Attention

Question 1

What is attention?

Answer 1

• Something everyone has a basic understanding of
• Day to day life
• Intuitive knowledge
• Its not a unitary entity

Question 2

What are the two basic conceps of attention?

Answer 2

Attention as a cognitive process
- Mental process of concentrating effort on external or internal stimulus (one classification)
As a limited resource for cognitive processing
- There is limitation
- Driving when its dark

Question 3

Controlled Attention

Answer 3

• Deliberate effort or concentration
• Selective attention
• Cant attend to everything or be interrupted constantly

Question 4

Perceptual attention

Answer 4

• External or internal stimulus

Question 5

Stimulus-driven attention

Answer 5

• What you attend to relies on the information you get from the environment
• Bottom up
• Influences external attentional processes

Question 6

Goal-dirceted attention

Answer 6

• What you attend to relies on your goals, intentions, expectations, knowledge etc
• Top-down
• Influences internal and external attentional processes

Question 7

Input attention

Answer 7

Involved in getting sensory information into the cognitive system
- Vigilance or sustained attention
Maintaining attention over long period of time
Influenced by a persons state
Declines after some time
- Sudden inputs

Question 8

Attention Blink

Answer 8

A brief slow-down after just processing a recent event
- Not noticing 1 number among letters - research

Question 9

Automatic processing

Answer 9

• Happens without intention, unpreventable
• Without awareness, you cant describe the process
  Some meanings are primed
• Shouldnt interfere with other processes
• Things can get automatic with practice and memory
  Driving a car
• Implicit Processing

Question 10

Controlled Processing

Answer 10

• Similiar to controll attention
• Demanding process, consumes resources
• Usually focus on one demanding task

Question 11

Mind wandering

Answer 11

• Can we control attention?
• Attention wander from current tasks to other thoughts
  Loose of focus, often has some relevance

Question 12

Inhibition

Answer 12

A cognitive process that actively surpresses irrelevant info
- Helps with selection
Finding a green object among red objects

Question 13

Is attention the same as awareness?

Answer 13

• Some says it can, loosely speaking
• But there is a seperation
  Some attention processes happens without awareness
• Less clear to what extent awareness of a stimulus can happen without attention