Attention and Consciousness Flashcards
what does visuation attention classically infleunce
- top down
2. bottom up
attention in a social context
presence of another person of a stimulus
- aspirations, intentions, desires (cognitive STATE)
- stimuluz, gaze direction, emotional expression and social identityt
what is social attention
a cognitive process determined by looking at another person
reciprocal social attention
when individuals mintor the success of an interaaction, identify problems and logalize errors
what is social attention useful for
interpersonal communication
succesful cooperation
human interdependence
what is gaze cuing
a facial stimuli that cues attention
Posners Spatial Cueing 1980
red dot on screen (non social condition)
tell participant that dog is where another person is looking (social conditiong)
in ‘social condition’ responses to target changed= magnitute of inhibition of return of effect is greater
‘you react faster to stumili at an attended location’
what is attention
a selective mechanism that ‘filers’ the world to orient an individual to a limited number of events at any one time
why does selective attention exist
brain= limited capacity processor
so anatomy/physiology doesnt let unlimited processing of incormation (high energy costs/neuronal firing costs) + high compression of sensory infroamtion from retina
TOO MUCH DATA to process= hence attention system FILTERS external/internal processes to improve effiecency
General Gist of Micheal Posners Spatial Queing Paradigm
studies attentional performance by attracting attention + bringing it back to a target
Valid= (in the same place)= faster response
anywhere else in visual field= more slow
spatial selective experiment
visual attention focused on a task at hand (reading accuraetly) to point that she doesnt realize all words are turining into x
what 2 mechanisms directs visual selective attention
- saliency (bottom ‘up’)
2. relevancy (‘top down relevant’)
what is relevancy (‘top down relevant’) attention
a purposeful and goal oriented mechanism known as endogenous attention
how does attention change neural activity
it imporves the signal to noise raito in sensory systems—> makes stimuli more salient and increases the neural activity as a result
Egly, Driver and Rafal Experiment
attention is OBJECT selective:
1. spatial location not everything as visual attention cares more about OBJECTS
what is ‘inhibition of return’
Posners idea: ‘ability to reenage attention to a location previously attended is compromised due to bias towards novel locations’
what is selective attention
focusining consciousness on a specific or gorup of stimulius
cocktail party effect
focusing on 1 conversation in a noisy party but responding to when you hear your name (spotlights change and are selective)
what is inattensional blindness
through selectivity becoming unaware to other stmiulu (like a gorilla in a football game or magicians using misdirection)
change blindness
psychological phenomena in which we fail to notice a change in an environment
examples of change blindness
(‘person swap experiment’) or (‘failure to notices things= false eye witness testimonies in court)
social ‘attribution theory’
we can explaint someones behaviour by creditng their stable/enduring traits/the stituation oat hand
(disposition and situational)
fundamental attribution area
when we understatime the situation (context) and overestimate the personal disposition
what did leon festinger come up with
theory of cognitive dissonance
cognitive dissonance
we’re uncomfortable when our thoughts/believs/behaviours are inconsistent with each other
william james 1890; what did he do
investigated the mind scientifically (looked at consciousness as a continiously moving stream)
types of attention
selective
divded
sustained
execeutive
what is phenmenology
describes the state of interests
how is information processed
filtered from external and internal processes
what are filtering biases
we are less aware of world around us than we think as we filter the more relevant/salient/notictable things to be efficient
Richard D. Wismen
a magician who misleads attention to cards so you don’t notice things change
what is fliker
type of change blindness; removes the salience of change and leaves us to focus on relevant things by using visible bright light changes
tracks eye movement
what happens when you remove flicker
you become better at noticing changes as our top-down expectaitons of what you think is important is removed
what did posner see attention as
a spotlight that enhances sefficency of detection of events
spatial attention
focusing on a space in our visual field
is the movement of our eyes and our attention the same
nope! within our visual field they can be separate
Posners Cueing Experiment Design
