Attention

Question 2

Attention

Answer 2

• Helps navigate you through your surrounding brimming with information and distractions.
• According to William James: It implies the withdrawl from some things in order to deal effectively with others.

Question 3

Selection

Answer 3

• The act of focusing in on one subset of available infromation deemed most important.
• This allows us to shift through a wealth of information available to us.
  EX. When your first put on clothes, feel the fabric against your skin, but throughout the day, the you become unaware of this feeling. UNLESS, something triggers you to pay attention to the feeling of your clothes again.

Question 4

Automatic Process of Attention (SALIENT)

Answer 4

• Trigered involuntarilty by external events.
• Involuntary “capture” of attention
• Operate in a fast, efficient and obligatory manner.
• Consciously effortful tasks can become automatic through practice.
• SALIENT information captures our attention automatically
  EX. attention is directed towards the sirens of an ambulance

Question 5

Controlled

Answer 5

• Processes guide attention voluntarily and consciously to objects of interest.
• This process occurs more slowly because they are assumed to require more cognative effort.
  EX. While driving, you are making consciously choosing to pay attention to many aspects of the environment to guide this goal directed behaviour (i.e changing lanes, speeding up, slowing down)

NOTE: as demands require more attention, we must adjusst to compensate (turning down volume in car)

Question 6

Spotlight model

Answer 6

• Conscious visual attention focuses like a spotlight.
• ## Our attention shifts to different stimuli, and items falling within the spotlight are more easily perceived and processed.

Question 7

Filter model

Answer 7

• Bottleneck which selects only a limited amount of information based on physical characterisitcs to pass on for further processing.
• We use auditory cues to filter target sounds from background noise
• Single filter model
• Dual filter model: Ranks the physical cues of audiory sounds (intensity, pitch, relevence) and passes it along the semantic/ late filter to undergo further processing.

Question 8

Bottom-up Processing

Answer 8

• Raw data gathered by our senses/ piece together smaller peices of sensory.
• Also said to happen when attention is “captured” by salient (most notable) changes in the enviroment.
• Automically capture your attention in a reflexive manner to alert you.
• We allow the stimulus itself to shape our perception, without any preconceived idea.

Question 9

Top-down processing

Answer 9

• Using a combination of our memories, biases, and heuristics to interpret infortmation.
• Based on prior experience to fill in the blanks.
• Stratigically direct your attention to match you current goals and expectations.
  EX. Putting keys on the front desk when returning home which makes for a direct search to the front desk.

Question 10

Oritenting

Tools to measure attention

Answer 10

• The act where attention moves across the scene.
• Posner’s spatial cueing paradigm: allows to measure shifts in attention in the absesne of eye movement

Question 11

Overt vs convert orienting

Answer 11

• The obvious process of looking to where you are attending your attention is overt orienting.
• Attending to something without looking is convert orienting.
  EX. our gaze may be politely focused on Wilma who is in conversation with you, but your attention covertly shifts toward the door in anticipation of Waldo’s arrival. This will make you notice Waldo faster when he finally does arrive.

Question 12

Visual Search Paradigms

Answer 12

• Used to study how we search for items in our enviornment, where particpants are asked to locate a target item among a set of distractors.

Question 13

Set size

Visual Search Paradigms

Answer 13

• The total number of items during a visual search task. Can vary from trial to trial.

Question 14

Pop-out effect

Visual Search Paradigms

Answer 14

• The bottom up capture of attention driven by a salient physical property of the target during a visual search task. If a target “pop-out”, seach time is unaffected by set size because the processing of the whole set of items happends simultaneously or in parallel.
• ## Physical properties can be something like colour

Question 15

Conjunctive Search

Visual Search Paradigms

Answer 15

• Sometimes the target is not the most salient in the scene. We cannot rely on unique features to distinguish the target from the distractor, and instead must search for the combination of multiple different features.
• When an item does not pop-out during a visual search task, you must examine each item individually to determine if it is the target.
• As set size increase, so does time.
  EX. looking for a red circle in a set size that includes red square, blue circles, and blue squares.

Question 16

Contextual cueing

Answer 16

• Brings attention to a designated space that improves reaction time.

Question 17

Schema

Answer 17

• In the context of visual search, it is a representation depiciting the range of plausible objects and liket confiuration of those objects within particular scenes.
• It can help guide seach by allowing for the efficient search of items in its familiar enivornment.

Question 18

Selective attention

Answer 18

• Leads to atteneded items being better remembered wen compared to unattended times.
  EX. Cocktail party
  EX. Breakthrough effect

Question 19

Cocktail Party Effect

Answer 19

• Despite competing background noises, a listener can focus on a single channel of information.
  EX. Having a conversationamidst many other people talking in the background.

Question 20

Breakthrough effect

Answer 20

• When relevant infromation from an unattended channel is heard.
  EX. Such as someone calling your name at a bust party.
• Dichotic listening paradigm

Question 21

Inattentional Blindness

Answer 21

• Our limited attentional resources can result in missing out (no noticing) some very important or salient things. EX. Monkey suit ball getting passed around

Question 22

Change blindness

Answer 22

• A perceptual phenomenon where a change has occurred in a visual scene, but the observer does not noticce or cannot identify it.
  EX. Magic trick.

Question 23

Stroop task

Answer 23

• A task in which a participant is required to identify the colour of ink a colour word is written in while ignoring the word itself. For example, the word red written in blue ink. The particpant must say “blue”. This task proves difficult due to the automatic nature of word reading.
• Trials where words match the ink is called congruent
• Trials where the word does not match the ink are called incongruent.