Attention

Question 1

Definition of attention

Answer 1

Lots of definitions based on awareness

Question 2

What happens when attention fails?

Answer 2

Negative consequences:
road traffic accidents - distractions, mind wandering
workplace - won’t be as productive
school - learning

Question 3

Why is attention important?

Answer 3

It is a gateway which helps us succeed in all cognitive processes:
negative consequences when it fails
applied contexts (advertising - increasing sales)
clinical contexts (anxiety, neglect)
We receive too much input, we can’t look at, listen to, feel and think about everything at once

Question 4

Why can’t we process everything?

Answer 4

Attention is a limited capacity resource and a processing bottleneck
At some point there is a block, preventing more info going in

Question 5

Types of attention

Answer 5

Selective - focussing attention on something, ignoring information
Sustained - maintaining attention over a long time (security guard monitoring a camera)
Divided - dividing attention to 2 things, multi tasking can look at capacity limits
Attention to sensory modalities - sight, touch, sound, smell

Question 6

Neural processing of attention

Answer 6

If covertly attending to something, neural response is boosted
2 regions responding to specific categories:
fusiform face area - when covertly attending to faces, this is activated
parahippocampal place area - covert attention to houses increased PPA response

Question 7

How to study attention?

Answer 7

Eye movements

Reaction times

Question 8

Eye movements

Answer 8

Measure what people are fixating on as looking round a scene

Limitations: eye movements aren’t perfectly linked to attention - we don’t always look where we are attending

Question 9

What is covert attention?

Answer 9

Fixating on one thing but attending to something else

Question 10

What is overt attention?

Answer 10

Attention is where your eyes are looking

Question 11

Ways of studying covert attention

Answer 11

Spatial cueing
Visual search
Distractor effects
Attentional capture 
Error rates
Self report measures
Neuroimaging

Question 12

Spatial cueing

Answer 12

Is the target letter an X or an N?
Quicker response if valid cue, slower if invalid cue as attention goes to the wrong place
Spatial attention moved to cued location
This words with:
endogenous cues (top down) - arrow sends information to where it is pointing, can ignore cue if want, voluntary
exogenous cues (bottom up) - captures attention immediately, can’t not attend - involuntary

Question 13

What is endogenous cues?

Answer 13

Voluntary

Sends information to where it is pointing

Question 14

What is exogenous cues?

Answer 14

Involuntary

Captures attention immediately

Question 15

Visual search task

Answer 15

Find purple O
If target pops out (unique quality) , increasing non targets has no effect
If target is a conjunction (shares properties with other targets) RT increases with number of non target
Have to search for lots, serial search

Question 16

What is a conjunction target?

Answer 16

Shares properties with non targets

Question 17

Distractor effects

Answer 17

If we are slowed down when something is irrelevant, we assume attention has been distracted
e.g. stroop task and response competition flanker task

Question 18

Stroop task

Answer 18

Name ink colour of word

RT are slower if ink conflicts with the word, suggests we can’t ignore word meaning

Question 19

Response competition flanker task

Answer 19

Is central letter X or N
Response slower if distractors are incongruent (when distracting targets are one of the letters) compared to congruent or neutral
If the task is separated from flankers, still can’t ignore them, suggests spatially separated distractors can’t be ignored

Question 20

What is an incongruent distractor?

Answer 20

When the distractor letter is the target letter too

Question 21

Attentional capture task

Answer 21

We assume attention has been captured by a stimulus if it slows us down when it is irrelevant
e.g. singleton attentional capture task

Question 22

Singleton attentional capture task

Answer 22

Find the circle in an array of subjects
Colour singleton non targets increases RT’s - evidence for attentional capture
Colour singleton target reduces RT as easy to find

Question 23

Error rates

Answer 23

Sustained attention to response task

press a button for every digit except 3 - hard to do this

Question 24

Self report measures

Answer 24

Used to test effects of attention on awareness
e.g. change blindness (not realising something has changed due to attention being too good) and mind wandering (hard to measure this)

Question 25

What do people with mind wandering report?

Answer 25

More reaction time interference and more errors on sustained attention tasks