- participants detect a target stimulus and response on the screen
- participants are cued before the stimulus appears
- exogenesous cues= at same location of stimulus
- endogenous cues= an arrow points to the location of the stimulus
cues can be valid/invalid= valid cues have faster response
Posners experiment: cue stimulus intervals
spatial visual attention moves to prioritize an area
what is covert attention
paying attention without moving eyes
what is overt attention
selectively processing one locaiton over others by moving the ideas there
Posner “SPOTLIGHT”
max acuity; can be protracted or split
spotlight exists tha tblurs the rest of the world
Text Reading Experiment
measures the broadness of attention in terms of acuity
normally= we don’t read in a straight line
in experiment= forcess you to read one word at a time
shows attention is spatially selective
exogenous attention
bottom up salient;
involuntary and refletive attention mechanism
something that GRABS your arrention
how does signal to noise raito work`
in our sensory system, studies show attention improves this as things in the ‘back of the brain’ function to make some stuff ‘stand out more’/make electrical signals cleaner
McAdams 2005 Experiment
used macaques to show that modulation in single-celled firing rates of a cell occur in the primary and secondary visual centers
McAdams 2005 Experiment Findings
- attention reaches back of brain in initial stages of visual cortical processing
human study version of McAdams 2005 Experiment
MEG recordings increase activity in v2/v1 during attended conditions
inihbition of return definition
an orientation mechansims that enhances the spped and accuracy at which an object is detected after its attended which impairs future speed and accuracy
why does inhibition of return exist
possible evolutionary mechanism to always look at new things if brian already has information on an old area
where is inhibition of return mediated
in the MIDBRAIN
how is attention moved
- saliency
2. relevance
example of how visual saliency is guided
‘wheres waldo’; we focus on relevant features (red and white)
Colour Change Card Trick (Richard Wiseman) 4 point process?
- tells u its a card trick= top down expectaiton
- tells u colour will cahnge= object selectivity
- camera focuses on an area= spatial selectivity
- camera acts a s a aflicker= decreases saliency of change
what four factors influence our attention
- top down expectations
- object selecitvity
- spatial selectiviy
- the saliency of change
what does Gustav Kuhn do
studies visual attention in people during magic tricks using diversion/misdirection
henderson and hayes 2017 did what…
in a ‘heat map of a room’ demonstrated where peoples attentions went
henderson and hayes 2017 argued…
that social meaning is more important than the SALIENCY of attention as people focus on social objects in a house
collectivist vs individual cultures
interest in whole vs indinters in individual
Social Revision of Posners INhibition of Return Task Design
researches compare faces vs scrambleed faces as cues to see if social stimiuli are special
Social Revision of Posners INhibition of Return Task FINDINGS
- no changes in IOR compared to nonsocial cues
issues:
1. doesnt test socialness
- is counterintuitive as we live in a social context (socialness has not been operationalised= we need to improve ecological validity)
Gobel, Tuft + Richardson 2017 Experiment Design
tell 2 patients that the other is being eyetracked by a red dot demonstrating where the other is lookin ing the inhibition of return task
Gobel, Tuft + Richardson 2017 Experiment FINDINGS
- social attention infleunces LOW LEVEL attention mechanisms
- –> participants slower to return to original location if what pulls u back is the ‘eyes of someone else’(trust) - social rank influences attention
- -> high rank oxford porfessor vs janitor= higher IOR with professor as more social trust
Gobel, Kim and Richardson 2014 ‘4th wall experiment’ aim
investigate dual function of gaze; whether having something LOOK BACK at you infleunces your attention
Gobel, Kim and Richardson 2014 ‘4th wall experiment’ design
- video camera recording an individual watching an undergrad/professor under impression that the researchers are studying first impressions
- some told your video will be destroyed
- others told your video will be shown to the profesor to watch
(mainupate social context of signall vs percieving social ucues)
Gobel, Kim and Richardson 2014 ‘4th wall experiment’ findings
- when told video wuld be destroyed= focus is on eyes f professor
- when told video would be shown to professor= focus is on eyes of undergrad
Gobel, Kim and Richardson 2014 ‘4th wall experiment’ conclusion
when there are people of status we defeclt our eyes
–> deflecting eyes from something CONTRONTATIONAL (also in primates)
