Attention - Object Based and Cog Neuropsych

Question 1

what is the difference with object based theories compared to space theories?

Answer 1

in space theories, it is believed that whatever is in attention is what would be included in this certain space, whereas object based theories argue that people may attend to the specific object, as opposed to whatever is in this “space”

Question 2

what results demonstrated negative priming?

Answer 2

in the study with the overlapping trumpet and kite, people were first asked to name the “red” shape and ignore the green one. in this case, red is the kite, this ignoring the trumpet. on the second trial however they needed to attend to the trumpet, but it was found that they were slower to name the trumpet instead of being faster, or being neutral (not seeing the trumpet in the first instance)

Question 3

describe the box/line experiment and its findings

Answer 3

stimuli could vary in 4 ways
- height of the vox
- what side the gap in the box was on (L or R)
- slant of line (top left to bottom right or vice a versa)
- dotted v dashed line
results were better when they asked participants to report the two attributes that belonged to the same object
showing that people can effectively attend to one object instead of another even though both occupying the same region of space

Question 4

what was the experiment that was to do with cuing object based attention (Egly, driver and rafal 1994)

Answer 4

had a cross in the middle of two elongated rectangles would cue either top left, right, bottom left, right.
Cued - stimuli is in cued area
same object - stimulus is in the same object but not in cued corner
different object - area of the other elongated rectangle

Question 5

what is interesting about the set up/theory of the cuing object based attention task?

Answer 5

• the same object and different object conditions had the stimuli appearing the exact same distance from the cue
• theory here is that IF attention were completely spatial, then the only thing that would matter would be how far away the target is from the cue
• thus these two conditions should have the same RT
• findings: this is not the case, thus lending support to object based attention

Question 6

what happens with cuing bars in object based studies when there was an occluding bar?

Answer 6

results were the same even though only parts of the object were visible, thus excluding other potential theories that attention spreads only to boundaries etc

Question 7

what face is active when viewing faces; houses?

Answer 7

fusiform face area; parahippocampal place area

Question 8

what was found when a house and a face were superimposed over each other and people attended to the face then the house or vice a versa

Answer 8

when attending to face, FFA up, PPA down

when attending to house; PPA up, FFA down

Question 9

visual neglect phenomena is often related to damage to which area of the brain?

Answer 9

right parietal lobe

Question 10

what are the two attention visual pathways? what do they specialise in?

Answer 10

ventral: goes to the temporal lobe - is the “what” pathway concerned with identifying what things are
dorsal: goes to parietal lobe - is the “where” pathway concerned with direction of motion and spatial location

Question 11

how come parietal lobe damage can result in visual neglect?

Answer 11

because the dorsal pathway is damaged

the where pathway

Question 12

what happens in visual neglect?

Answer 12

• difficulties in making objects in the left side of space available to conscious awareness
• deficit in processing spatial information

Question 13

what are some behavioural manifestations of visual neglect?

Answer 13

failure to dress left side of body, shave left side of face

Question 14

what were the findings of posner’s study on cuing deficits in people with visual neglect?

Answer 14

found that the largest deficit and difference with the normal population was when there was invalid cues where the stimulus was presented in the left visual field
this left posner to hypothesise that the ability to voluntarily engage attention was not impaired amongst these people, but rather the ability to disengage and shift in attention in response to new info is hindered.

Question 15

what did posner say normal attention involves?

Answer 15

1. engagement
2. disengagement
3. reorienting of attention

Question 16

what is extinction in regards to visual neglect?

Answer 16

the extinction or suppression of the conscious perceptual response/experience of one stimulus by another
- deficit of stimulus in left visual field when presented with two simultaneous stimuli, thus the perceptual response to one stimulus extinguishes response to the other

Question 17

why might extinction occur?

Answer 17

it is well established that recognition/identification requires activation of neural structures, and that in the cases of a damaged parietal lobe, this hemisphere is chronically under active and thus the stimuli doesn’t provide activation they should

Question 18

what is balint’s syndrome?

Answer 18

inability to focus on individual objects and to see more than one object at a time - they are locked into one area if visual space
(simultanagnosia)

Question 19

what brain areas are often damaged in Balint’s syndrome?

Answer 19

bilateral lesions in parietal and/or occipital cortex, thus much worse consequences compared to visual neglect patients

Question 20

in the featured integration theory, what is the spotlight of attention used for?

Answer 20

to glue features of objects together to create coherent perceptual holes

Question 21

t or false, Balint syndrome sufferers lose their spotlight of attention?

Answer 21

True

Question 22

because Balint syndrome sufferers lose their spotlight of attention, what does this result in?

Answer 22

they lose the ability to coherently perceive objects of features as belonging to one another

Question 23

what is an example of an illusory conjunction that RM demonstrated?

Answer 23

being presented with a red T and a Blue O, but perceiving this as a blue T

Question 24

how did Balint’s syndrome provide support for object based theories?

Answer 24

that even when stimuli over lap (no need to move spotlight of attention) illusory conjunctions were still shown, showing that they acted on objects not the space

Question 25

at their crux, what are the arguments for both space and object based attention?

Answer 25

Space: what matters is visual space and what you attend to is visual space
object: what matters is the object and what you attend to is visual space

Question 26

t or f, neglect seems to be associated with a region of space?

Answer 26

true, the left region of space - perhaps more spotlight based?

Question 27

what is fundamental to the object based view?

Answer 27

attention is to keep track of objects, and divides them into what we can ignore or shouldn’t ignore based on their importance

Question 28

how is original inhibition or return thought to operate? does this tag the space or object ?

Answer 28

that you “tag” a space as uninteresting or does not require more searching? space

Question 29

t or f, there is also some evidence for object based inhibition of return?

Answer 29

True - provided by tipper 1991

Question 30

how did tipper show that there was some evidence for object based inhibition of return?

Answer 30

• had standard inhibition of return task (peripheral cue, long SOA, target flash, slower RT at cued location).
• but he then rotated the display, 9 o’clock display went to 12, and 3 went to 6.
  founder slower RT times still at valid (cued) marker despite it new location, suggesting IOR follows object, not confined to region of space.

Question 31

how was evidence for object based neglect found?

Answer 31

conducted study where there was a line between the left and right display circles, typically would find that neglect of targets in left circle would be greater, however, this added a step of rotation and then found that longer RTs were found on the right, suggesting the participant had tracked the object to the other visual field, suggesting neglect of left side of objects, not just let side of space