Attention Flashcards
What User Has to Do
1) Selectively attend to different sources of info
2) Distribute attention across multiple sources of info
3) Maintain attention on a single display for long periods of time
Attention
Our ability to attend to stimuli is limited. How we direct attention depends on how well we perceive, remember, and act on information.
Selective Attention
Determines our ability to focus on certain sources of information and ignore others.
Divided Attention
Determines our ability to do more than one thing at once (ex: Driving while talking).
Mental Effort
Cognitive demands of a user’s duties.
Attention Demanding
Task requires considerable mental effort.
Executive Control
Strategies a person adopts to control the flow of information and task performance. Performance depends on this.
Models of Attention
1) Bottleneck Models-Early Selection, Late Selection
2) Resource Models- Single Resource, Multiple Resource
Bottleneck Models
Specify a particular stage in the information processing sequence where the amount of information we can attend to is limited. Performance decreases as the amount of information stuck at the bottleneck increases.
*Early Selection and Late Selection
Refer to where the bottleneck is placed in the information processing sequence. Early selection is closer to perception and people have little awareness of stimulus to which they are not attending. Late selection is closer to response and shows that major reductions in performance are associated with processes that occur after perception.
Resource Models
View attention as a limited-capacity resource that can be allocated to one or more tasks, rather than as a fixed bottleneck. Performance decreases as the amount of resources decrease.
Single Resource and Multiple Resource
Characterized by the number of resource pools used to perform a task. Single resource is just one, multiple resource is two or more.
Executive Control Models
Models that do not hypothesize any capacity limitations. View decrements in performance as a consequence of the need to coordinate and control various aspects of human information processing.
Filter Theory (Bottleneck)
Early selection model in which stimuli enter a central processing channel one at a time to be identified. Extraneous messages are filtered out early. (Looking for red squares in a box of toys so you’re going to ignore things that are not red).
Filter-attenuation Model (Bottleneck)
Claims an early filter serves only to decrease the signal of an unattended message rather than to block it entirely.
Late-selection Model (Bottleneck)
All information comes into the processing sequence but if they are not important, they decay rapidly. Moves bottleneck to later in the processing sequence.
Load Theory (Bottleneck)
Whether selection is early or late will depend on whether the perceptual load is high or low. High: early selection. Low: late selection.
*Unitary-resource Models
Depicts how people can control how attention is divided across tasks. Performing several tasks at once is not difficult unless the available capacity of attentional resources is exceeded.
Dual-task Procedures
Measure performance when attempting to do a primary and secondary task simultaneously. Increased attention to primary task reduced performance on secondary task.
Malleable Attentional Resources
When tasks are automized, we pay less attention to them. Performance can suffer when their is mental overload and the task is too easy.
*Multiple Resource Model/Theory
States that instead of one resource of attention, there are several distinct cognitive subsystems and each have their own limited pool of resources. Performance of multiple tasks will be better if task dimensions do not overlap. Multi-task performance is often worse when tasks share the same sensory and motor modalities or processing codes.
*Executive-Process Interactive Control (EPIC) Theory
Emphasizes importance of strategic coordination of the tasks. Reductions in multiple-task performance are due to the strategies that people adopt to perform different tasks in different manners. Assumes there is no limitation in the capacity of central, cognitive processes.
EPIC Example
Present people with two tasks. Stimuli for tasks presented in rapid succession and responses for Task 1 should be made before Task 2. Responses are slower than normal for Task 2 because response is strategically deferred.
Selective Listening
Used to present a target message with a distractor message to determine what characteristics of the distractor interfere with the target message by masking the target or confusing the listener.
Selective Listening is Easy When…
- Target message physically distinct from distractor
- Spatial separation of target and distractor
- Target and distractor are of different intensities
- Target and distractor are from different frequency regions
Covert Orienting
Observer should be able to selectively attend to a location in the visual field that is different from his/her fixation point. Spotlight metaphor.
Endogenous Orienting
Shifting your attention voluntarily.
Exogenous Orienting
Involuntary shift of attention. Can happen when observer does not move his eyes.
Inhibition of Return
Tendency to avoid returning the the same location (once attention has shifted away from an exogenously cued location).
Divided Attention
Problems arise when two or more targets must be identified separately. (Flash green-flip switch, flash red-turn wheel). Prioritizing can help a user divide his attention between sources.
Performance-Operating Characteristic (POC) Curve
Trade offs described by this. Baseline performance for each task when performed by itself compared to when the tasks are combined.
Independence Point
Point where no attentional limitations arise from doing the two tasks together.
Performance Efficiency
The distance between the POC curve and the independence point. Indicator of how efficiently the two tasks can be performed together.
Cost of Concurrence
The difference between performance for one task alone and dual-task performance.
Arousal and Attention
Theoretically, performance will not decrease at high levels of arousal if attention remains on the task at hand.
Perceptual Narrowing
Restriction of attention that occurs under high arousal. Same idea as “tunnel vision”.
Vigilance Decrement
A decrease in vigilance (sustained attention) when a task is performed for an extended period of time.
Vigilance Task
One in which the user is expected to monitor multiple displays simultaneously while having nothing to do for long periods of time between events.
