Attention Flashcards
Define overt attention
Where you physically move in order to process one object or region preferentially
Define covert attention
Hidden attention that doesn’t require physical movement, which determines what you are conscious of
Describe Cherry’s dichotic listening task and its results
Selective listening in shadowing experiments. Two messages presented simultaneously to each ear – dichotic listening, and subjects instructed to continuously repeat back one of the messages heard.
- Results:
- When different messages to each ear, little difficulty in repeating one of them back. Little remembered of ignored message but physical characteristics (pitch, loudness, location) often noticed
Define the Broadbent model
Filter model of selective attention: incoming sensory information has to pass a bottleneck in order to reach limited-capacity stages where full processing takes place.
All or none filter based on elementary physical attributes
Operates prior to contact of sensory information with memory, and so prior to the identification of information
Describe Treisman’s experiment
Subjects in shadowing experiments tended to switch channels whenever the message previously delivered on the attended side was continued on the irrelevant side, and switched back when it was further continued on the to-be-attended channel. Usually didn’t notice this switch.
Define the Filter Attenuation model
After Treisman’s experiment: Proposed that the attention filter isn’t absolute – doesn’t completely block ignored info but attenuates it
Describe Cherry’s cocktail party effect experiment
In dichotic listening, subject’s own name sometimes noticed even when presented in the ignored stream.
Describe the Von Wright, Anderson, Stenman experiment
Words previously associated with electrical shock give rise to galvanic skin responses even when presented under shadowing instructions at the irrelevant side.
Which experiments give evidence for perception of the unattended ear?
- Cherry cocktail party effect
- Von Wright, Anderson, Stenman’s response to a previously conditioned stimulus
- Swapping tracks between ears but keep noticing
Describe Moran and Desimone’s experiment
single-cell recordings of V4 visual cortex in non-human primates are dependent on animal’s attention. Present an effective stimulus and an ineffective stimulus. Covert attention turns on to effective stimulus and cell fires more than for ineffective stimulus.
Describe Rees’ experiment
fRMI looking at motion perception in V5/MT. 2 syllable words in centre moving stimulus around. An easy task, pressing if word is uppercase, leaves attention to process motion, but a hard one – press if word is two syllables, didn’t.
Describe Posner’s experiment
Present central arrows prior to the appearance of a target that could appear to the left or right of a central fixation point. Cue summons attention to either left or right location. When target appeared at the location to which attention had been cued (validly-cued trials), subjects detected the target and responded faster, cuing benefit, than neutral trials (where neither side had been cued), cueing cost.
What is an endogenous cue?
Elicited by centrally-presented symbolic cues. Reliably cue attention when they are spatially informative, probably reflecting voluntary shifts of attention.
What is an exogenous cue?
A cue that cues attention even when they hold no information about the likely position of the target. Especially associated with peripheral onsets. Fast and reflexive involuntary orienting.
Explain inhibition of return
Occurs if stim is 100ms later, but opposite if it is 650ms. If there isn’t anything at the location, eyes move away, and an inhibitory tag is left to stop you looking there again.
What does attention select?
Objects, not a spotlight
Describe Egly’s experiment
Measured responses to targets following a cue located at one end of an object, comparing responses to targets presented at the other end of the same object vs targets appearing equally far away from the cue but on a different object. Targets on cued object responded to more quickly.
Describe Storm and Pylyshyn’s experiment
Tracking 4 dots. If column on the screen, dots look like they’re going behind it, can keep track. If no column they just flash off then on, can’t keep track. Shows we look at 4 objects not 4 locations.
Describe Wanning’s experiment
Object-based attention in V1. If cue for object looks like it could be part of the object, e.g. two shorter lines oriented together, can cue attention, whereas if perpendicular and interpreted as a different object, doesn’t.
Give 3 disorders of attention
Unilateral neglect syndrome
Balint’s Syndrome
Unilateral Extinction
What part of the brain is particularly associated with attention?
Right parietal lobe, temporo-parietal junction especially.
What is unilateral neglect syndrome and what causes it?
Unilateral damage to the parietal lobe. Ignore food on left side of plate, only groom right side of body. Fails to pay attention to stimuli on their left side.
Unware they aren’t attending to everything.
Left sided lesion doesn’t always give the neglect.
What is unilateral extinction and what causes it?
Unilateral damage to the parietal lobe. Patient does pay attention to stimuli on their left or right sides, but when stimuli are presented on both sides together, fail to notice the left-sided stimulus.
Typically accompanies neglect.
What is Balint’s syndrome and what causes it?
Bilateral parietal damage.
Simultanagnosia - the patient cannot see two objects simultaneously, and fixity of gaze, finding it hard to switch attention between objects.
What is stimulus onset asynchrony?
If the target immediately follows the cue, responses are faster at cued than uncued locations
How do you test for neglect syndrome?
Behavioral Inattention test:
Circling small stars (will only do on right hand side,
Bisection test - bisect only RHS lines and bisect towards the RHS. Treats both the line and the paper as objects
Clock face tests - feel like running out of space and cram last few numbers.
What is the evidence that attention selects objects?
- Egly cues at one end of an object
- Storm and Pylyshyn: tracking dots
- Wanning: orientations of cueing lines
- Neglect: Driver and Halligan rotating shapes
5: Neglect: Mattingley, Davis and Driver sticks broken or not by objects
What is the evidence from neglect that attention selects whole objects?
- Driver and Halligan
2. Mattingley, Davis and Driver
Describe Driver and Halligan’s experiment
Seeing if left of object or left of space is neglected. Rotate shape to left of object on right side of normal visual field - still can’t identify left hand side of object differences between objects. Additive effects seen if difference is on left of object and left of patient.
Describe Mattingley, Davis and Driver’s experiment
Present a line broken by an object. If left stick presented alone, see it, if left and right presented, just see right. If you move the lines so it looks like one line passing behind the object, can detect the left side of that object.
