Attention Flashcards
What is selective attention
what is selective attention?
whatkind of processes?
what areas?
enabe?
selective is the process by which we select or focus on one or more cognitive processes, either in the environment or internal cognitive processes, for enhanced processing whilst ignoring others
Why is selective attention needed?
What principle?(CE)
Why can we not focus on everything equally, what would this lead to? (2)
Photoreceptors capture all the information from the environment. However, the principle of cognitive economy states that we can only process a limited number of information that is available to us. the brain can not efficiently process all the information in the environment as t would lead to reduced mental processes and actions.
Selective attention: top-down processing and bottom-up processing
Which process is used in slective attention?
what does each process mean?
- top-down: what three things do we use?
- bottom-up: start with? then?
In selective attention these processes work together
Top-down: usingexisting knowledge, expectations, and context to interpret and make sense of incoming information
Bottom-up processing: start with individual sensory stimuli and build up to form complete perception (pieces of a puzzle)
How do we select?
How many models?
Names?
-Early filtering model: Broadbents theory, 1958
-Late selection model: Deutsch&Deutsch, 1903)
-Attenuation model: Treisman theory, 1964
how do we select
We can not consciously attend to all sensory inputs at the same time
Early filter model - Broadbents filter
Depiction of attention?
What can pass through?
where does all the information enter?
what determines if the stimuli is selected? (what kind of characteristics?)
What does this selection prevent?
Does the filter register the meanings of the selected information? when does this process occur?
also known as Filter theory of attention
humans can only process a limited amount of information due to attentional bottleneck
Attention - bottleneck
all information goes into the unlimited capacity sensory buffer but only a limited amount of information can pass through the bottleneck
Stimuli selected for further processing depends on its physical characteristics ie volume, pitch
Unattended messages are lost
Meanings of messages do not occur at the filter- semantic processing occurs after the filter has selected the message to pay attention to
Messages that are restricted by the bottle neck are not understood
How do we select
Attenuation model
Did Treisman agree with Broadbent? Which part?
What was different about her theory?
Definition?
What did her experiment show?
Task
agrees with Broadbents early bottleneck filter (cant process all)
Difference: Rather than discarding unattended messages, the filter attenuates
Attenuation: turning down the volume - unattended messages are attenuated (volume of messages turned down) so that meanings of attended messages can be processed
In her experiments, Triesmann found that participants were able to identify contents of unattended messages = able to process meaning of attended and unattended messages
dichotic listening tasks, speech shadowing method
How do we select
Late selection model
What is suggested about unattended messages?
What is the overall point?
What messages get into the conscious awareness?
Also called the response selection model
The late selection model suggests that unattended messages are also processed for meanings as well as the attended messages (selected))
However, only the information that is relevant for the task response gets into the conscious awareness
we dont have to be attending the message to be aware of the meaning
The cocktail party effect
What ability does it refer to?
our ability to focus on a specific conversation despite background noise
What type of task is used to investigate selective attention?
What is the main question? (barrier)
What were participants only able to mention able the unattended message?
- what were they unable to identify? eventhough?
what were participants able to identify?
Dichotic listening tasks and shadowing
- Two messages simultaneously presented; from the attended messages the participant is asked to shadow the message as its being told
Can shadowing be disrupted? - what can break the intentional barrier?
- After the task, participants were only able to recall physical characteristics of the unatteneded messages, such as tone of voice, the sex of the voice etc
- Participants were unable to identify a word from the unattended message. eventhough it had been repeated 35 times but were able to identify their name it it had been mentioned
Broadbert
Early filter model
why did he argue that the selection of task relevant information process occurs early on? (what do people focus on?)
Linkto the dichotic listening task and what partipcipants were able to recall
what does this mean about the stages the un/attended information get through to
whathappens to attended messages? (what analysis/ awareness)
As partcipants from the dichotic listening task could only identify physical characteristics of the unattended message without knowledge of the meaning of the message itself but wre able to identify their name, Broadbert argued that the selection of task relevant information occurs at an early perceptual level of processing (individual only focuses on important information being told or their name being called)
Attended messages go through meaning analysis and are entered to the conscious awareness
unatteded messages does not make it past the physical analysis
Examples of selective attention tasks
Flanker task
stroop task
Ponser task
Flanker task
What does flanked mean?
What does the task measure? (the ability to?
Flanked: presence of distracting stimuli or surrounding elements that can influence the response to a target stimulus - typically presented on either side of the target stimulus
Measures the ability to focus on target stimulus whilst ignoring the surrounding distractions
Flanker task
by who?
where is the target stimulus positioned?
What does the participant have to do?
Eriksen&Ericksen, 1974
Target stimulus is positioned at the center and is flanked by non-target stimuli
the participant has to press the left or right arrow key according to the targets direction
Flanker task
How many types of nontarget stimuli are there in this task?
what are they?
modes?
in this task, there are three types of nontarget stimuli
- congruent stimulus: Called compatiable mode. this direction of the nontarget stimuli is the same as the target
- incongruent stimuli: incompatible mode. Direction of nontarget stimulus is the opposite of the target. so choosing a correct response should be more challenging than in the compatible mode
- Neutral stimuli: doesnt have the same or opposite direction of the target
Selective attention task
Stroop task/ effect
What does it show a delay in?
why?
what do participants have to do?
Participants focus their attention to one aspect of the task (colour of a word) while neglecting the other (the name of a word)
participants have to name the colour of the word instead of the the word itself as fast as they can
- interference of reaction time of a task as the colour of a word is not the same as the name participants find it difficult to identify the colour quickly and accurately
- Delay in reaction time between autonomic and controlled processing of information, in which the names of words interfere with the ability name the colour ink used to print the words
