Attention Flashcards
• Overview of attention • Models/types of attention • Neural mechanisms of attention – Spatial attention – Attention to features & objects – Attentional control & awareness • Neglect & other attention disorders
“Intentional Blindness”
&
“Change Blindness”
Seeing is not the same as perceiving
What
is
attention?
(W. James Quote)
“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.
Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condi6on which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrain state.”
-William James, 1890
4 Properties of Attention:
- Limited Capacity
- Selection
- Modulation
- Vigilance
Types/classes
of Attention
• Covert (“mind’s eye”) vs Overt (actual eye)
• External (coming in through senses) vs Internal (already represented in mind)
• Top‐down (voluntary, goal‐driven)
vs Bottom-up (reflexive, stimulus‐driven)
Overt Attention
look at location/ object of interest
Covert Attention
look at one location but pay attention to another
(moving your “mind’s eye”)
– “These experiments demonstrated, so it seems to me, that by a voluntary kind of intention, even without eye movements, and without changes of accommodation, one can concentrate attention on the sensation from a particular part of our peripheral nervous system and at the same time exclude attention from all other parts”
- Helmholtz (1894)
Cocktail
Party
Effect
Covert Auditory Attention – In-class demo
Models
of
Attention
• Problem:
– Limited capacity: We can’t process everything available to our senses
– How do we select what to attend?
- Early vs late selection
- Do we intentionally select things to attend, (goal-driven)? “top‐down.” Or is attention automatically captured, (stimulus‐driven)? “bottom-‐up.” Actually, it’s Both.
Top‐down
- aka Goal‐directed
* aka Voluntary
Bottom‐up
- aka Stimulus‐driven
* aka Reflexive
Early
vs
Late
Selection
• Limited capacity:
we can’t process everything available to our senses; we have to choose
• When does this selection take place?
– Early Selection
Sensory gating mechanism: only selects stimuli even before they make it to perceptual analysis
– Late Selection
Everything is encoded & perceptually processed before selection
• How deeply are unattended stimuli processed?
Brain regions involved in attention
Temporal-Parietal Junction Posterio -Parietal Junction Superior Prefrontal Superior Colliculus Pulvinar of the Thalamus Ventral Prefrontal
Sources & Sites of Attention
Sources:
Which brain regions are involved in controlling attention?
Sites:
Which brain regions show the effects of attention?
Primarily Frontal and parietal
Superior Colliculus
Attention: automatic Orientating
Posner
Cuing
Task
Response times are measured following Valid, Invalid, and Neutral Commands in a spatial cuing task.
Attentional Facilitation
ERP Variant
Spatial Attention
