Attention Flashcards
what is attention
- ttention is the cognitive resource which enables us to select information from out senses for cognitive processing
- active/endogenous processing is in out control, we are choosing o focus on it eg listening to a lecture
-passive/exogenous processing is when out attention is drawn to an external stimuli but not but conscious control
Understand distinction between focused and divided attention
Focused attention
- We only attend to a small subset of sensory information
- focused attention is when we select these things by focusing on a particular modality eg auditory or visual
- Or physical characteristics of these modalities eg tone of speaker, intensity
- cocktail party effect: you can still tune into someones voice when your having a conversation in a loud party, using physical characteristics you can attend to them specifically
- own name effect: salient information breaks through the filter.
Divided attention
- When we try to focus on a number of things at a time
- Influenced by task difficulty – task similarity (verbal/visual modality, verbal/manual response) – practice (strategies, reduced attentional task demands)
- Central attention capacity theories or multiple resource theories
Describe main filter theories of attention.
What are the main filter theories of attention
Early filter
* Filter located early in processing stream, prevents anything your not paying attention to from getting through to later stages of processing
* Only physical stimulus characteristics are processed physical eg gender, tone, language, speed, intensity
* Filter then determines which stimuli receive further processing eg further semantic processing.
Later filter
* Filter located late in the processing stream.
- all stimuli are fully analysed
* Physical and semantic characteristics are processed.
* Filter then determines which stimuli will be attended to (the most important)
- little support for this theory
- not consistent with dichotic listening tasks
Attenuated filter
- filter is early but doesn’t block stimuli completely
- a mix of early and late
- the attenuated filter is variable
Describe main filter theories of attention.
What is some evidence to support early filter theories?
Cherry (1953)
* Dichotic listening task: different messages in both ears,
- found that paying attention to only one message is more difficult when physical characteristics are same. suggesting we use physical characteristics to filter non-salient information early in processing.
- they also noticed when Participants must shadow what they heard in the attended ear they were poor at retrieving if information if the message was in another language or played backwards, they only noticed basic physical characteristics also supporting early filter theory
Broadbent (1958)
* Parallel access to very short-term sensory register
* Early HARD attentional filter
* Single channel of information selected on the basis of physical characteristics to pass through the filter into shortterm
* memory for further (e.g. semantic) processing
Main filter theories of attention
attenuated filter theory
- a combination of early and late
- there is still a filter early in processing strea, (right after sensory input) but its a soft filter (or attenuator) which allows for some degree of semantic processing therefore consistent w own name effects and dichotic listening tasks
Describe main filter theories of attention.
Criticisms of early filter theory
- Highly salient info is often detected, this implies the early filter is not hard
- eg own name effect
- Semantic content of unattended information can cause attention to be directed towards it
- Must be processed to some extent
Treisman’s dichotic listening task (1960)
* Semantic meaning of the sentences switched ears halfway through even when physical characteristics were different
* “To make a cake, you need pianos, clarinets, and drums”
* “The instruments included butter, sugar, and eggs”
* Most people switched ears to follow the message even though they were asked to follow one ear therefore: Filter must be sensitive to content
Corteen & Wood (1972)
* Participants required to listen to list of words and an got Electric shock when city names were presented
* Then: asked to shadowed message in one ear, and in the other presented with irrelevant words (including city names) in the unattended ear
* Participants were unable to report information presented in unattended ear
* But: increased galvanic skin response (a physiological measure of arousal) to city names implying Unconsciously analysing words for meaning
Theories of the nature of visual selective attention
Spotlight, zoom
Spotlight theory (space based)
* Small region of enhanced visual processing where anything outside the spotlight is harder to “see”. The Spotlight can be moved to different locations
Kwak, Dagenbach, & Egeth (1991)
- the assumptions is that it Time to make same/different judgement when presented with two letters on either side of the +
- did not vary with distance
T + X
* Inconsistent with the idea of moving spotlight
- therefore moved to zoom theory
Zoom lens theory (space-based)
* Area of focal attention can be increased or decreased depending on task demands
