Chapter 3: attention

Question 1

what factors determine where we direct our attention

Answer 1

1) GOAL-DIRECTED FACTORS (ENDOGENOUS)
-Intentional

2) STIMULUS-DRIVEN FACTORS (EXOGENOUS)
-Incidental

Question 2

explain serial bottleneck

Answer 2

A point in the path from perception to action at which people cannot process all the information in parallel
-Think about all the info you encounter at any given time. It’s too much for you attentional resources all at once.

Question 3

when do bottle necks occur

Answer 3

EARLY-SELECTION THEORIES
-Filter occurs before we perceive the stimulus.

LATE-SELECTION THEORIES
-Filter occurs after we perceive the stimulus.

Question 4

explain the dichotic listening task

Answer 4

-Subjects are presented with two messages to two ears over headphones and are instructed to “shadow” one
-SHADOWING: repeating back the words from one message only.
-Very little about the unattended message is processed in a shadowing task.

Question 5

explain the filter theory

Answer 5

-Early selection theory
-Sensory information has to pass through some bottleneck, at which point only some of the information is selected for further processing.
-Selection of the message to which to attend is based on physical characteristics (e.g., pitch of voice).

Question 6

what else can drive attention

Answer 6

semantic content (meaning of language)

Question 7

explain cocktail party effect

Answer 7

When you are at a party where a lot of sound is going on, you attend to your name being said

Question 8

explain the Gray and Wedderburn study with two lists

Answer 8

Two lists are presented simultaneously:
 Dogs eight
 Six scratch
 Fleas two

Participants instructed to shadow meaningful message
-“dogs scratch fleas”

Question 9

what are the two theories for auditory attention

Answer 9

1) THE ATTENUATION THEORY (Treisman, 1960)
-Early selection theory
-Certain messages would be weakened but not filtered out entirely on the basis of their physical properties
-Messages are minimized but not eliminated

2) LATE-SELECTION THEORY (Deutsch and Deutsch, 1963)
-The filter occurs after the perceptual stimulus has undergone analysis for verbal content
-No attenuation
-Limitations are in response system

Question 10

which theory for auditory attention is better

Answer 10

Probably attenuation theory
-Treisman and Geffen (1967)
-Shadow one message while listening to both for target word
-Tap when word is heard in either stream
-87% of target words in shadowed ear detected
-8% of target words in unshadowed ear detected
-If late selection is correct, they should have done equally well

Question 11

explain the Neisser and Becklen visual attention study

Answer 11

Performed visual analog of the shadowing task:
-Participants watched two videotapes superimposed over each other.
-Could find critical events… (ex. Being told to pay attention to the times people shook hands with one another)
-When told to monitor one film
-Not when told to monitor both
-Indicates they could successfully filter

Question 12

explain the O’Craven study with the houses and faces layered on top of each other

Answer 12

-When face is attended, there is activation in the fusiform face area
-When house is attended, there is activation in the parahippocampal place area

Question 13

explain the neural basis of visual attention

Answer 13

-Similar to auditory processing
-Provided evidence that there is enhanced neural processing in the portion of the visual cortex corresponding to the location of visual attention (much like the ear)

Question 14

explain the visual search task with letters and search time

Answer 14

Neisser (1964)
-Participants scanned a matrix of letters searching for a target letter.
-Search time was a function of how far down the target letter was in the matrix.

Question 15

explain the pop out effect

Answer 15

TREISMAN AND GELADE (1980)
-Distinctive targets are easier to find (pop out at you) than when they blend with the context.
-People are much more affected by the number of objects to scan when target is not distinctive
-Ex. Finding a T is harder in a field of Zs than in Ys

Question 16

what is the binding problem

Answer 16

-Different neurons respond to different individual features – a vertical red line is both vertical and red. Furthermore, what if there is a red vertical bar and a green horizontal bar?
-If different neurons respond to each feature, how do we “bind” them together to make a coherent perception?

Question 17

solution to the binding problem

Answer 17

TREISMAN AND GELADE: FEATURE-INTEGRATION THEORY
-First, people perceive features from visual field (color, movement, etc.)
-Next, use attention to synthesize those features located in the same place into an object
-Attention is important here

Question 18

explain illusory conjunctions in the realm of the study with numbers and different colored letters

Answer 18

TREISMAN AND SCHMIDT (1982)
-People report digits from one part of their visual field
-(they pay attention to this)
-colored letters are shown in another part
-(they’re not paying attention to this)
-People report color/letter combinations of features that did not occur
-Can combine features accurately only when attention is focused

Question 19

what are the three studies on neural mechanisms involving binding of a single object together

Answer 19

1) LUCK AND COLLEAGUES (1997)
-Found neurons specific to particular object types fire only when attending to that object (even if other objects are there)

2) KASTNER AND COLLEAGUES (1998)
-Demonstrated enhanced neural processing in visual area of attended objects (not unattended objects)

3) SIMONS AND CHABRIS (1999)
-video of people and basketball with gorilla
-Demonstrated effects of sustained attention

Question 20

what brain areas are involved in controlling attention

Answer 20

Posterior parietal lobe

Question 21

explain unilateral vision neglect

Answer 21

POSNER AND COLLEAGUES (1982)
-Patients ignore information in the visual field on the opposite side as the brain damage.

Question 22

study with unilateral vision neglect

Answer 22

Someone with brain damage on the one side was unable to cross out circles on the left side of an array

Question 23

explain the study with brain damage on either side of the brain and drawing

Answer 23

-The right parietal region is responsible for attention to such global features as spatial location, whereas the left parietal region is responsible for directing attention to local aspects of objects.
-Showed people pictures and asked people to reproduce the pictures
-Those with right brain damage got the detail right but not the overall shape, those with left brain damage got the shape right but not the detail

Question 24

explain object based attention

Answer 24

-Where people focus their attention on objects rather than on regions in space
-May be easier

Question 25

explain central attention: selecting lines of thought to pursue

Answer 25

Executive control

People are often able to pursue only one line of thought at a time.

Two laboratory tasks:
-No ability to overlap two tasks
-Almost total ability to overlap tasks

Question 26

explain the Byrne and Anderson study about solving math problems

Answer 26

-Selecting lines of thought to pursue
-Participants were not able to overlap two math computations at the same time.
-Participants were given three numbers and had to verify that they were an addition math equation and multiply the first and last number by each other as well
-Hit a bottleneck trying to do two math problems at the same time

Question 27

explain the schumacher et al study about time sharing

Answer 27

-Selecting lines of thought to pursue
- PERFECT TIME-SHARING
-The ability to pursue more than one task at the same time
-Hearing different tones, when they heard the tone had to say high, medium or low and encoding different letter locations

CENTRAL BOTTLENECK
-The inability of central cognition to pursue multiple lines of thought simultaneously
-Can occur for any stream of processing
-(also, some practice – task became automatic)

They did not have any bottlenecks with the timing of each task so they were able to do them at the same time or by themselves at the same speed
-You cannot think about two things at the same time, but you can think about a thing while you are doing something else

Question 28

what is automaticity

Answer 28

Expertise through practice
-Performance of a skill that has been practiced repeatedly that eventually is executed with little or no direct attention
-What are some things that you do automatically?
-Usually this is a good thing, but sometimes maybe not

Question 29

explain the stroop effect

Answer 29

Reading becomes automatic

Participants say the ink color in which words are printed
-The words spell names of colors that are not congruent with the ink color.

Question 30

what prefrontal sites are important for executive control

Answer 30

Direction of central cognition (executive control)

Prefrontal regions important in executive control
-Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
-Anterior cingulate cortex