Attention Flashcards
Attention:
State of vigilance, alertness
Allows selection of some sensory inputs vs. other sensory inputs
Mental concentration which allows one to focus on a particular task
Controls access to conscious experiences
Focused Attention (all seen as focused attention)
One channel is selected. Focus on one thing at a time
Sustained Attention (extreme)
Vigilance and mental control. Focus on something over a period of time
Selective Attention
Freedom from distractibility. Try to focus on one thing and not be distracted by anything else.
Alternating Attention (extreme)
Shifting between tasks. Involves multiple input.
Divided Attention
Multiple tasks/channels processed simultaneously (e.g., driving)
When multitasking the tasks being performed should be different from each other in order to have the most success.
Focused attention (know roles of dorsal & ventral networks) DORSAL
Voluntary
- Endogenous
- Goal Directed
- Controlled, effortful
- Stimulus selection, allocation
- More anterior (front of brain)
- Frontoparietal
- What’s going on in your head
Focused attention (know roles of dorsal & ventral networks) VENTRAL
- Involuntary
- Exogenous
- Stimulus Driven
- Automatic
- Disengage, shift, engage
- More posterior (back of brain)
- Right hemisphere
- What is triggered by what happens in your environment
auditory shadowing
is also referred to as dichotic listening and repeating. It was proven in an experiment where a person must repeat out loud (shadowing) a spoken message heard in one ear while a second, different message is played in the other ear.
The shadowed message is usually difficult to repeat, retention of meaning is poor, and tone in repeating is monotonous. (Think about being on the phone while someone else is trying to talk to you. You often have to ask the other person to repeat themselves and often may not remember what the other person said either!)
The unattended message content is usually never retained although certain characteristics can be distinguished such as a man or woman’s voice (this is interesting b/c it shows that other systems are at work!).
Colin Cherry: Cocktail party effect
Physical differences (e.g., sex of speaker, voice intensity) were used very efficiently to attend to one voice out of two
The sound features of a given source (temporal coherence)
Top-down processes
Ability to follow a melody in the presence of irrelevant notes
Familiarity with the target voice
Accuracy of perceiving what one speaker is saying in the context of several other voices is much higher if listeners have previously listened to the speaker’s voice in isolation (McDermott, 2009)
Use of visual information to follow what a given speaker is saying
In summary, there is a “winner-takes-all” situation in which the processing of one auditory input (the winner) suppresses the brain activity of all other input (losers)
Filter theories: Summary of findings
Some information may be selected early, while other information is selected later.
Most parsimonious model involves a flexible filter to accommodate processing of different types of information (sometimes an early filter, later filter, or something in between)
Total available attentional capacity is allocated to processing.
Focused visual attention: Spotlight
Posner (1980) argued that visual attention is like a spotlight
Focused visual attention: Zoom lens
Other psychologists (e.g., Eriksen & St James, 1986) have argued that visual attention is like a zoom lens We can deliberately increase or decrease the area of focal attention just as a zoom lens can be adjusted to alter the visual area it covers
Focused visual attention: Split Attention (“Multiple Spotlights”)
A 3rd theoretical approach is split attention (e.g., Awh & Pashler, 2000)
Allocation of attention to two (or more) non-adjacent regions of visual space
Crossmodal attention
Coordinating information from two or more sense modalities at the same time
Visual attention can involve…
a combination of space-based, object-based and feature-based processes
Divided attention/multitasking (& how to improve by reducing interference)
Task Similarity-attention is more accurate when tasks are more different (causes less competition)
Practice-improves attentional ability (divided attention ability)
Task Difficulty-different levels of difficulty of tasks encourage better functioning overall
If tasks are too similar will be harder to pay attention to them both than if they were different- ex driving and texting vs. driving and using blue tooth. More competition for texting and driving.
Baddeley’s hierarchical model
Central Executive control over: Articulary Phonological Loop Via the left hemisphere? Visuospatial Sketchpad Via right hemisphere?
Wickens’ multiple resources
Input Auditory, Spatial, Visual Processing Verbal, Spatial Output Manual, Spoken
Minimize interference at three levels in order to multitask
Ex: driving and talking on cell phone:
Input: Visual auditory
Processing: verbal & spatial processing
Output: Manual task vs vocal response
Disengagement
of attention from a given visual stimulus (neglect pts., Balint’s syndrome).
