Attention Flashcards
Exogenous-endogenous
Overt-covert
Automatic-controlled
Stimulus external to us - We decide
Ppl know what we’re attending - Ppl don’t know what we’re attending
No attention needed - Requires attention
Stimulus saliency
What drives attention is what stands out the most
- Important for exogenous attejtion
Inattentional blindness
Inability to perceive info outside of attentional spotlight
Change blindness
Inability to detect differences in two alternated flashed images
Dichotic listening task
(Broadbent)
Ppl are good at paying attention to message in one ear only
- Selective attention (pay more attention to one thing at expense of others)
Ppl could only notice sensory info in unattended ear
- Could tell if message was spoken by male or female only
Cocktail party effect
Ability to attend to specific voice in an enviro in which other competing voices are present as well
Broadbent’s early selection filter model
Sensory memory goes through a filter (attention)
- Meaning processed only after filter applied
Problems:
- Ppl aware of own name in unattended message
- Participants “follow” a meaningful message in the unattended ear when alternated between both
Triesman’s attenuation model
(Late-selection model)
Attenuator lets all stimuli through, but increases volume of attended signal
- Can happen w/ loud noises, important words (like your name), words we hear often
If input meets threshold in dictionary unit, it can pass on to memory
- Diff words have diff thresholds
Attentional load
Divided attention
Measure of how much processing resources are needed to perform a task
Allocation of processing resources to multiple objects or tasks simultaneously
Flanker compatibility task
Shows attention spill over w/ low load tasks
Must look for target letter
- Flanker letter must be ignored
^ W/ flanker, low-load tasks increased reaction time
High-load tasks stayed the same
Automatic processes vs Controlled processes
Automatic:
Doesn’t require attention
Fast
Parallel
Can’t be modified once started
Controlled:
Requires attention
Slow
Serial
Under conscious control
Shiffrin and Schneider
Capacity theories of attention
Trained ppl to find target on frames
- Distractor was whether target was in same category (letter among letters) or different (number among letters)
Same category:
- Never became automatic
- Response time increase as distractor items increased
Different category:
- Became automatic
- Number of items per frame didn’t affect response time
How many items can we attend to at a time?
(Cowan)
4 +/-1
What is one of the purposes of attention?
Pre-activating the processing needed for specific stimuli that are present or about to be present
Spatial Cueing Paradigm (Pre-Cueing Paradigm)
Posner
Neisser and Becklen
Posner: Reaction time highest when arrow incorrectly points to where shape will appear
- Found attention is location-based
Neisser/Becklen: 2 superimposed images
- If attention was location-based, ppl would attend both images
- Found they only attended to one (we can selectively attend objects in the same spatial location)
