Attention Flashcards
What is selective attention?
When resources are focused on one type opf stimulus while ignoring others
What is the endogenous visual system?
- Top-down voluntary and goal directed
- Dorsal fronto-parietal network
What is the exogenous attentional system?
- Automatic, involuntary stimulus-driven system
- Right hemisphere of the ventral fronto-parietal network
What is the evidence for dissociation?
Virtually no overlap in the brain areas associated with bottom-up and top-down processing
What are the two types of visual neglect and what is this condition associated with?
Persistent neglect - ignore left visual field
Personal neglect - neglect of left side of the body
What is the spotlight theory and what evidence is there for it?
- Small area of focus with little outside this area
- Reaction time fastest when probe is in the middle of a word (La Berge 1983)
What is the multiple spotlight theory?
- Split attention where attention can be allocated to more than 2 non-adjascent areas of visual space
- Evidence from Awh & Pashler 2000 with number grid
Describe two pieces of evidence for object based attention?
Dorsal simultagnosia - only a portion of the visual field is perceived and patients act as if they can only se 1 object at a time
Balint’s syndrome - Can describe objects but only see one of the two
What evidence is there for a space and object based attentional system?
Tipper & Behrmann (1996) experiments with patients with unilateral neglect
What is inhibition of return?
Reduced perceptual priority for information in a region that recently enjoyed a higher priority
What two factors affected the processing of unattended visual stimuli?
Perceptual load - distraction greater under low perceptual load
Load on executive cognitive control - distinguishing between targets and distractors
What is divided attention?
The allocation of resources when performing two tasks at the same time
Which 3 factors influence dual task performance?
- Task similarity
- Practice
- Task difficulty
