Attention Flashcards
1) Selective Attention
2) and why
3) example
- attending to relevant info and ignoring distracting info
- limited processing ability
- select the important things only
- focus on one task, ignore distractors
- inattentional blindness
Early Filter Model
- filter out distracting or irrelevant info at the level of perception
- similar to Broadbent
- distracting info is removed at sensory buffer
Apophenia
Seeing meaningful patterns in meaningless input
Components of Attention
-Top Down: Frontal, parietal and limbic
::: Observer guides attention
-Bottom up: Visual, auditory, somatosensoiry
:::: Stimuli guides attention
-Arousal Mechanism: Ascending reticular activating
:::: Alerting attention
Sustained Attention
-ability to focus on one task
-VIGILANCE
-sustained attention response task (SART)
:series of number is presented, respond only to target
Inattentional Blindeness
definition
- related to selective attention
- failure to recognize a new stimuli because you are focusing on something else
Support for Early Filter model
- Dichotic listening tasks
- worse when switching ears, info decay
-Selective Looking Tasks
: like the gorilla
- Shadowing tasks:
- participants hear 2 messages in headphones binaurally,
- must attend to one or the other, can only retain content from the attended message
- still gather info from the unattended message, like sex of speaker
- filtering out info at perceptual features, but
Shadowing Tasks
- participants hear 2 messages in headphones binaurally,
- must attend to one or the other, can only retain content from the attended message
- still gather info from the unattended message, like sex of speaker
- filtering out info at perceptual features, but
Arguments against Early Filter model
- process some information at semantic level
1) attend to your name when hearing it at a party
2) -shadowing tasks with shock. pair words with shock stimulus. when playing the shock words to an unattended ear, people still have physiological response to words
- skin conductance goes up
- registering the sematnic content at some level
Late Filter Theory
-Stroop Task:
:congruent trial, very easy
:incongruent trial, much harder
treisman’s attenuation Theory
- early filter model, says that filter attenuates unattended information
- doesnt shut OFF the information, just quiets it down
- meaningful information can still
Stroop Task
- name the color of the ink in a printed color word
- much faster with congruent trials than incongruent trials
- processing unattended information at semantic level
- automatically process the words
Automatic versus controlled task
examples in Stroop Task
- activities that do not require conscious attention to run smoothly
: naming the color word
:bottom up - activities we must attend to consciously
: name the color of the ink
: top down
Load Theory
- task difficulty will determine how and when we select our attention
- we WANT to use up all our resources during a task
Load Theory
- task difficulty will determine how and when we select our attention
- we WANT to use up all our resources during a task
Difficult versus easier tasks (LOAD THEORY)
- difficult:
- attention is selected early, focused on one thing
- filter out extra info because of high perceptual load
- like early selection filter
easy:
- processing all info within capacity
- attention is selected later
- process irrelevant information, less focused
- like a late filter, more distracting information moves further down processing pipeline
if asked to find the letter “A” out of 5 letters, will you do it faster or slower than if asked to find the letter among 20 letters? Why?
- Faster
- Higher perceptual load, less attention resources to divert to distracting details
Capacity Model
Two views
- Central Resource capacity
- Multiple Resource Capacity
Central Resource Capacity
- attention from any task is coming from the same place
- using up attention means you wont have attention resources for other stuff
Multiple Resource capacity
- different senses have different pools of attentional resources
- visual distractors wont hurt auditory tasks
Support for Central Resource capacity
-Driving simulator:
- either with or without radio playing
- measure likelyhood that participant will detect an unusual stimuli
- with auditory distractor (radio on) less likely to to notice visual stimuli
Evidence for Multiple REsource Capacity
- participants in two conditions, high auditory load, low auditory load
- during both, participants saw visual distractors
- used PET scan to see whether visual processing parts of brain were active (they were)
- didn’t affect the ability to process the auditory information
Attentional Blink
- look for a target, when presented the target will miss another target that comes right after
- celebrating the victory of attending to one target
- shows that there is a processing capacity, because we need more time to recognize both targets, we’ve used up attentional resources
- if targets are within 500ms of eachother
Unilateral neglect
and tests for it
- damage to Parietal lobes, important for TOP DOWN SPACIAL PROCESSING
- half of spatial recognition field is gone, typically left side, both in memory and physical representations
- cancellation task, mark out lines
- draw an image
Change Blindness
-because of selective attention unaware of change to something in the background
emotional Stroop task
- people take longer to name color ink of emotion word
- automatically process the semantics of the word
Reticular activating system
- brain stem
- critical for general awareness
- if damaged, coma
Key areas of the Frontal lobes for Attention
- Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)
- selecting task relevant info
-anterior cingulate cortex
(ACC)
-focusing attention, mediation response
4 characteristics of inattentional blindness
1) people fail to notice event/object
2) object is fully visible
3) inability to notice is based on attention not on visual features (camo)
4) object/ event is unexpected
Testing for inattentional blindness
features
specifics
- participants arent expecting target
- participants are using attention resources and looking in the area of target
cross on a screen, vertical/horizontal longer, did you see the spot?
word stem completion task
-related to inattentional blindness test, instead of black box, show a word
“armpit”
- then given the word “arm____” asked to complete
- if shown ‘armpit’ much more likely to say armpit, even if not attending to word display
De ja vu
implicit priming and inattentional blindness
Attentional Capture
examples of meaningful stimuli
- opposite of inattentional blindness
- such a powerful stimuli that it drags attention away from other things
- bottom up processing
- survival adaptation
- related to go no go task
e. g.
- bodies and faces
Posner’s Cueing task
- fixate on center screen
- cue is displayed, moving attention
- target is displayed, reaction time measured
VALID TRIAL:
cues predict where target is
INVALID TRIAL
cues do not predict target location
Inhibition of return
- Attention is inhinbited in returning to a recently attended location after a longer duration between cue and target
- related to Posner’s cueing task
- less inclined to divert attention back to where you were
Feature Integration Theory
- stages:
- preattention phase, auto process feature, use feature search-focused attention phase, used conjunction search
Tests for feature integration theory
- feature search, bottom up, target is set apart by one feature
“pop out effect”
-conjunction search, requires more processing time, top down
Overt versus Covert visual attention
- attending to something with your eyes,
- attending to something without your eyes
Vigilance decrement
-a decrease in performance in sustained attention tasks as a function of time
Explanations for vigilance decrement
overload: SARTS are tiring, over work the participants
underload: SARTS are boring af, encourage mind wandering
Task Switching
- changing from working on one task to another
- top down processing based on goals of a task
- switch between mental sets, consuming resources
switch cost
- performance decline in a test immediately following a switch in task
- happens because there is a cognitive energy cost
Action slips
- messing up a task by confusing elements of the external stimuli and your internal thoughts
- result of mind wandering
benefits of mind wandering
- future thinking: think about possible outcomes
- creative thinking: allows new solution to old problems
- boredom relief: mind wandering speeds up perception of time
