Attention: what is it? Flashcards
How would you describe attention to a robot?
Computers are often used as a model for the human brain. In a way computers have parallels to other cognitive processes, e.g. they receive input (perception) and then perform various processes on this input (cognition). But computers don’t really seems to have attention in the way that we do. After question, think about deliberate focusing vs something catching attention etc.
What negative consequences can occur in daily life when attention fails?
Failures of attention, such as becoming distracted, have been associated with increased risk of various negative outcome such as accidents while driving, underachievement in education, problems at work.
Longitudinal study of attention can predict how children will do when they leave school.
Why is attention important?
List 3 things
Negative outcomes when it fails
E.g. education, workplace, driving
Applied contexts
E.g. advertising, user experience
Clinical contexts
E.g. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, Neglect
Understanding the mechanisms of attention are really important to understand the symptoms.
Why is attention important?
- what do we receive too much of?
We receive too much input.
We can’t look at, listen to, feel, and think about everything at once.
What is attention associated with?
- attention as a…
- or processing…
Some kind of limitation
–Attention as a limited capacity resource
–Or processing “bottleneck” eg. in a traffic jam one lane closed means less people get through so for processing maybe the amount of info can get through is less and this is what is causing this
Attention as a limitation example
Not noticing friend is heavily pregnant. Did I not “see” her large pregnant belly because I was focusing on other things, like what she was saying? Or did I process this information perceptually and then inhibit it from reaching my conscious awareness?
What determines which things we pay attention to?
Goals – e.g. meeting a friend/getting taxi
Physical properties of the things around us – e.g. signs here designed to get our attention
What are the different types of attention?
Selective attention:
Focusing attention on certain information, while ignoring other information
(idea of exclusion- focusing on something and not something else)
Sustained attention:
Maintaining focused attention or ‘vigilance’
E.g. Security guard monitoring surveillance camera
Tasks tend to look at the ability to attend to rather simple tasks which also tend to be rather boring.
Divided attention:
E.g. multi-tasking
Another way of looking at capacity limits- (if the resource is limited, splitting it between 2 things will have an impact)
Attention to different sensory modalities:
E.g. sight, touch, sound, smell
Visual attention has received most examination
Example of fixating on a visual scene
Told to focus on scoreboard and asked if you can see clouds. You can see the clouds without moving your eyes.
Attention can move without our eyes moving.
How can we study attention?
- Visual attention has been studied through eye movements
- But we don’t always look at what we attend!
Covert versus overt attention
Covert attention: pay attention to something different from what you’re looking at
Overt attention: looking at each other and paying attention
Reaction time experiments: spatial cuing
Valid cue procedure and results
Procedure:
- 2 empty boxes and asked to look at the cross in the middle
- arrow appears and points to the left
- letter then appears on the left
Results:
Arrow made you faster in responding because moving attention over there (spatial cue)
Reaction time experiments: spatial cuing
Invalid cue procedure and results
Procedure:
- 2 empty boxes and asked to look at the cross in the middle
- arrow appears and points to the left
- letter then appears on the right
Results:
- attention was opposite to where arrow faced (invalid cue)
- responses are typically slower following invalid versus valid cues
- suggests spatial attention moved to cued location
Reaction time experiments: spatial cuing
- What cues does it work with?
- What can covert spatial attention be?
- This works with both endogenous cues… (arrow)
- …and exogenous cues (things that automatically get our attention)
- Covert spatial attention can be both voluntary and involuntary
- our attention can be moved around against our will
Reaction time experiments: Visual search
Task- Find green O
(several red crosses with 1 green O)
Easy to find green 0 because it “pops out”
If the target “pops out”, increasing non-targets doesn’t affect RT
You can tell that your attention draws to something thats different