Get out of it
Shifting
of attention from one target stimulus to another (PSP, Balint’s syndrome).
Move
Engaging
or locking attention on a new visual stimulus (uses the pulvinar for directed attention and to prevent attention from being focused on unwanted stimulus)
Get into the new task.
Unilateral visual [spatial] neglect—ventral attention network; multiple forms exist
A lack of awareness of stimuli presented to the side of space on the opposite side to the brain damage.
Unilateral neglect is a disorder of attention where patients fail to attend to stimuli, such as objects and people, located on one side of space.
It most commonly results from brain injury to the right cerebral hemisphere, causing visual neglect of the left-hand side of space.
Extinction: Neglect patients sometimes detect a single stimulus presented to their left visual field, but fail to detect the same stimulus when another stimulus is presented to the right of it. Spatial deficit is worst in competitive condition.
Automatic processes
Are Fast
Do not reduce the capacity for performing other tasks (i.e. they demand zero attention)
Are unavailable to consciousness
Are unavoidable (i.e. they always occur when an appropriate stimulus is presented, even if that stimulus is outside the field of attention.)
Automatic Thoughts
- Unlimited Capacity
- Require NO attention
- Are inflexible
- Info can be processed in parallel
Controlled Thoughts:
- Have limited capacity
- Require attention
- Are flexible
- Info processed in serial
Instance theory ( = automaticity is memory retrieval)
How automaticity develops
Automatic processes are fast because they require only the retrieval of “past solutions” from long term memory: automaticity is memory retrieval
*Action slips (definition & your own examples)
Absentminded/unintended errors that usually occur when we are preoccupied, distracted, or under stress (like autopilot)
Usually occur during the performance of tasks that are so highly practiced they are largely automatic.
Storage failures
forget action or perform the wrong action
ex. you take your vitamin twice in the morning
Test failures
make a mistake in progress of a sequence of actions
ex. you pick up the wrong books for class
Subroutine failures
add, delete, or reorder a sequence of actions
(ex. you skip a letter when writing a word).
Discrimination failures
recognition error
ex. you mistake shaving cream for whipped cream
Program assembly failures
(ex. when cutting green beans you throw out the bean and save the ends).
Happens because we get into a routine and are not paying attention.
Distractability
deficient attention. Susceptible to peripheral distraction.
Hypervigilance
Hypervigilance
Selective attention
failure to attend to anxiety provoking or uncomfortable stimuli
ADHD
problems with attention, impulse control, etc. Barkley considers ADHD to be a motivational disorder. Denckla considers it an intentional disorder.
Anxiety
affects ability to attend. See attentional narrowing
Neglect
A lack of awareness of stimuli presented to the side of space on the opposite side to the brain damage.
Extinction:
Neglect patients sometimes detect a single stimulus presented to their left visual field, but fail to detect the same stimulus when another stimulus is presented to the right of it. Spatial deficit is worst in competitive condition
Balint’s Syndrome
A brain damaged condition in which some patients find it hard to shift attention
Simultanagnosia
A brain damaged condition in which only one object can be seen at a time
Depression vs. anxiety effects of memory (esp depression) and attention (esp anxiety)
Anxiety Depression Function: Detect danger Conserve energy Focus: External Internal Follows: Danger Loss Time: Present Past Cog. Affected: Attention Memory
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Selective attentional bias/interpretive bias- interpret ambiguous stimuli as threatening
Distractibility- sensitivity to danger; hypervigilance
Attentional narrowing- increased level of anxiety cause decrease in attentional scope. Purpose is to exclude irrelevant info and improve efficiency. However, if there is too much anxiety, relevant info is excluded and functioning is compromised
Attentional narrowing
information and improve efficiency. However, if there is too much anxiety, relevant information is excluded and functioning is compromised. Visual fields become narrower to help force attention so more efficient in processing of certain areas.
Ex: Placement of important switches for emergency landing in center of console of control panel of pilots
Ex: Missing important info during a bank robbery because anxious
Interpretive bias
Also known as “selective attentional” bias
When an individual with GAD interprets ambiguous stimuli as threatening
Hypervigilence
Excessive attention to all internal and external stimuli (may be secondary to delusional or paranoid states)
Distractability
deficient attention; susceptible to peripheral distraction
Transience
memory becomes less reliable over time; typical when information is not used.
