention?

Answer 26

Number of times a black object contacts the frame. Altered luminance of unexpected object - Similarity and what you’re looking at - More likely to break in car when mismatched clours, and more likely to collide with cyclists - When engaging with mobile phone, noticing unexpected events were much less

Question 27

What are spacial neglect in attention?

Answer 27

An abnormality in attention - After damage to one hemisphere to the brain, a deficit in attention to the opposite side of space is observed - Patient with neglect will behave as if one side of sensory space in nonexistent - Right parietal lobe will cause neglect of the left space

Question 28

What is simultagonosia in attention?

Answer 28

An abnormality in attention - Inability to perceive more than a single object at a time - Colliding with multiple objects in a room - Result of a lesion to parieto-occipital junction

Question 29

What is selective attention?

Answer 29

Allows us to select one channel and turn off the others, or turn down their volume

• Broadbent’s filter theory of attention views attention as a bottleneck through which information passes. The mental filter enables us to pay attention to important stimuli and ignore others

Question 30

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 30

Refers to our ability to pick out an important message i.e. name in a conversation that does not involve us