attention part 2

Question 1

inattentional blindness/vs change blindness

Answer 1

inability to perceive information outside of the attentional spotlight

unlike change blindness it is specificallly not noticing something new
- a failure to attend to new or unexpected events in our attended to environment

Question 2

change blindness

Answer 2

a type of inattentional blindness - inability to detect changes to scene - usually when something distracts from a change taking place - like a mask

Question 3

failures of selective attention

Answer 3

selective attention occurs when we pay attention to one thing at the expense of all others - can to forms of inattentional blindness or change blindness

study: people given a task - estimate length of crosses that are presented in flashing snaps - some crosses have another stimuli added (like a word or shape) - most people don’t notice - although it can sometimes unconsciously influence their performance on subsequent tasks

Question 4

Posner’s attentional spotlight

Answer 4

function of attention is to orient ourselves in a space and ignoring what is located outside of the focused space

it also activates attention for anticipated processing

Question 5

Posner cueing task

Answer 5

had ps look at a fixation point on a screen- cues pointed to where the object was likely to appear

goal: respond as quickly as they could when object appeared in their periphery (keep eyes on fixation - covert attention)

valid trial: object lined up with cue - ps had significantly faster reaction times

invalid trial: object did not line up with cue

Question 6

inhibition of return

Answer 6

attention is inhibited from going to a recently attended space after a long duration between space cue and target

• a flip side of the valid trials in the cueing task - if there is too long a gap, valid trials will actually have longer reaction times that invalid trials

Question 7

what are the two phases of feature based attention

Answer 7

1. pre-attention phase
   - object features are separately, automatically coded
   - bottom up processing
2. focused attention phase
   - object features are integrated together to guide a search
   - top down processing, requires voluntary attention

Question 8

feature integration theory

Answer 8

attention is needed in order to combine distinct features into coherent perceptual objects - anne triesman

Question 9

conjunction error

Answer 9

people have errors in memory for unattended stimuli - usually only get part of a stimuli correct

lack of attention means that people have a hard time binding together stimuli - feature integration theory

Question 10

visual search tasks

Answer 10

evidence for feature integration theory

participants look for a target object among a group of distractors

Question 11

conjunction search

Answer 11

search task where targets can’t be distinguished from distractors only any single property - it is only the conjunction of properties that differentiate them

uses top down processing

in these tasks, as the number of distractors increases from one feature to two, the amount of time it takes people to find the target increases linearly

triesman: we need to use attentional processing to bind the separate features of each distractor, which takes time

Question 12

feature search

Answer 12

also a pop out/single feature search

visual search task where target differs on one main feature - usually so different that it attracts attention

uses bttom up processing

Question 13

embodied theories of attention - overt and covert

Answer 13

allocation of attention is typically coupled with where we fix our eyes

overt attention: when you move your eyes to where you are attending

covert attention: moving your attention around even though your gaze is fixed in a particular location

Question 14

cultural differences in visual attention

Answer 14

studies have shown that westerners focus their eyes on central objects in a scene (more individualistic?) while east asians are more likely to pay attention to the background/have more eye movement overall (more holistic?)

Question 15

types of top down attention

Answer 15

sustained attention and divided attention

Question 16

sustained attention

Answer 16

ability to focus on one task - vigilance or concentration

Question 17

vigilance decrement

Answer 17

as we spend more time on a task, our vigiliance/ability to sustain attention goes down

Question 18

divided attention

Answer 18

attending to multiple objects at the same time - commonly referred to as multi tasking

debates as to whether we are actually capable of multitasking or whether we engage in task switching

ex. talking on the phone = more likely to miss stop signs and 10% slower to break

Question 19

overload theory vs underload theory

Answer 19

theories of vigilance decrement:

overload theory: attentional demands increase with time, we get tired

underload theory: boredom - mindwandering - divided attention

Question 20

mind wandering

Answer 20

when our attention shifts from the external task to internal thoughts

can act as divided attention because we are shifting our mental resources away from the primary task

Question 21

exogenous vs endogenous attentional control

Answer 21

exogenous attentional control:
when some property of the environment drives us to pay attention to it - bottom up
- temporo-parietal junction (TPJ)

endogenous attentional control:
when a person chooses what to pay attention to, based on his or her goals or intentions
- intraparietal sulcus (IPS)

Question 22

attentional capture

Answer 22

bottom up cues that are automatically processed - something surprising/a prediction error

things that capture our attention
- survival information
- faces
- human bodies
- personally relevant stimuli
- addictive stimuli
- fearful stimuli

Question 23

measuring attentional capture of faces

Question 24

task switching and costs of multitasking

Answer 24

alternative to multitasking - instead of doing two tasks at once maybe we quickly switch our attention from one task to another

could explain the costs of multitasking - takes time as the brain readjusts from the old task to the new task

interesting: people who multitask the most often show the greatest deficits in task switching

Question 25

multiobject tracking

Answer 25

some evidence that people can pay attention to multiple objects concurrently - people can keep track of around 4-5objects concurrently

Question 26

two theories for why our visual system has a covert attentional system

Answer 26

1. human gaze is easily detected by others and we don’t always want to reveal to others where we are attending
2. attention may sometimes precede eye movements by a short amount of time, as a way of ‘scoping out’ the best place to move them

Question 27

where does attention happen in the brain

Answer 27

everywhere - attention increases perceptual processing in anticipation of incoming stimuli - ex. if someone is expecting an auditory stimulus, a portion of the auditory cortex is likely to be activated

this form of attention is top down, based on anticipation (endogenous)

Question 28

dorsolateral frontal lobes and posterior parietal lobes in endogenous attentional networks

Answer 28

regions in the dorsolateral frontal lobes and posterior parietal lobes serve to control which other brain areas are activated - modulating

fmri scans of people doing directional detection tasks show activation in the intraparietal sulcus as well as areas meant for processing motion - suggests that the parietal lobes control which portions of the brain are paying attention

Question 29

brain regions and exogenous attention

Answer 29

regions in right hemisphere, like temporoparietal junction are responsible for capturing our attention to unexpected stimuli

Question 30

frontal eye fields

Answer 30

area in the frontal lobe that that modulates where we orient our attention - contains a retinotopic map so tells us where in the retina to expect stimuli/pay increased attention to

Question 31

go/no go tasks

Answer 31

tasks to assess attention and cognitive control

require a subject to press a button as quickly as possible when a target is present but stop pressing it when a different, but similar, target appears

researchers have found that children with ADHD make more errors in these types of tasks and also have less/more inefficient activation of frontoparietal regions when suppressing responses - demonstrates that there is dysregulation in attentional control networks that may increase levels of impulsive behaviours in people experiencing ADHD

Question 32

Balint’s sundrome

Answer 32

usually occurs due to a stroke that simultaneously affects the occipital and parietal lobes of both hemispheres

patients display both optic ataxia (inability to execute visually guided movements) and simultanagnosia (inability to identify or use more than one object or property in a scene at a time

Question 33

Autism spectrum disorder and alterations in attention

Answer 33

autism can lead to a reduced tendency to fixate on other peoples eye

this might affect people’s ability to identify the emotions of others because they are not focusing on certain pieces of information

Question 34

pop out effect

Answer 34

the time needed to find a target that is different by one feature from distractors is independent of the number of distractors