LaBerge (1983)
* Condition 1 Word: Animal or food? broad lens of attention
* Condition 2 Middle letter: Consonant or vowel? narrow lens of attention
* Additional task: On some trials, probe appeared at one of 5 letter positions, requiring a speedy response
* measured speed of probe response
* Found that Attentional lens can be broad or narrow ie zoom lens
* for narrow task they Responded quicker when probe was in the area they were looking eg if red dot appeared in middle letter
- for broad word task the time stayed relatively the same
implying that a broad lens attention is successfully allocated across a large space
Theories of the nature of visual selective attention
Criticisms to spotlight and zoom lens models
- Visual attention often directed to objects, not locations and space
O’Craven et al. (1999) fMRI study - Showed that attention is object based and not space based
- Superimposed objects, one moving and asked them to put their attention on either on face, building, or movement
- one area of the brain activated at a time depending on what was asked to focus on even when the face and house were technically in the same space
- therefore Attention can be object-based
Explain the difference between disjunctive and conjunctive search (selective visual attention)
Disjunctive search
* There exists (at least) one feature that differentiates the target from (all) distractors
* Easier, more efficient, parallel search
* No matter how many distractor items the search will be easy
- one salient feature is enough eg yellow car amongst all black vs yellow car amount an array of colours is still easy
Conjunctive search
* Only a combination of multiple features differentiates the target from the distractors
* More difficult, effortful, serial search
* the more items the longer the search
- this is because perceptual input are processed by different areas in the brain: split processing eg colour, shape, number therefore higher cognitive demand
Describe feature integrated theory of selective visual attention
Describe Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory
Feature map processing
- sensory input is initially processed in a bunch of spilt feature maps in the brain.
- these happen parallel to each other and don’t require attention which is why they are fast
- colour shape texture
master map processing
- these are then processed in one combined master map which integrates them
- this requires focal attention and more time which is why conjunctive search is slow
- it relys on the feature map
Illusory conjunctions example
* Evidence for feature integration
* When red triangle and blue circle are shown participant is asked to say what they saw
* When they are given 30ms or less to veiw the shaps sometimes the colours/shapes get confused
Name factors that determine divided attention dual-task performance
Dual-task paradigm
* performance decrements occur when two tasks are combined
* This sheds light on nature of attentional limitations
* Debate on whether we have Single attentional resource vs. multiple resource pools
Factors which effect duel task performance
* task difficulty - harder = more decrement
* task similarity (verbal/visual modality, verbal/manual response) - similar tasks = more decrement
* practice (strategies, reduced attentional task demands)
Describe central capacity vs. multiple resource theories of divided attention
Central attentional capacity theories
* One “pool” of attention
* Central capacity can be allocated flexibly across tasks
* Resource is strictly limited theory is that:
o combined demands < total resource = no interference
o combined demands > total resource = performance decrements
* Explains why difficult tasks (e.g., random number generation) interfere with any other task, even easy & dissimilar one (e.g., tone detection)
- cannot explain why there are decrements in similar tasks even easy ones
Multiple resource theories
* Multiple resource theories
* Several independent pools of attention (modules)
* Similarity in task = resource competition = interference
* Explains why similar tasks interfere with each other even if easy (e.g. manual movement tracking and tone detection with the manual response; McLeod, 1977) eh patting head and rubbing tummy
Understand the terms “cognitive bottleneck” and “psychological refractory period”
the idea that cognitive processessing happens in 3 stages
1. perceptual encoding
2. response selection
3. response execution
Psychological refractory period (PRP)
- When 2 stimuli are presented in close succession the response selection and execution to the 2nd one is slowed
- this is because of a cognitive bottle neck
cognitive bottle neck
- the idea that you cannot execute response selection and execution until the response to the first stimuli has been executed
- Practice reduces but does not eliminate the PRP (Ruthruff, Johnston, & Van Selst; 2001)
- Even when you do two things at the same time and there is massive practice and automatisation, there’s a hard-wired cognitive bottleneck forcing at least some serial processing
- so basically you get better at switching attention between two stimuli not actually processing them both any faster
