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Psychology, Cognitive Psychology > Chapter 4, Attention > Flashcards

Chapter 4, Attention Flashcards

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1
Q

What is Attention?

A

The ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment.

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2
Q

What processes are used in attention?

A
  • Unconscious processes

- Conscious processes

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3
Q

What is a part of the Conscious processes, and what does it do?

A

Includes feeling and content of awareness

  • Monitors interactions with the environment (can tell how we adapt to situations)
  • Links past (memories) and present (sensations). (Gives us a sense of continuity of experience)
  • Control and planning of future actions (we know what we want to do, how we want to act based on the first two points).
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4
Q

What is Preconscious?

A

Items that lie outside our conscious awareness, some may be made conscious (memories, sensations, etc.), some not.

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5
Q

What is Subliminal Perception?

A

Perception without awareness

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6
Q

What is Priming?

A

When recognition of certain stimuli is affected by the prior presentation of the same or similar stimuli.

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7
Q

What is Selective Attention?

A

Attending to one thing while ignoring others. it has a limited capacity and timing and it can filter out some information and promoting other information for further processing.

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8
Q

What is Distraction?

A

One stimulus interfering with the processing of another stimulus.

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9
Q

What is Divided Attention?

A

Paying attention to more than one thing at a time.

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10
Q

What is Attentional Capture?

A

Rapid shifting of attention is usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement.

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11
Q

Visual Scanning?

A

Movements of the eyes from one location or object to another.

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12
Q

What is Positive Priming?

A

Prior presentation of a stimulus facilitates later recognition. It can be:

  • Conceptual
  • Repetition
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13
Q

What is the Filter Model of Attention?

A

A model of attention that proposes a filter that lets attended stimuli through and blocks some or all of the unattended stimuli.

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14
Q

What is Dichotic Listening?

A

The procedure of presenting one message to the left ear and a different message to the right ear.

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15
Q

What is Shadowing?

A

The procedure of repeating a message out loud as it is heard.

Shadowing is commonly used in conjunction with studies of selective attention that use the dichotic listening procedure.

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16
Q

Who tested Selective attention and how?

A

Colin Cherry (1953)

How it was tested was through shadowing and Dichotic Listening.

Participants could report they had heard a message and the gender of the speaker but not the content of an unattended message.

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17
Q

What was Broadbent’s Filter Model (Bottleneck Model)?

A

It was an Early-selection model, which filters messages before incoming information is analyzed for meaning.

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18
Q

How was the Early-selection model structured?

A

(1. ) Message is transmitted to Sensory Memory
(2. ) Sensory Memory holds info for a fraction of a second and then transfer it
(3. ) The filter then identifies attended messages based on physical characteristics.
(4. ) It is then passed to the Detector which processes higher-level characteristics (e.g. meaning)
(5. ) lastly, it is passed to the Short-term memory which receives the output from the detector, holds it for 10-15 seconds then transfers it to Long-term memory.

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19
Q

What could Broadbent’s Model not explain?

A
  • How does the participant’s name get through
  • How participants can shadow meaningful messages that can switch from one ear to another.
  • How the effects of practice on detecting information in the unattended ear, as you can be trained to detect in the unattended ear. (also based on the meaning of the message)
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20
Q

What is the Cocktail Party Effect?

A

The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli, especially at a party where there are a lot of simultaneous conversations.

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21
Q

What was Treisman’s Attenuation Theory?

A

It was an adaptation of Broadbent’s Filter but instead, the Early-selection model had a Leaky filter model.

This meant that attended messages can be separated from unattended messages early in the information-processing system, selection can also occur later.

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22
Q

How was Treisman’s Early-selection model structured?

A

(1. ) Messages was transmitted to the Attenuator
(2. ) The Attenuator analyzes incoming messages in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning. (a process)
(3. ) The Attenuator then transfers the message to the Dictionary Unit which contains stored words each of which has an activation threshold (mental lexicon)

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23
Q

In Treisman’s Attenuation Theory how are messages let through and what is the final output?

A
  • Attended-to messages are let through the Attenuator at full strength
  • Unattended messages are let through at a much weaker strength
  • Dictionary unit determines final output based on different activation levels of information. Words that are common or important have low thresholds, while uncommon words have high thresholds.
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24
Q

What were Broadbent and Treisman’s theories considered?