Absentmindedness
occurs when insufficient attention is applied to a stimulus at the time of encoding or retrieval; usually occurs with automatic actions (losing keys, etc).
Blocking
provided with relevant cues to a sought after item but unable to elicit it
One of the most subjective “sins” because people are aware of the block when it occurs.
Tip of the tongue
Ugly Sisters- Incorrect items that are related to the target that keeps recurring during the retrieval attempt.
Incidences of blocking increase with age
Misattribution
Some form of memory is present, but it is misattributed to an incorrect time, place, or person.
3 forms of misattribution
May remember item correctly but it is misattributed to an incorrect source (don’t remember where you know a face from).
People may misattribute a thought to their own imagination when they are actually retrieving it from a prior experience (unintentional plagiarism).
False recall or recognition of items or events that never happened (occurs more in older adults)
Suggestibility
The tendency to incorporate information provided by others into one’s own recollections.
Bias
The distorting of influences of present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings on recollection of previous experiences
Persistence
Remembering a fact or event that one would prefer to forget
Encoding
Info enters the system
Storage
Info is stored
Retrieval
Ability to get to information
Basic steps in memory
Encoding → Storage → Retrieval
Information is encoded then transferred to ST-memory then transferred to LT-memory (storage). Then retrieval is the process of bringing it back out from LT-memory
(A tape recording is a good example)
Iconic memory
what we see. The ability to hold visual images.
We form a representation of what we see in the real world. We hold onto this for a very brief period of time (information decays within 0.5 seconds.)
Echoic memory
what we are hear - The ability to hold sounds.
We hold onto auditory information a bit longer (duration of information ~2-4 seconds)
Visual world is pretty stationary (gradual change) but auditory is “here & gone”; that’s why auditory/sensory information hangs around longer
Short Term Memory (primary); Case KF–significance of his deficits to understanding multiple memory stores model
Characterized by a limited capacity of up to seven pieces of independent information. A brief duration of these items last from 3-20 seconds. Decay appears to be the primary mechanism of memory loss.
Case KF
Impaired STM but had intact LTM
Different because memory is supposed to follow: sensory → STM → LTM
Reason was he had difficulty with audio STM; was taking in visual STM and transferring it into long term – this was the explanation.
Long Term Memory (secondary)
Provides the framework to which we attach new knowledge. Information can be stored for extended periods of time and the limits of its capacity are not known.
Primacy Effect
Indicates that the words presented at the start of a list are better remembered than words in the middle of the list
Recency Effect
Indicates that the words presented at the end of a list are better remembered than words in the middle of the list.
Baddeley’s working memory model, including 4 components (revised model)
Central executive: a control system that mediates attention and regulation of processes occurring in working memory. Four functions:
Switching of retrieval plans
Timesharing in dual-task studies
Selective attention to certain stimuli while ignoring others
Temporary activation of long-term memory
**Key component
**Limited capacity
**Resembles attention
**Deals with cognitively demanding tasks
Visuo-spatial sketch:
what people call the “minds eye.” Specialized for spatial and visual coding.
Storage and manipulation of spatial and visual information - Limited capacity.
Phonological loop
used to rehearse verbal information to keep it in the ST-memory. Holds information in a speech based form
Episodic buffer
Holds and integrates diverse information
Assumptions from central executive theory
If two tasks use the same component, they cannot be performed successfully together
If two tasks use separate components, it should be possible to perform them as well together as separately.
Explicit Memory (aka declarative memory)
A type of Long Term-memory in which we store memories of fact
It is divided into semantic and episodic memories.
Conscious intentional recollection of previous experiences and learned information
Ex: what you had for breakfast yesterday, what you read in the newspaper
Explicit
conscious, intentional recollections and thinking of learned experiences (e.g., what you had for breakfast yesterday, content and person in last telephone conversation, what you read in the newspaper or on the internet, etc.)
Implicit
unconscious, non-intentional (e.g., use of language, motor skills like riding a bike, skating, swimming)
Incidental Memory
Memory for information people are not asked to remember
Tested via “memory by surprise; unexpected”
Declarative Memory
Is a type of LTM in which we store memories of fact
Divided into semantic and episodic memories
Episodic Memory
Knowledge about the event of learning something
DIFFERS from autobiographical memory - Memory for significant life events; memory contains information about yourself, and about personal experiences.
