Attention - Historical Origins

Question 1

What year did Donald Norman publish his ‘successful’ book?

Answer 1

1976

Question 2

what is the broad meaning of attention? the basic definition?

Answer 2

brain’s ability to self regulate input from the environment

Question 3

what is the brain’s primary computational task?

Answer 3

to interpret the world and act on it

Question 4

what does selective attention involve?

Answer 4

the brain deciding attend to certain stimuli and blocking out other competing stimuli

Question 5

why do humans need to have selective attention?

Answer 5

because we do not have enough cortical mass to deal with all the information our senses are providing

Question 6

what are the two types of attention? which one is cog psych focusing on?

Answer 6

sustained and selective attention

selective

Question 7

the human system is referred to as a “….” system?

Answer 7

limited capacity

Question 8

what does a limited capacity system not do?

Answer 8

treat all stimuli equally

Question 9

who came up with the cocktail party problem? when?

Answer 9

Cherry, 1953

Question 10

what does the cocktail party problem refer to?

Answer 10

focuses on how humans have the capacity to follow a conversation in a crowded environment… how we “pick out” the relevant convo

Question 11

what did cherry specifically theorise?

Answer 11

that the process of sound waves being created, travelling to the eardrum, and then being processed in the brain only happens to the sound waves that we are interested in

Question 12

what is a “channel” ?

Answer 12

sensory pathway acting as a source of information

Question 13

what did cherry’s study of dichotic listening and shadowing involve the participant doing?

Answer 13

participants listened to two channels of information and were asked to repeat one back (attend to one of the channels)
but would then ask them if they recalled information about channel 2

Question 14

what other tweaks did cherry make to his study? and which changes were noticed ?

Answer 14

• switched channel 2 from english to german - not noticed
• switched from male to female - noticed
• reversed speech: “something weird” - noticed
• switched from voice to pure tone - noticed

Question 15

what was the main finding of cherry’s first study? what was noticed on the unattended channel?

Answer 15

no memory for unattended message

Question 16

Only superficial (physical) features in cherry’s experiment were perceived - what does this mean?

Answer 16

things that distinguished voice, non voice, male or female were perceived, while semantic content (language, meaning) was not

Question 17

How did Neisser 1967 classify between two classes of cognitive processes

Answer 17

pre-attentive - occurs without need for attention

focal attention - processes that only occur if you attend to something

Question 18

Using Neisser’s definitions, what was and was not perceived in cherry’s study?

Answer 18

• sensory (physical) features were processed pre-attentively
• meaning requires focal attention

Question 19

what is the phase difference?

Answer 19

the arrival of sound waves to the left and right ear at slightly different times in order to localise sound in space

Question 20

what is a criticism of Cherry’s experiments?

Answer 20

while he was interested in what is perceived, he actually measured what was remembered

Question 21

who proposed filter theory in 1958? what is the main theory?

Answer 21

Broadbent

- attention acts as a filter to select stimuli for further processing

Question 22

what are the first 4 stages of filter theory proposed by Broadbent?

Answer 22

1. senses make it through to 2. short term store which then go to the 3. selective filter, and this filter selects the one channel that makes it into the 4. limited capacity channel

Question 23

what is the short term store for broadbent?

Answer 23

a fragile, raw, acoustic trace where the audio echo hangs around for a brief period

Question 24

what was found re filter switching times/ filter theory… how?

Answer 24

split span experiments divided recall into two conditions 1. temporal order and 2. ear by ear recall (preferred)
argued that the increased recall capacity of the ear by ear recall is evident for filter switching times, as temporal order would call for 5 filter switches while ear by ear recall only needs 1

Question 25

T or F, it was thought that attentional selection was based on simple physical features (location in space, voice etc)

Answer 25

True

Question 26

what was a key conclusion of the extraction of meaning after Broadbent’s research?

Answer 26

meaning requires access to limited capacity channel, only extracted if stimulus is attended

Question 27

what did the Dear aunt jane (Gray and Wedderburn 1960) experiment show?

Answer 27

that preferred recall follows semantic context, not presentation ear as was proposed by Broadbent

Question 28

for the filter theory, why should the dear aunt jane experiment not work?

Answer 28

because meaning is supposedly only understood once the material has passed the filter, so if the filter blocks out meaning, the content or semantic context shouldn’t be able to influence how you recall the items

Question 29

what did moray 1959 manipulate and show regarding filtering?

Answer 29

participants were to attend to (shadow) channel 1, but in channel 2, their name was presented and often detected even on the unattended channel
disproves that meaning is only extracted on the attended channel

Question 30

what are the two camps in the early v late selection debate?

Answer 30

Early (Treisman 1961)
- Sensory analysis —-> Filter —-> Semantic analysis (LTM) —> report
Late (Deutsch & Deutsch, Norman)
- Sensory analysis —-> Semantic analysis (LTM) —-> Filter —-> report

Question 31

what is the basis of Treisman’s attenuation model?

Answer 31

that the filter works to “turn down” the volume of the unattended channel, so that the attended channel goes through to semantic analysis at ‘full strength’ while unattended channel does make it through to this stage but to a weaker degree. She argues that certain stimuli such as highly salient (name) and semantically related material (dear aunt jane) gets through filter

Question 32

how did Treisman investigate and provide support for early selection?

Answer 32

two channels of speech, but both has indications to “tap” at various points. successful taps were higher on attended channel, but not zero on unattended channel as such supposedly showing support for the filter attenuating stimuli instead of blocking it

Question 33

what is the basis of the late selection theory?

Answer 33

that if the filter is able to respond to semantic knowledge, then it makes more sense that it is further down the stream after semantic analysis takes place

Question 34

for late selection theory, what needs to happen for things to get into conscious awareness

Answer 34

2 sources of activation (sensory analysis and pertinence) need to intersect in the memory system for something to get through the filter into conscious awareness

Question 35

what are the two sources of activation in Norman’s late selection theory?

Answer 35

bottom up mechanism - stimulus driven (sensory analysis)

top down mechanism - pertinence (relevance to task)

Question 36

Mckay 1973 investigated late selection… how did they do so? what did they find?

Answer 36

two channels
shadow channel had sentence that finished with ambiguous word
the unattended channel was manipulated to provide the ambiguous word with different meanings eg (bank - river or money).
then completed recognition task and results showed participants were more likely to recognise the sentence based on the clarity that the unattended channel provided . eg, people who heard river were more likely to saw they heard that sentence on the shadowed channel
thus showing that meaning was processed and can bias subsequent performance on memory task

Question 37

how did some psychs in 1975 investigation late selection using classical conditioning?

Answer 37

paired word within category with shock to classically condition Galvanic skin response
then conducted shadowing task where words from that category (eg fruit category) were presented on unattended channel but still created GSR. as words that were not used in the conditioning but were in the same category generated GSR, there is a level of semantic understanding happening at least to point that category membership is extracted