what did sigmund freud do with consciousness
used pyscholanalysis to show that a large amount of behaviour is directed by unconscious processes as opposed to by intuition (instinct)
what is consciousness
awareness of self and the environment
evidence of unconciousness
blindsight
what is blidness
ability to attend to objects without explicit consciousness awareness
cortical blindness
cortically blind can’t ‘see’ anything but still/moving around objects in a room due to UNCONSCIOUS perception
origins of blindsight
- damage to primary visual cortex causing cortical blidness
why do cortically blind people still ‘see’ to some extent
as the visual informaiton still enters and is procssed by the higher V2 cortical area bia the archaich pathway in the superior colluclus= activation of this pathway affects UNCONSCIOUS awareness
what do social norms do
govern behaviour unconsciously= we can go to auto-pilot move
act as ‘scripts’ that govern behaviour
Longer, BLank and Chanowitz 1978 Script Study Aim
how changing the ‘script’ alters outcomes
Longer, BLank and Chanowitz 1978 Script Study Design
two questions:
- max i use the xeror machine
- may i use the xerox machine- i have to make copy
participants;
asked to ask eithe rquestion to a group of people in a line
Longer, BLank and Chanowitz 1978 Script Study Findings
people 50% more likely to let someone cut in line with first statement and 90% more likely to agree with second, abnormal statement
Longer, BLank and Chanowitz 1978 Script Study Conclusino
impliciti associatin test= biases of stuff that we associate withiout thinking
who studied free will
Libet 1983
libets claim
consciousness awarewness comes after motor-action intiation so can’t be a casual factor
(aka we don’t really have free will)
libets experiment
gives particiapnts the free choice before a movement while recording where a dot is on a clock (move hand when you feel like it and say when you feel like it)
during this= he measured the time before participant was aware that they want to intiatite movement in an EEG
libets results
eeg response elicited before participant said they wanted to move hand
participants aware of their intentions 300ms after movement reads in primary visual motor context
libet; the resulting paradigm shift?
before consciousness seen as thought into action
libet; showed brain activity before consious thought
what 3 factors demonstrate consciousness is necessary
- facilitate mental flexibility
- meta cognition
- sharing cognition
how does consciousness factiliate flexiliblity
unconsciously driven bheaviour lacks ability to deal with unexpected outcomes so consciousness lets us deal with novelties and adapt
what is metacognition
libet study suggests that we dont have freewill but other studies demosntrate that consciousnnes allows us to produce a running narrative of ourselves to form an identiy in LONG TERM memory which influences future vehaviour
(consciousness= causes behaviour through identiy)
how do we share cognition
the identit/yrunning conscious narrative of self lets us share whats going on in our heads with others to promote socializaiton
descarates definition of consciousness
mind-bod dualism= thought consciousness is generated in pineal gland
scientist definition of consucioness
matieral monomism: consciousness as a product of brains and nuerons
how can we test for consciousness
- fMRI or EEG to measure brain activity in conscious or unconscious states (measure the ‘neural correlates of consciousness; NCC)
Lafuente + Romo 2005 aim
whehter we can control consciousness
Lafuente + Romo 2005 experiment
- increase vibraiton to a hand at undectetable levels as monkey pushes levers as a way to check whether the monkey notices the stimulus
- single-cell recordings electrodes placed into monkeys somatosensory (s1) and prefrontral cortical neuron (PFC)
- cell activation compared between stimulus trials where awrwareness of stimulus was correctly/incorrectly reported
Lafuente + Romo findings
- indifference in s1
- PFC= reports selective awareness
hence= PFC has a role in conscious experience
Richardson and Gobel: what extensions of top down/bottom up are there on visual attention in a social context
in a social context:
further bottom-up: presence of another person as a stimulus with a gaze direction
further top-down= beliefs of othe rpeopels cognitive states like their aspiratins/itnenstions
uses of following a gase
- discover new things
- know where dangers/rewards are
- pre-requriste for trans-generational learning
where does gaze cueing effect increase
- masculine faces
- high status faces
- faces resembling onlooker (race similiarity)
- political partisanship
- INGROUp membership
McKone + Robbins argument
faces special in terms of coding, holistic process and face-specific neutral represenations
