Attention Flashcards
Name the kinds of attention there is
- Selective attention
- Overt attention
- Covert attention
- Divided attention
Dichotic listening task
Participants were exposed to two different messages in each ear.
After, the participants were asked to pay attention to only one ear and repeat what the message was saying.
Shadowing
The participant would repeat what they heard immediately after.
This allows to the researchers to verify if the participants are actually paying attention to what they are supposed to.
What would the participants report if they would be asked about the message on the unattended ear?
They would be able to report the gender of the speaker and they would be able to report that there was a message but they could not report the contents of the message.
Explain Donald Broadbent’s model of attention
- Sensory store: holds the incoming information for half a second. Therefore, it receives both the attended and unattended messages.
- Selective filter: Based on physical properties (pitch, tone of voice, accent, etc.) identifies the attended message and ONLY sends the attended message to the next step.
- Higher-level processing: identifies the content of the message and other high-level characteristics
- Working memory:
True or False
Broadbent’s claim that no information about the unattended message would pass.
Give an example.
False
If you are at a very crowded place where you are having a conversation with someone and someone shouts your name, you will hear your name.
True or False
The unattended message is processed enough for it to have meaning.
True
The Dear Aunt Jane experiment showed this.
Describe the Dear Aunt Jane Experiment
In the Dear Aunt Jane experiment, participants were presented with two different messages in each ear.
For example, the right ear would be presented with:
“Dear 6 Jane”
and the left ear with:
“5 Aunt 7”
When asked to attend to the right ear, participants would report that they heard: “Dear Aunt Jane” and not “Dear 6 Jane”
Explain Treisman’s Attenuation Model
- Sensory Store: Holds the incoming information for half a second. Therefore, both messages enter it.
- Attenuating filter: Identifies the attended message by looking at its physical properties. It then attenuates the unattended message and transmits both messages to the next step.
- Hierarchy of analyses: Dictionary of words were each word is associated with an activation threshold. When the words are common or important, their activation threshold is lower.
- Working Memory: Both messages enter the working memory but with a difference in “strength”
Notice, both Broadbent’s and Treiman’s models suggest that the filter happens early in the processing.
Describe Donald G. Mackay’s experiment to prove that there was a late selection between attended and unattended messages
In this experiment, participants would hear on the attended ear the sentence: “They threw stones at the bank”
and in the other ear either: “Money” or “River”
Participants were then asked to point out which sentence was more similar to the one they heard:
“They threw stones towards the side of the river.”
“They threw stones at the savings and loans association.”
Participants that heard the word money picked the second sentence and participants who heard the word river picked the first one.
In Donald G. Mackay’s experiment, the bias word affected the participants pick.
What does this mean?
This means that the unattended word must have been processed at a higher level of meaning.
True or False
No one model can explain all the data
True
In some cases, the data shows an early selection, whereas in others, the data shows a late selection.
What resources does attention need?
it requires cognitive capacity and cognitive load.
In other words, there is a limit to what our brains can do and there is a certain amount of cognitive resources that a cognitive task would need.
Describe the Flanker Task
In the flanker task, the participants are shown with a given pattern that contains a target and other figures that will influence the participant’s reaction.
The participants must only react to the target and not to the “flankers”.
Describe Posner and Snyder’s experiment
In this experiment, the participants were shown with the letters AA or AB and they needed to
report if the letters were the same or different. Before the letters would appear, there was one of
three possible messages that could appear:
+ (Neutral)
A (Priming)
G (Misleading)
Explain the graph of results from Snyder’s and Posner’s experiment
Here we can see that the low-validity condition, benefited when priming and had a very low cost of misleading. On the other hand, high-validity condition benefited much more of the priming but also cost much more.
Name two types of primes and their descriptions
- Stimulus-based: Seeing the stimulus beforehand provides an advantage for identifying the same thing after.
- Expectation-based: Priming the wrong detector has a cost.
Posner’s Cueing Paradigm
The participants would have to identify on which side the target would appear. In this experiment, subjects were shown 80% of the time, an arrow showing the actual side where the target would appear. They were also 20% of the time to be mislead.
True or False
Posner’s Cueing Paradigm yielded different results than the Posner and Snyder experiment.
False
The Posner’s Cueing Paradigm yielded similar results
Describe the experiment by Schneider and Shiffrin
- Present the participant with a target
- Show 20 frames containing 4 objects in each very fast
- Was the target in one of the frames?
What were the results of Schneider’s and Shiffrin’s experiment?
- Participants claimed that after 600 trials, the task started to feel automatic
Varied Mapping
Schneider’s and Shiffrin’s second experiment.
First, the participants were asked to complete the same as in the first experiment.
- Give a target P
- Find target in 20 fast frames
- Give as new target the distractor T
- Find the new target in 20 fast frames
Results of varied mapping
Participants did worse in varied mapping and it took them longer to do well.
The task was so hard that it required controlled processes
Controlled processes vs automatic processes
- Controlled processes require more resources whereas automatic processes require less.
- Automatic processes are faster
- Automatic processes might sometimes (rarely) be incorrect
Inattentional blindness
Failure to notice a fully visible but unexpected object because attention was engaged in another task.
Change detection task
Change blindness
Tell the difference between two pictures that a shown for a very small amount of time and switch between the two.
This task is hard and it often takes a while to find the difference.
True or False
We need attention for perception?
True
This is what inattentional blindness and change detection show.
Moreover, it would require too many resources to be paying attention to everything!
Overt Attention
- Shifts of attention accompanied by eye movement
- Bottom-up: Physical characteristics
- Top-down: Relationships between the perceiver and the scene
Covert Attention
- Shifting attention without moving the eyes
- Attention is like a spotlight
True or False
Attention relies on a mix of both location-based and object-based processes
True
Unilateral Neglect Syndrome
Patients neglect some side of what they see
Feature Integration Theory
- Detect the different features of an object
- Put all the features together
Treisman’s experiment to prove Feature Integration Theory
- Participants were shown for a 5th of a second an image containing multiple geometric figures in multiple colours
- Participants would have enough time to intake the different features but wouldn’t have time to put them together
Illusory conjunctions
When two features of two different objects get mixed up.
Balint Syndrome
Disorder of feature combining
True or False
Attention is very important in social situations
True!
We are even influenced by other people gaze.
