Attention

Question 1

Cocktail party effect

Answer 1

Participant’s name gets through
• Cocktail party phenomenon
• Participants can shadow meaningful messages that switch from one
ear to another
• Dear Aunt Jane (Gray & Weddeburn, 1960)
• Effects of practice on detecting information in unattended ear
• You can be trained to detect in unattended ear
• Based on the meaning of the message

Question 2

Attention Capacity

Answer 2

capacity: the amount of percepual resources that is available for a given task or process

Question 3

Attention Selectivity

Answer 3

selectivity: when total capacity is fized, the amount of attention paid to different subjects of visual information can be allocated flexibly to some degree

Question 4

Early- Selection

Answer 4

Early selection – may not
select the most relevant
information

Broadbent’s filter model

• Early-selection model
• Filters message before incoming information is analyzed for meaning
• Sensory memory
• Holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second
• Transfers all information to next stage

Filter
• Identifies attended message based on physical characteristics
• Only attended message is passed on to the next stage
• Detector
• Processes all information to determine higher-level characteristics of the
message

Short-term memory
• Receives output of detector
• Holds information for 10-15 seconds and may transfer it to long-term
memory

*** Broadbent’s model could not explain the cocktail party phenomenon

Question 5

Late-Selection Hypothesis

Answer 5

According to the late-selection hypothesis, all input receives analysis
but only the attended input reaches consciousness or is
remembered.

Late selection – resources
are wasted processing the
entire scene

• Late selection model
• e.g. McKay (1973)

• Selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after
information has been analyzed for meaning
• McKay (1973)
• In attending ear, participants heard ambiguous sentences
• “They were throwing stones at the bank.”
• In unattended ear, participants heard either
• “river”
• “money”

• McKay (1973)
• In test, participants had to choose which was closest to the meaning of
attended to message:
• They threw stones toward the side of the river yesterday
• They threw stones at the savings and loan association yesterday
• The meaning of the biasing word affected participants’ choice
• Participants were unaware of the presentation of the biasing words

Question 6

Filter Model

Answer 6

Broadbent’s filter model

Question 7

Bottleneck Model

Answer 7

Visual attention as a bottleneck has two properties of attention: Capacity and Selectivity

Question 8

Attenuation Model

Answer 8

Tresiman’s attenuation theory

Intermediate-selection model
• Attended message can be separated from unattended message early in the
information-processing system
• Selection can also occur later

Attenuator
• Analyzes incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language,
and meaning
• Attended to message is let through the attenuator at full strength
• Unattended message is let through at a much weaker strength

Dictionary unit
• Contains words, each of which have thresholds for being activated
• Words that are common or important have low thresholds
• Uncommon words have high thresholds

Question 9

Paradox of Intelligent Selection

Answer 9

The paradox of intelligent selection
• Early selection
• Late selection

We focus on particular aspects of the scene so that the visual system
can intensively process the important information
• Attentional selection must then have some means of choosing the
relevant information
• How can the visual system choose the most relevant information
without first processing all of the information
• Early selection – may not
select the most relevant
information
• Late selection – resources
are wasted processing the
entire scene

Question 10

Inattentional Blindness

Answer 10

Selective Attention
• Sometimes effects of attention are so strong that we fail to see stimuli that are directly in front of our eyes.
• For instance, if participants are asked to look at a fixation target while attending to another part of the screen, they may fail to notice changes in shape to the fixation target. This phenomenon is known as inattentional blindness.

Inattentional blindness experiment. (a) On each trial, participants judge whether the horizontal or vertical arm is longer. (b) After a few trials, the inattention trial occurs, in which a geometric object is flashed along with the arms. (c) In the recognition test, the participant is asked to indicate which geometric
object was presented.

Question 11

Change Blindness

Answer 11

• Change-blindness is another phenomena that supports the
hypothesis that there is no conscious perception without attention
• Stimulus – Alternately show subjects two complex scenes which are
identical except for one object or feature that changes
• Subjects must determine whether or not a change is occurring

Change blindness is a form of inattentional blindness in which two thirds
of individuals giving directions failed to notice a change in the
individual asking for directions.

Question 12

Searchlight/ Spotlight model of attention

Answer 12

Spatial attention is
sometimes thought of
as a “searchlight.”
•We can move this
searchlight in space, as
well as adjust the size of
the “beam.”

Attention is like a beam of light: Indivisible- only covers contiguous locations, moves spatially from one region to another, enhances regions within spotlight, size of region may vary but total capaity is limited, independent of eye movements

Question 13

Posner Cuing Paradigm (costs and Benefits; not timing)

Answer 13

The Posner Cuing Paradigm
• Subjects are instructed to respond when a
target appears on the screen
• The target is preceded by a cue or
indication of which side the target will
appear on
• The cue is either valid or invalid
• Subjects maintain fixation on the center of
the screen

 Valid cues are believed to speed the subject’s reaction time (a benefit) by
allowing the subjects to covertly shift attention
• An invalid cue induces
a cost – slowed reaction
time – by shifting the
subjects’ covert attention
away from the target
location
• A push, or endogenous
cue

Question 14

Unilateral neglect syndrome

Answer 14

Evidence from unilateral neglect syndrome, caused by damage to
the right parietal lobe, could be argued to support a space-based
view. These individuals cannot attend to the left side of space.

Question 15

Feature integration theory

Answer 15

Treisman and Schmidt (1982)
• Participants report combination of features from different stimuli
• Illusory conjunctions occur because features are “free floating”

• Focused attention stage
• Attention plays key role
• Features are combined

Preattentive stage
• Automatic
• No effort or attention
• Unaware of process
• Object analyzed into features

Steps in Treisman’s feature integration theory. Objects are analyzed
into their features in the preattentive stage, and then the features are
combined later with the aid of attention.