Attention

Question 1

3 things attention helps us do?

Answer 1

• focus on whats important at hand
• ignore irrelevant info
• Allows cognitive access to some information, not all

Question 2

What systems are involved for attention?

Answer 2

Same systems for alertness (thalamus, ARAS) PLUS association cortices of frontal and parietal lobes

Question 3

What happens in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex?

Answer 3

Working memory, hypothesis testing

Preparation and execution of action

Question 4

What happens with a lesion of the dorsolateral Prefrontal cortex?

Answer 4

Decreased initiative, attention, will have trouble with dual task situation

Question 5

What area of the brain is active in the cognitive phase?

Answer 5

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Question 6

What is the anterior cingulate cortex involved in?

Answer 6

Assessing the salience (how well something stands out) of emotion and motivational information

Question 7

When is the Anterior cingulate especially involved?

Answer 7

WHen effort is needed to carry out a task such as in early learning and problem-solving

Question 8

What type of resource is attention?

Answer 8

Limited resource!!!

Question 9

What happens if attentional demand is greater than attentional resources available?

Answer 9

Performance will decline

Tasks will have to be sequenced

Question 10

What is the primary factor in giving more attentional effort?

Answer 10

Motivation to perform well is the primary factor (top down model)

Question 11

What systems are activated with increased effort?

Answer 11

Cholinergic and dopaminergic cortical systems

Question 12

What is needed to overcome detrimental factors (Fatigue, potential distractors etc.)

Answer 12

High level of motivation

Question 13

What is internal control of attention?

Answer 13

What we choose to pay attention to

Question 14

What is external control of attention?

Answer 14

When something in the environment grabs our attention

Question 15

What is selective attention?

Answer 15

Information outside your focus is not paid attention to eg reading a book on the train

Question 16

How do highly skilled performers manage the challenges of limited attentional capacity?

Answer 16

The can make good choices about what to attend to.

Skilled at shifting attention among pertinent information in the environment

Question 17

What is the cue utilization hypothesis?

Answer 17

In low stress situations performance may not be optimal because attention is not focused and so irrelevant cues are being detected and relevant ones are being ignored

Question 18

When is performance optimal?

Answer 18

Moderate arousal level. Too little and too much and performance suffers

Question 19

What is perceptual narrowing?

Answer 19

Happens in high stress situations where you get tunnel vision. It is good for focus but can miss relevant information

Question 20

Can perceptual narrowing improve with training?

Answer 20

Yes

Question 21

What is sustained attention?

Answer 21

Maintaining attention on a task over a prolonged period

Question 22

What is sustained attention affected by?

Answer 22

Fatigue

Question 23

What is divided attention?

Answer 23

When you are trying to process two streams of information at one time or performing more than one task

Question 24

What is dual task deficit?

Answer 24

AKA divided attention defecit

When we reach our attentional capacity limit when performing dual tasks, our performance may decline

Question 25

What happens in older patients with Hx of falls during dual task?

Answer 25

Increased sway on posturography

Question 26

Can you improve dual task performance?

Answer 26

yes with practice

Question 27

Where in the information processing model does limited capacity for attention create a problem

Answer 27

In the response selection (decision) phase

Question 28

In which stage of motor learning is the most attention used?

Answer 28

Cognitive phase

Question 29

What is better for motor learning, external or internal focus?

Answer 29

external focus