Attention Flashcards
What are the types of attention?
- Overt attention
- Covert attention
What is overt attention?
Physical turning of head and eyes in order to preferentially process an object/region of visual space.
What is covert attention?
Preferentially processing objects in visual space without moving the eyes.
What is the dichotic listening test (Cherry, 1953)?
- Subjects were played 2 different auditory messages simultaneously, one in each ear.
- The subjects were asked to selectively attend to message in one ear by repeating it but ignore the message in the other ear.
What were the results of the dichotic listening test?
- The contents of the unatteded message were not remembered, despite the contents of the attended message being remembered.
- The characteristics of the unattended message were remembered, including:
1. Pitch
2. Volume
3. Location - This is not overt attention as both messages were simultaneously presented, but the subject selectively only processed message in one ear.
Why did behaviourism delay study of covert attention?
- Covert attention is a purely internal process, with no external observable counterpart.
- This went against the ethos of behaviourism.
What was Broadbent’s filter model of attention?
- All information passes through ‘bottleneck’ that filters it and selects the information that goes on to be processed.
- This is all-or-nothing, so that only physical attributes of the discarded information is processed and nothing else.
What is the filter-attenuation model of attention?
Information not attended to is not completely discarded (i.e. not completely unprocessed). Instead, it is simply attenuated so that less processing power is dedicated to it, but it is processed none-the-less.
What evidence goes against Broadbent’s filter model and supports the filter-attenuation model?
- Treisman (1960): When message that was being selectively attended to switched ears, the subjects were able to also switch ears to maintain attention.
- Cherry (1953): When subject’s own name appeared in the unattended message, he/she would still notice it.
- Von Wright et al. (1975): Words conditioned to be associated with electric shocks still produced Galvanic skin response (i.e. fear response) when played on the unattended channel of the dichotic listening test.
What was Posner’s experiment?
- A target was presented on either the left or right-hand side of the screen.
- A cue was presented at the centre of the screen:
- Valid cue: Cue correctly indicated position of target
- Neutral cue: Cue did not predict the position of target
- Invalid cue: Cue incorrectly indicated position of target
What were the results of Posner’s experiment?
- Subjects presented with valid cue were the fastest to respond to the target
- Subjects with invalid cue were the slowest to respond to the target
- Indicated that there was a physical process of shifting attention that took time
What is the “spotlight metaphor” for attention?
Attention is like a spotlight. Everything positioned within the circle of space in the spotlight of attention was processed while everything outside was not processed, regardless of the actual characteristics of the objects in the spotlight (i.e. no object perception needed).
What are exogenous cues for attention?
External indicators of attention that indicates in physical space where attention should be drawn (i.e. shining light into spot where attention is needed).
What are endogenous cues for attention?
indicators of attention that symbolise where attention should be drawn but require cognitive decoding of semantics in order to do so (i.e. arrow pointing in direction attention should be drawn).
What neurobiological evidence is there for attention?
fMRI studies have shown that certain areas of the cortex are more active when attending to specific types of stimuli (moving or static) compared to when not attending to it. This suggests attention acting as a kind of ‘gating mechanism’ for attention.