A

Early-selection models

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25
What is a Late Selection Model of Attention?
A model of selective attention proposes that the selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after the information in the message has been analyzed for meaning.
26
Who was one of the people who suggested a Late-selection Model?
Mckay (1973)
27
What did Mckay do?
Mckay had participants hear messages in attended and unattended ears, in the attended ear an ambiguous message was played -"They were throwing stones at the bank" In the unattended ear, participants heard - "River" - "Money"
28
What did Mckay's participants have to choose after the initial part of the experiment?
Participants had to choose which was closest to the meaning of the attended messages. The meaning of the biasing word affected the participant's choice. Participants were unaware of the presentation of the biasing words.
29
Which Model was right between the Early and Late selection Models?
Well, a genuine case can be made for both models under different conditions. Plus researchers focus on different factors that control attention (e.g. cognitive resources and cognitive load) So there is no definitive right model.
30
What is Processing Capacity?
The number of information people can handle
31
What is Perceptual Load?
The number of cognitive resources needed to carry out a particular cognitive task (task difficulty) - Low-load task: use a small number of resources (e.g. well-practiced, easy tasks) - High-load task: uses more cognitive resources (e.g. difficult tasks that are not well-practiced)
32
What is the Load Theory of Attention?
The proposal is that the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on the load of the task the person is carrying out. High-load tasks result in less distraction.
33
Who proposed the Load Theory of Attention?
Lavie (2008)
34
What are the aspects of Attention?
- Attentional Capture - Visual Scanning - Divided Attention - Distraction
35
What are Fixations in Attention?
Short pauses on point of interest. (small dots) -3/sec for unfamiliar
36
What is Saccadic eye movement?
Rapid movements of the eyes from one fixation point to another. (lines)
37
What are the Bottom-up Determinants of Eye Movement?
Areas that stand out and capture attention due to physical characteristics - Bottom-up Process - Depends on the characteristics of the Stimulus - Color and motion are highly salient
38
In reading an eye scan what is represented?
- Lines = Saccades | - Circles = Fixations (Bigger circles = longer fixations)
39
What determines the location of Fixations?
Characteristics of the scene: - Stimulus Salience - areas of stimuli that attract attention due to their properties - Color, contrast, and orientation are relevant properties. - Saliency Maps: shows fixations are related to such properties in the initial scanning process Knowledge about Scenes: -Familiar items become salient
40
What are the Top-down Determinants of Eye Movement?
Familiar objects and objects with meaning also take priority in scanning. - Sometimes even more than physical characteristics - Fence vs Horses (reference image, slide 25) - Varies between people (subjective)
41
What are more Top-down Determinants of Eye Movements? (Part Two)
Scene Schema: Knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes - Help guide fixations from one area of a scene to another - People look longer at items that are "out of place"
42
What are more Top-down Determinants of Eye Movements? (Part Three)
Eyes movements are determined by the task: - Demands of task override stimulus salience - Participants did not look at objects or areas that were irrelevant to the task - Eyes movements preceded motor actions by a fraction of a second ("just in time" strategy)
43
What is Precueing?
A procedure in which participants are given a cue that will usually help them carry out a subsequent task. This procedure has been used in visual attention experiments in which participants are presented with a cue that tells them where to direct their attention.
44
What is Covert Attention?
Occurs when attention is shifted without moving the eyes, commonly referred to as seeing something "out of the corner of one's eye." Contrasts with Overt Attention.
45
What is Overt Attention?
Shifting of attention by moving the eyes. Contrast with Covert Attention.
46
What is Object-Based Visual Attention?
Attention being directed to one place on an object
47
What is Same-Object Advantage?
Occurs when the enhancing effect of attention spreads throughout an object so that attention to one place on an object results in the facilitation of processing at other places on the object.
48
What is the Mind Wandering?
Thoughts coming from within (daydreaming)
49
What does Mind Wandering affect on the brain?
It activates the default mode network in the brain (areas of the brain that are activated when you are not involved in a task) It affects brain areas that should be activated by the task you are working on.
50
In what way can Divided Attention be done?
It depends on the practice of divided attention or the difficulty of said task.
51
How did Schneider and Shiffrin test Divided Attention?
Through two tasks: Holding the info in memory and attending to distractor info and determining if the target is present among distractor info. Procedure: - Present target stimulus in the memory set - Present a series of 20 test frames (fast!) - Was the target from the memory set present in a frame?
52
What was the first condition of Shiffrin and Schneiders test?
- Consistent mapping condition: Targets and distractors are always from different categories (target =number, distractors = letters) - Actual target changed from trial to trial - PArticipants improved over time because of automatic processing.
53
What is Automatic Processing?
It occurs without intention (often with practice). At a cost of only some of a person's cognitive resources.
54
What did Schneider and Shiffrin find about Automatic Processing?
It made the task more difficult
55
What was Schneider and Shiffrin's experiment? (Part two)
- Target and distractor from the same category (e.g. both letters) - A target on one trial can be a distractor on another trial. - Varied Mapping Conditions: Rules keep changing from trial to trial. (no automatic processing) - Test frame had to be presented longer to achieve same level of performance.
