Attention Flashcards
What is attention?
Given limited capacity to process competing options, attentional mechanisms select, modulate, and sustain focus on information most relevant for behavior.
Focus on information most relevant to your goal
What is the problem solved by attention?
How to allocate limited resources (energy & time) in the service of behavior
What is the importance of attention
We need to prioritize information so we do not waste time and energy on irrelevant efforts
Challenge of attention
How to balance the need for selective focus with the need to handle new situations as they arise
What are the possible sources of attention? And what is it?
Exogenous
Endogenous
The “cause” for directing one’s attention
What is a exogenous source of attention?
in the environment, reflexive, automatic, “bottom-up”
A salient stimulus, e.g.: a loud clap, a sharp pain, a bright flash, a sudden movement
Pulls your attention to it
What is an endogenous source of attention
in the mind, voluntary, intentional, “top- down”
A desire, goal, or instruction, e.g.:
What are they talking about?
“What is in the room behind that window?”
Is this the correct exit from the highway?
She told me to focus on the guy in the yellow shirt
What are the possible targets of attention? And what is it?
External
Internal
What you are attending to
What is an external target of attention
sensory information, in the environment
A sensory modality, spatial location, feature, or object, e.g.:
The sounds of the forest
The back of the classroom
The orange shirts of the opposing team
The doughnut in the display case
What is an internal target of attention?
mental representations, in the mind
A memory, imagery, or plan, e.g.:
The license plate number of a hit and run driver
You and your significant other relaxing on a tropical island
The next step in a recipe you are cooking
What is overt attention?
Involves actual movement of the sensory surface
E.g: moving the eyes, directing the ear
What is covert attention?
Does not involve actual movement but you ares till shifting your attention,
e.g.: “looking out the corner of your eye”, “eavesdropping on a conversation at the next table”
What is transient attention?
Momentary focus on something, e.g.: glancing at a stranger’s face
Milliseconds
What is sustained attention
Prolonged focus on something, e.g.: standing watch at a door for 2 hours
Minutes
What is selective attention?
Focus on one thing to the exclusion of others, e.g.: watching TV so intently, you don’t notice your friend enter the room
What is divided attention?
Try to focus on multiple things simultaneously, e.g.: talking on the cellphone while driving a car
Example: At the zoo, after reading a sign that says “Squirrel monkeys like to rest on tree limbs,” you look up at the top of a tree in the monkey house for several minutes.
What are the sources, targets, and types of attention?
Endogenous and external
Overt, sustained and selective attention
What is the cocktail party affect
Focus attention on a specific person when there is lots going on
State all the steps in the hierarchy given to determine when attention selection occurs
What is lower perceptual analysis
V1 for example
What is higher level semantic analysis
Where we prices for meaning
What did the dichotic listening experiment do and what were they used for?
Used for determining when does attentional selection occur
Play sound in each ear
Used shadowing → repeat word for word the message you hear in one ear
“Attend to the left ear”
What are the source, targets and types of attention involved in dichotic listing
Source: endogenous
“Attend to the left ear”
Target: external
Sounds entering ear
Covert: can’t tell which ear they are attending to
Sustained: have to keep attending to left ear for an extending period of time
Selective: have to attending to only one ear
What is the early all-or-none filtering model (Broadbent’s filter model) and what experiments support that?
Attention acts of a filter after low-level perceptual analysis
Unattattened messages didn’t make it through at all
Cherry
Cherry findings for dichotic listing
Could report existence of message
Could report gender of speaker
Could not report content
What is the early attenuating model (Treisman’s attenuation theory)? and what experiments support it?
Filter occurs after low-level perceptual analysis but it is not a all or none filter
If the unattended message is meaningful then it gets through and getting processed
Moray (1959)
Gray and Weddeburn (1960)
What did the dichotic listing study by Moray find
Could report change in gender of speaker
Could report change in pitch of a tone
Could NOT report a word repeated 35 times!
Could report hearing own name in unattended message! → raised problem for all or none filter model
What did the dichotic listening study by ray and Weddeburn (1960) find and do>
For one word the message would flip ears then flip back
Left ear hears: “Dear 7 Jane”
Right ear hears: “9 Aunt 6”
“Dear Aunt Jane”
Meaning of unattended words being taken into account! –> problem for all or none filtering model
What is the late selection model in attention? and what experiments support it?
filter is after the unattended message has been processes for meaning (high-level semantic analysis)
Even if they aren’t consciously aware of the unattended message the brain has the meaning of the information available
McKay
What did the dichotic listening study by McKay find
Meaning of biasing word (“river” or “money”) in unattended ear affected participants’ choice
However, participants were unaware of the biasing words!
What is the modern interpretation of where attentional selection occurs?
Strategic control of attention
Attention is not a single filter at a single location in processing → we can strategically allocate attention very early or later depending on the nature of the task, our goals, etc.
attention is determined by top-down modulation (executive/cognitive control) → allocate attention at different levels of processing as needed
What is an ERP?
Event-related potentials
Activity of the brain
Average of EEG signal
How are ERPs measured
take EEG recording and chop out individual responses and average them
Time-locked to event of
interest
Typically plotted with negative up!
What is an EGG and what does it measure? Is the temporal resolution or spatial resolution good?
Non-invasive technique
Measures surface electric fields generated by post-synaptic potentials in dendrites of neurons
High temporal resolution: >1000/sec can be measured almost instantly
Low spatial resolution: measures up to 256 electrodes → don’t know exactly where the signal is coming from
Electric fields spread out through space → don’t know where the source is
How do they determine what location on the scalp to put the electrodes for EEG
Standardized names for different location where electrodes are placed on the scalp
How are the electric fields created by neurons enough to measure with EGG?
We have lots of pyramidal cells and they all have long apical dendrites
Because all of the apical dendrites are inline → they all generate electric fields that are aligned → generate electric field large enough to be measured
How can we determine ERP over time?
plot data for many electrodes over time → measure strength of the electric field
Show surface distribution
What are the three stages of ERPs to audio evoked responses? And it what time frames do they occur? when do the peaks increase?
Brainstem reponses: first 10 ms
Midlatency responses (primary auditory cortex) –> 10-50 ms
Late waves (secondary/tertiary auditory cortex) –> first 500 ms
Peaks are greatest in the late waves
Where would participants respond to a stimulus the fastest at
A < B < C
