Attention Flashcards
What is selective attention?
The ability to focus on that which is important to the task at hand while ignoring or suppressing task-irrelevant information.
What do early selection models suggest?
That the information not attended to is filtered out before any processing occurs e.g. identification
Give an exam of an early selection model
Broadbent’s Filter Model
What is evidence for early selection?
Dichotic listening - can report basic physical characteristics but cannot report meaning or content.
Explain Broadbent’s Filter model.
Info is held in a sensory store and some of this information is then passed into the perceptual processing system but other information is filtered out. The later information is not available for processing, so processing is only applied to filtered stimuli.
What did Moray, Corteen, Von Wright, and Treisman find?
Evidence for processing in the unattended channel.
What is the difference between Broadbent and Treisman’s modified model?
In Treisman’s model, the unattended information is not filtered out, but attenuated (turned down)
Why can we hear some words in the unattended channel?
Some stimuli are louder than others e.g. your name or words associated with an electric shock.
What are the similarities between Broadbent and Treisman’s model?
The attenuation still happens early (prior to processing of perceptual/meaning processing) and it is still a structural model (the attenuator is the new part in the model)
What is late selection?
All incoming information is processed to the highest level - physical characteristics and the meaning of all current stimuli are extracted in parallel without interference.
Where does selection occur in late selection?
At the level of response/awareness
Is late selection structural?
Yes.
What is evidence for late selection?
- Lackner & Garrett 1972
- Stroop Task
What did Lackner and Garrett 1972 find?
- PPs use material from the unattended channel to resolve ambiguous sentences
- PPs paraphrasing reflected the content of the unattended channel
How is the stroop task evidence for late selection?
- Two elements of the stimuli, both are encoded
- Both elements compete for response
What is the difference between a structural and capacity model? (4)
Capacity models have no structure bottleneck, the cognitive system has limited amount of processing capacity, and ‘paying attention’ is equivalent to ‘investing energy’, so limiting factor is not a structural one.
What does Kahneman 1972 suggest?
Any task demands a processing capacity and that task performance is dependent on the allocation of capacity to the task.
According to Kahneman 1972, what does a task’s processing capacity depend on?
- the difficulty of the task
- the individual’s experience on the task
Accoring to Kahneman 1972, what is the allocation of the capacity to tasks dependent on?
- Enduring dispositions (habits and preferences)
- Momentary (need right now)
- Evaluation of demands on capacity
What evidence is there for Kahneman 1972’s theory?
Dual Tasking
What is the dual task decrement?
When individuals do two things at once, there is a drop in performance. Could be classified as the difference between the single task and the dual task performance.
What did Deutsch and Deutsch (1963) find?
Both attended and unattended information is analysed for meaning in order to select an input for full awareness.
Explain Lavie’s Perceptual Load Theory.
When there is low demand, more of what is seen is processed. When there is high demand on capacity, less of what is seen is processed.
Is Lavie’s Perceptual Load Theory a model of early or late selection?
It is a hybrid model (both). You can have both early and late selection within the system depending on the demands of the attended stimuli.
Low load =
Little demand for perceptual processing
High load =
Increased demand for perceptual processing
What compatibility effects are there in Lavie’s Perceptual Load Theory?
Incompatible, neutral, and compatibile effects
Explain each compatibility effect.
Incompatible - wrong option stimuli
Neutral - a random stimuli
Compatible - a correct option stimuli
What did Lavie’s Load Theory Results show?
The RT was the longest for the incompatible condition.
There is a strong compatibility effect in low load but no real compatibility effect in high loads between compatible/incompatible conditions.
How does perceptual load effect early or late selection?
Low load means late filtering.
High load means system filters out irrelevent stimuli early.
What is inattentional blindness?
Not noticing task irrelevant elements in the visual scene. (e.g. the gorilla video)
What did Cartwright-Finch & Lavie 2006 find?
Increased loads reduced PPs noting irrelevant stimuli.
Perceptual load reduces the compatibility effect and increases inattentional blindness.
Explain the cross task.
In the low PL condition, PPs were asked if the green line is horizontal or vertical (easy). In the high PL condition, PPs were asked which line is longer (hard). At the end they were asked if they could see the square,
What happens to interference when we vary the load on working memory?
HighWM load - larger differences in RT between congruent and incongruent compared to LowWM load.
Therefore, high WM load increases interference and high PL reduces interference.
What does Allport say about attention?
The fundamental purpose of attentional mechanisms is to protect the brain’s limited capacity system from informational overload.
What is the S System?
Sensory memory
What is the P System?
The perceptual system - operates serially (selected items are processed one at a time)
What did Broadbent 1971 suggest about the P system?
That the P system affects perceptual-semantic categorisation in that items in the P system are assigned to their corresponding mental categories
What did Treisman and Gelade 1980 get participants to do?
have to find a target amongst distractors. e.g. red horizontal line amongst red vertical lines and green horizontal lines.
What did Treisman and gelade 1980 vary in their experiment?
The number of distractors and the presence or absence of the targets.
What is a conjoined feature?
Searching for a stimuli with more than 1 feature e.g. colour AND shape.
How do single feature searches impapct reaction time?
Increasing the number of items has no impact on reaction time.
When it’s absent, the number of items in the array does have an impact on reaction time.