Chapter 4- Attention

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

The ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations.

Question 2

Selective attention

Answer 2

Attending to one thing while ignoring others

Question 3

Distraction

Answer 3

One stimulus interfering with the processing of another stimulus

Question 4

Divided attention

Answer 4

Paying attention to more than one thing at a time

Question 5

Attentional capture

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Visual scanning

Answer 6

The movement of eyes from one location or object to another.

Question 7

Cherry attention study

Answer 7

Cherry studied attention and used a technique called dichotic listening, where different stimuli were presented to the left and right ears using headphones. The participants focused on the message going to one ear and then repeated it out loud. The process of repeating the words is called shadowing. Participants could easily shadow the stimuli in one ear. They could report whether the voice in the unattended message was male or female, but not what they’d said. Broadbent’s filter model of attention was designed to explain the results of this experiment.

Question 8

Cocktail party effect

Answer 8

The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli. Even in noisy environments, people are able to focus on one conversation they’re having.

Question 9

4 stages of Broadbent’s filter model of attention

Answer 9

1. Sensory memory
2. Filter
3. Detector
4. The output from the detector goes to short term memory

Question 10

Broadbent’s filter model of attention

Answer 10

Broadbent’s model of attention was designed to explain how it’s possible to focus on one message and why information isn’t taken in from the other message. This model is called an early selection model since irrelevant information is eliminated by the filter early in this process before it can be analyzed. It filters based on the physical properties of the message rather than its content. It also provided testable predictions about selective attention, which lead to further research. Treats attention as a bottleneck.

Question 11

Sensory memory

Answer 11

Holds all of the incoming information for a fraction of a second and then transfers all of it to the filter.

Question 12

Filter

Answer 12

The filter identifies the message that’s being attended to based on its physical characteristics. These include the speech’s tone, pitch, speed of talking, and accent. Only the attended message will pass through to the next stage.

Question 13

Detector

Answer 13

The detector processes information from the attended message to determine higher level characteristics, like the meaning of the message. The detector processes everything that passes through it, since irrelevant stuff was already filtered out in the filter stage.

Question 14

In Broadbent’s model, what happens to output from the detector?

Answer 14

The output from the detector goes to short term memory. Short term memory holds information for 10-15 seconds and can then transfer the information to long term memory.

Question 15

Moray dichotic listening experiment

Answer 15

This was another early selection model. Participants were told to shadow the message presented to one ear. However, when the participant’s name was presented to the unattended ear, about one third of participants recognized it. This meant that the person’s name had not been filtered out, and that it had been analyzed enough to determine its meaning, in contrast to predictions. This is similar to when you still hear someone say your name in a noisy room.

Question 16

The attenuator analyzes incoming messages in terms of (3)

Answer 16

1. Its physical characteristics- pitch, speed, etc
2. Its language- how the message groups into syllables or words
3. Its meaning

Question 17

How is Treisman’s attenuation model of attention different from Broadbent’s?

Answer 17

Information in the channel is selected similar to what Broadbent proposed, but in this model language and meaning can also be used to separate messages.

Question 18

Treisman’s attenuation model of attention

Answer 18

Treisman proposed that the analysis of the message proceeds only as far as is necessary to identify the attended message. For example, analysis at the physical level of each message could be used to separate them if there’s one male and one female speaker. However, meaning might be necessary to separate the messages if the voices sound similar. This is a late selection model.

Question 19

Stages of Treisman’s attenuation model of attention

Answer 19

In this model, the attended and unattended messages are identified first. Then both messages pass through the attenuator, but only the unattended message is attenuated (weakened). At least some of the unattended message gets through, so the model is called the leaky filter model. The message is then analyzed by the dictionary unit- it contains words, stored in memory, and each of which has a threshold for being activated.

Question 20

According to Treisman’s attenuation model of attention, which words have low thresholds?

Answer 20

Words that are common or important, like the participants’ name, have low thresholds. These words can be activated even with a weak signal, like when it’s spoken softly, unattended, or obscured by other words.

Question 21

McKay study

Answer 21

Participants listened to ambiguous sentences, such as “they threw stones at the bank”- bank can have two meanings. In the unattended ear, words like “river” or “money” were played as biasing words. The biasing words influenced whether participants believed the ambiguous sentence had been about a river or about a financial institution.
Therefore, the biasing words must have been processed enough that the meaning was registered, even though participants were unaware that they had heard it.

Question 22

Late selection models of attention

Answer 22

McKay’s research led to the proposal of late selection models of attention- proposed that most of the incoming information is processed to the level of meaning before the message to be further processed is selected. In a true late selection model all messages receive full acoustic AND semantic analysis. Selection takes place after ALL messages have been fully analyzed

Question 23

Are early or late selection models of attention more accurate?

Answer 23

There is no one answer to the “early-late” controversy. Early selection and late selection are demonstrated in different situations depending on the task and the type of stimuli.

Question 24

Which 2 factors must be considered when asking people to ignore distracting stimuli?

Answer 24

Processing capacity and perceptual load

Question 25

Processing capacity

Answer 25

Refers to the amount of information people can handle and sets a limit on their ability to process incoming information.

Question 26

Perceptual load

Answer 26

Related to the difficulty of a task. Low load tasks are generally easy, well practiced tasks that have a low perceptual load. High load tasks use up more of an individual’s processing ability

Question 27

Load theory of attention (Lavie)

Answer 27

You are less likely to be distracted when participating in a high load task. With a low load task, there is still processing capacity left. Therefore, resources are still available to process the task irrelevant stimulus, and the response time slows down. With a high load task, there are no resources left to process irrelevant stimuli.