56
What is Controlled Processing?
- Participants have to pay attention at all times (must control their focus) - Requires more cognitive resources Applying this to Stroop Task: - Words processed automatically, more exposure/practice - Colour naming uses controlled processing, must override automatic processing. Requires greater control and more cognitive resources.
57
What happens when we are not attending?
- Inattentional Blindness | - Change Blindness
58
What is Inattentional Blindness?
A stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though a person might be looking directly at it.
59
What is Change Blindness?
If shown two versions of a picture, differences between them are not immediately apparent -Task to identify differences requires concentrated attention and search.
60
What other areas can change blindness occur?
it can be seen in films, primarily in Continuity errors which are some aspects that change in a scene that remain the same.
61
What do we miss?
We constantly miss things in the environment -Adaptive Unattended dangerous stimuli usually make noise or move - Automatic attraction of attention by a sudden visual or auditory stimulus = exogenous attention - Intentional, consciously determined directing of attention = endogenous attention - Both involve overt attention - shifting attention by moving eyes
62
What is the Binding Problem?
How an object's individual features are bound together to give a single percept. - Attention allows us to perceive objects visual features as belonging together - Despite different areas of the brain processing characteristics, the ball is perceived as one unit
63
What is Feature Integration Theory?
An approach to object perception developed by Anne Treisman, that proposes a sequence of stages in which features are first analyzed and then combined to result in the perception of an object.
64
What is Attentional Warping?
Occurs when the map of categories on the brain changes to make more space for categories that are being searched for as a person attends to a scene.
65
What is change detection?
Detecting differences between pictures or displays that are presented one after another.
66
What is Binding?
The process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object.
67
What is the structure of the Feature Integration Theory (FIT)?
(1. ) Object input transfers to the Preattentive Stage (2. ) Preattentive Stage is automatic, requires no effort or attention so we are unaware of the process, it then Analyzes's the object into features. (3. ) It is then passed to the Focused Attention Stage, this is where attention plays a key role, in this stage the features are combined. (4. ) It then is turned into Perception.
68
What are Illusory Conjunctions?
A situation, demonstrated in experiments by Anne Treisman, in which features from different objects are inappropriately combined
69
What was Treisman and Schmidt's experiment with Feature Integration Theory?
- Participants report combinations of features from different stimuli - Participants are to ignore black numbers and focus on objects, participants can correctly pair shapes and colors. - Showed evidence of focused attention stage
70
What is Balint's Syndrome?
A condition caused by brain damage in which a person has difficulty focusing attention on individual objects. - High Illusory Conjuntion - When told what they are looking at, illusory conjunction decreased - Knowledge of typical colors of objects helps.
71
Is Feature Integration Theory Bottom-Up or Top-Down processing?
- It is mostly Bottom-Up processing - In (FIT) Top-down processing influences processing when participants are told what they would see. - Top-down processing combines with feature analysis to help one perceive things accurately.
72
What is Search in terms of Attention?
It is a scan of the environment for particular features - Feature Search - Conjunction Search
73
What are the Attentional Networks?
- Dorsal Attention Network - Ventral Attention Network - Executive Attention Network
74
What is the Dorsal Attention Network?
A network that controls attention based on top-down processing. -Partial cortex - dorsal frontal cortex
75
What is the Ventral Attention Network?
A network that controls attention based on stimulus salience. -TP (Junction of the temporal and parietal lobes) - ventral frontal cortex
76
What is the Executive Attention Network?
It is responsible for executive functions: - Cognitive control - A mechanism involved in dealing with conflicting stimuli. Related to executive function, inhibitory control, and willpower. - Inhibitory control - A mechanism involved in dealing with conflicting stimuli. Related to executive function, cognitive control and willpower. - Willpower - A mechanism involved in dealing with conflicting stimuli. Related to executive function, inhibitory control, and cognitive control.
77
Is attention crucial for social interactions?
Yes it is absolutely crucial, you need to be able to shift eye gaze to match the gaze of others -Helps us assess the emotional reactions.
78
What is Autism?
A serious developmental disorder in which one of the major symptoms is the withdrawal of contact with other people. - Can solve reasoning problems that involve social situations - Cannot function when placed in an actual social situation - This may be due to the way those with Autism observe what is happening. - They look to the mouth off to the side of the face to assess the emotional reaction.
79
What are the symptoms and subtypes of ADHD?
Symptoms: - Inattention - Hyperactivity - Impulsive Subtypes: - Inattentive - Combined - Hyperactive
80
What is Effective Connectivity?
How easily activity can travel along a particular pathway between two structures.
81
What is Synchronization?
Occurs when neural responses become synchronized in time, so positive and negative responses occur at the same time and with similar amplitudes. It has been proposed that synchronization is a mechanism responsible for enhanced effective connectivity and enhanced communication between two areas that accompany shifts of attention.

Psychology, Cognitive Psychology (5 decks)

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