Semantic Memory
Knowledge independent of context
Ex: knowledge of meaning of words; and how to apply them
Nondeclarative Memory
Involves recollection of skills, things you know how to do that you don’t need to recall consciously
Ex: How to type
Procedural memory; Priming
The LTM subset that consists of skills and procedures
Ex: Learning to ride a bike, playing a musical instrument, and learning how to swim
Priming
The activation of particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task
Episodic Memory
Knowledge about the event of learning something
Semantic Memory
Knowledge independent of context
Ex: knowledge of meaning of words; and how to apply them
Memory Tasks
Possible Tests (Think CVLT-II)
Encoding
Immediate Recognition
Storage
Delayed Recognition
Retrieval
Expect recognition > free recall;
Retrieval Problem: recogn.»_space;> free recall
Primacy/Recency Effects
Serial Position Curve
Working Memory
Post-distractional tasks (distracting person from rehearsing)
Levels of Processing
refers to semantic meaningfulness (shallow vs. deep) and accounts for much of how we remember information (tend to remember info that is more semantically rich)
Transfer Appropriate Processing
TAP refers to the similarity of info at study and test, with the idea that our memory is more accurate when there is similarity of the info at study and test
TAP functions within the LOP framework.
Schemata
stored body of knowledge about a topic (ex: your knowledge of dogs)
Propositions
representation of meaning that can be stored/retrieved from memory; in form of true/false statements (ex: a dog has fur)
Script
representation of a complex event; allows for predictions (ex: what happens in a restaurant, e.g., seated, given menu, order food, served, eat, pay/include tip!)
Autobiographical memory
memory for significant life events
childhood amnesia during earliest (up to 5 yrs old?) years
episodic precedes semantic memory in development
Note: episodic memory differs from autobiographical memory and is one’s daily memory for events (often insignificant in grand scheme of life)
Personal relevance & memory
our memory is better for personally meaningful info
Eyewitness memory
memory for a special event; often emotions involved; consider attentional narrowing as a factor; consider post-event info can alter one’s memory for the event (work of Loftus & colleagues: how fast was car going when it hit/smashed into the wall? Faster estimate with the verb smashed
Interviewing re eyewitness memory
be careful re suggestibility of client; special interviews have been designed to minimize likelihood of implanting false memories
Prospective memory
remembering to do things (at a future time)
Bower’s network theory
we discussed this with emotions theories; emotions are included in network (nodes, spreading activation); led to following 2 constructs: Mood state dependent recall, Mood congruence
Consolidation
process of putting info into LTM; hours to days; neural involvement of hippocampus and other brain structures necessary
H.M.—most famous amnestic case; amnesia followed brain surgery for epilepsy; see Memory and Learning handout for details. Henry Molaison was his name (released upon his death).
Suffered from epilepsy which resulted from bike accident in childhood. Had a bilateral medial temporal lobe surgery and lost 2/3 of hippocampal formation and amygdala
After surgery he suffered from severe anterograde amnesia, although his STM was intact he could not commit new events to LTM. He was able to keep his LT-procedural memories
Clive Wearing
another famous amnestic individual; amnesia due to viral encephalitis; procedural memories (conducting; playing piano) intact. Declarative memories severely impacted.
Developed amnesia, and was completely unable to encode new memories. He remembers little of his life before damaged hippocampal function.
Frontal lobe damage explain his acting out behaviors/rage/shame/uncontrolled emotions.
Strategies for improving memory
see end of Memory and Learning handout; include common sense approach re maximizing one’s attention, emotional outlook, study/test similarity; individualized, meaningful strategies
Self-conscious emotions vs. basic emotions
Basic emo. develop early in life (w/in months)
Development of self-conscious emotions requires high cognitive ability
Develops later in childhood
Shame, Guilt, & Pride
Both states and traits
Shame (-), Hubris (+)
More trait-like
stable, global, uncontrollable (regarding the self)
Guilt (-), Authentic Pride (+)
More state-like
unstable, specific, controllable (regarding a behavior)
Guilt vs. Shame
Guilt is more constructive than shame; focus is on behavior not person
