Attention

Question 1

What does the principle of cognitive economy say about attention?

Answer 1

Only a limited portion of the information available is processed. The brain CANNOT process all, otherwise our mental processes and actions would be too slow (inefficient).

Question 2

What is selective attention?

Answer 2

The ability to selectively attend to certain information in the environment while at the same time tuning other things out (Stevens & Bavelier, 2012).
* Limited resources
* Top-down, conscious- we attend to what we need/what is relevant
* Bottom-up, we attend to what’s meaningful and familiar. Influenced by experience/goal.

Question 3

How is information from the environment captured?

Answer 3

By the photoreceptors

Question 4

What are the ways we select?

Answer 4

Early Filtering Model (Broadbents Theory, 1958)
Late Selection Model (Deutsch & Deutsch, 1963)
Attenuation Model (Treismon Theory, 1964)

Question 5

Using an experiment give an example of selective attention tasks.

Answer 5

Flanker task - participants are asked to respond to the direction of the central target stimulus while neglecting another flanking stimulus

Stroop task - participants are asked to focus their attention on one aspect of the task (the colour of a word) while neglecting another (the name of a word).

Dosner or cueing task - participants need to fixate at the centre of the screen and position their attention to the visual field indicated by a cue. In valid trial, the target appears in the visual field indicated by the cue. However, in invalid trials, the target appears in the opposite visual field and you need to shift or re-position your attention

Question 6

What are the neural correlates of attention?

Answer 6

• The dorsal frontoparietal system
• The ventral frontal and temporoparietal system

Question 7

What is the dorsal frontoparietal system?

Answer 7

Is involved in top-down attentional control or endogenous attention , that is, the act of voluntarily and selectively attending to an item or location over others (conscious-driven). Involves the frontal eye fields and the intraparietal sulcus.

Question 8

What task is the dorsal frontoparietal system activated?

Explain what happens in it.

Answer 8

In the Posner task, the dorsal frontoparietal network is activated by the onset of the cue, and is associated with the orienting of attention towards the location specified by the cue.

Question 9

What is the ventral frontal and temporoparietal system?

Answer 9

Is involved in bottom-up attentional control or covert orienting, that is, when attention is directed towards an unexpected stimuli (stimulus-driven), or while re orienting attention towards unattended locations. Includes the ventral frontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction.

Question 10

What task is the ventral frontal and temporoparietal system activated?

Explain what happens in it.

Answer 10

The temporoparietal network is activated in invalid trials when the target appears in the opposite location and attention is re-oriented.

Question 11

What are the errors of attention?

Answer 11

Inattentional blindness
Change blindness

Question 12

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 12

When we are paying attention to some events in a scene, we may fail to notice when an unexpected but completely visible object suddenly appears

Question 13

Give a real-life example of inattentional blindness.

Answer 13

Harvard scientists noticed that when asked to inspect this lung slice to look for sign of cancer, 83% of radiographers did not notice the gorilla on the top right side of the scan (Drew et al., 2013).

Question 14

What is change blindness?

Answer 14

When we are paying attention to some events in a scene, we may fail to notice an obvious change.

Question 15

What are the factors that cause inattentional/change blindness?

Answer 15

Limited attention resources
Salience/importance of the stimulus
Your own memory/experience

Question 16

What is divided attention?

Answer 16

Attending to two or more stimuli in the environment simultaneously

In experimental psychology, divided attention is studied by asking participants to perform two tasks at the same time (experimental analogue of everyday life multitasking…).

Question 17

What happens to participants in the divided attention task?

Answer 17

• Your accuracy and speed suffer when you perform the two tasks at the same time (dual-task condition) compared to when you were doing the two tasks in isolation (single-task condition).
• The reason you struggled is that the two tasks were competing for your attention resources (our attention is limited).

Question 18

What are examples of divided attention?

Answer 18

• Individuals walk more slowly (and in greater danger) when they talk on phones (Hyman, 2010).
• Students have lower memory retention if they read while sending text messages (Hyman, 2010; Willingham, 2010)
• People make more driving errors and show slower reaction times when they are having a conversation on a phone (Collet et al., 2009; Folk, 2010; Kubose et al., 2006; Strayer & Drews, 2004).

Question 19

What is sustained attention?

Answer 19

Attending to one or more stimuli or tasks for a long time (=concentration)
In experimental psychology, sustained attention is studied by asking participants to look at frequent distractors that appear on the screen one by one until the target appears.