Attention: Determinants Flashcards
What are 4 synonyms of ‘bottom-up’?
- stimulus-driven
- exogenous
- involuntary attention
- reflexive attention
What are 5 synonyms of ‘top-down?
- goal-driven
- endogenous
- attentional control
- executive attention
- voluntary attention
What is Desimone and Duncan (1995)’s Biased Competition Theory?
Top-down attentional control mechanisms and bottom-up sensory-driven mechanisms compete among multiple stimuli for representation
List 3 proposed characteristics of stimuli that capture attention
- high salience
- movement/’abrupt onset’
- personally relevant
Theeuwes (1992) conducted a study using the Singleton Attentional Capture Task; what did they find?
Found that colour singleton increased search reaction time; as the task is shape-based, this shows that top-down processes cannot focus attention solely on colour.
What are the 4 stages of Theeuwes’ stimulus-driven selection model?
- calculation of local salience
- selection of most salient item
- determination whether selected item is desired target
- if not, location inhibited and attention shifts to next most salient item
What is the role of the ‘attentional window’ in Theeuwes’ theory of stimulus-driven selection?
Stimulus-driven selection only occurs within the attentional window, which can be increased/decreased by spatial cues
Folk and Remington (1992) proposed the Contingent Capture theory; what does this theory suggest about attentional capture?
Attentional capture is not stimulus-driven, as attention can only be captured by stimuli that are relevant to our goals
What did Folk and Remington (1992) find in support of their Contingent Capture task?
Invalid cues produced slower reaction times, but this was contingent on their relation to the task; e.g. colour cues captured attention when target was defined on colour
How do Bacon and Egeth (1994) criticise Theeuwes’ colour singleton study?
Argue that the singleton’s colour was relevant, as search for the singleton’s shape involved a singleton detection search strategy (which would detect colour singleton too).
What did Bacon and Egeth (1994) find? - hint: crit Theeuwes
When shape target was no longer the singleton, the colour singleton no longer interferes.
How did Theeuwes (2004) respond to criticism by Bacon and Egeth (1994)?
Argued they reduced local salience of the singleton; if local salience is maintained, colour singleton still interferes when the target is no longer a singleton
What does Jonides and Yantis (1988)’s Abrupt Onset Theory claim about attention?
Only abrupt onsets can produce stimulus-driven (bottom-up) capture
What research evidence supports Abrupt Onset theory?
When presented with either a colour singleton or abrupt onset in a visual search task, onset produced attentional capture but colour singletons didn’t.
What did Franconeri and Simons (2003) find?
Moving/looming stimuli capture attention but receding stimuli don’t.