Question 28

Lavie study

Answer 28

Lavie’s study asked participants to press a key if they saw an X or N on a screen. This was easy if the target letter was surrounded by other letters that were all the same, but more difficult if it was surrounded by different letters. Including an unrelated stimulus, like a cartoon character, increases the reaction times more for the easy task than it does for the hard task.

Question 29

Other than a low perceptual load, what other factor could make you easily distracted?

Answer 29

It also depends how powerful the irrelevant stimulus is. If the fire alarm went off, a person would probably be distracted regardless of the load of their task.

Question 30

Stroop effect

Answer 30

Difficulty naming the colors of the words. This occurs because the names of the words cause a competing response and therefore slow responding to the target (naming the color of ink). The task irrelevant stimuli (reading the actual words) is strong in this situation. Reading is an automatic response that is difficult to ignore.

Question 31

Why do you need to look at things directly to have detailed vision?

Answer 31

Due to the way the retina is constructed, objects in central vision fall on a small area (the fovea) which has better detail vision than the peripheral retina.

Question 32

Fixation

Answer 32

Fixing your eyes on a specific object

Question 33

Saccadic eye movement

Answer 33

A rapid, jerky movement from one fixation to the next. Even when you aren’t searching for anything, your eyes still move 3 times per second.

Question 34

Overt attention

Answer 34

Shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes

Question 35

Stimulus salience

Answer 35

The physical properties of the stimulus, like color, contrast, or movement. Determining how salience influences the way we scan a scene typically involves analyzing characteristics like color, orientation, and intensity at each location in the scene and then combining these values to make a saliency map of the scene.

Question 36

Is stimulus salience a bottom up or top down process?

Answer 36

Using stimulus salience for attention is a bottom up process because it depends on the patterns of color and contrast in a stimulus. You are responding to the physical property of the stimulus rather than its meaning.

Question 37

High salience

Answer 37

An object has higher salience if it sticks out while looking at a scene. An individual’s first few fixations are usually on high salience areas. After a few fixations, scanning begins to be influenced by top down processes.

Question 38

How do cognitive factors influence scanning?

Answer 38

There are variations in how people scan scenes- everyone might not scan a salient feature first. Scanning is also influenced by a person’s preferences, making it a top down process.

Question 39

Scene schemas

Answer 39

An observer’s knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes. This is a top down process involved in scanning.

Question 40

How do the demands of a task influence scanning?

Answer 40

The timing of when people look at specific places is determined by the sequence of actions involved in a task. Eye movements occur just before we need the information they provide. Therefore, eye movements usually precede motor action. They predict what will come next in the sequence of actions.

Question 41

Covert attention

Answer 41

Shifting attention while keeping the eyes still. This occurs when you are paying attention to something off to the side while looking straight ahead. It involves is a mental shift of attentional focus - like a spotlight beam

Question 42

Precuing

Answer 42

Determines whether presenting a cue indicating where a test stimulus will appear enhances the processing of the target stimulus.

Question 43

Posner precuing study

Answer 43

Participants watched a screen. In 80% of trials, an arrow appeared instructing participants to look on one side of the screen for the target square. In 20% of trials, their attention was directed away. Participants reacted (pressed a key) to the square more quickly when their attention had been directed to that side of the screen.
This result gave rise to the idea that attention is like a spotlight that improves processing when directed at a specific location.

Question 44

Same object advantage

Answer 44

Faster responding that occurs when enhancement spreads within an object. Participants respond to a target more rapidly when a stimulus appears at the location they were told it would be.

Question 45

How does attention affect perception?

Answer 45

Attending to an object makes it more clear and vivid, therefore, attention affects perception.

Question 46

How does attention affect physiological responding?

Answer 46

Directing attention to a specific area of space activates a specific area of the cortex. Brain maps generated through fMRI studies showed that different parts of the brain will experience different levels of activation when viewing a stimulus. There is a “map of categories” that changes for each stimulus.

Question 47

Attentional warping

Answer 47

The map of categories on the brain changes so more space is allotted to categories that are being searched for. This effect also occurs when the attended category isn’t present in the stimulus.
For example, when a person is on the lookout for vehicles, the brain becomes “warped” or tuned so that large brain areas respond best to vehicles and things related to vehicles. Then, a large response occurs when they see a vehicle. Other things the person isn’t looking for would cause smaller responses.

Question 48

Automatic processing

Answer 48

A type of processing that occurs without intention (happens automatically) and at a cost of only some of a person’s cognitive resources. You carry out many skills automatically. This is why you can drive home and not remember how you got there/not remember the actual trip.

Question 49

Schneider and Shiffrin study

Answer 49

Studied divided attention and required participants to carry out two tasks simultaneously. After many trials, the task of identifying the target stimuli among the distractor stimuli became automatic and accuracy increased. The many trials of practice resulted in automatic processing

Question 50

In which situations does divided attention become more difficult?

Answer 50

If task difficulty increases, automatic processing is not possible even with practice. While driving in a construction zone for example, you might have to turn off your radio or stop your conversation with your passengers in order to devote all of your cognitive resources to driving.

Question 51

Distractions

Answer 51

Things that direct our attention away from something we’re doing.

Question 52

Why is speaking on the phone dangerous while driving?

Answer 52

The issue of driving while speaking on the phone has nothing to do with holding the phone itself. The issue is that speaking on the phone uses cognitive resources that would normally be devoted to driving. Other technologies for information/entertainment in cars can be even more dangerous than cell phone use, regardless of whether it takes your eyes off of the road.

Question 53

Experience sampling

Answer 53

Answers the question “what percentage of the time during the day are people engaged in a specific behavior?” One method that could be used is sending participants text probes throughout the day asking them if they were doing a specific thing.
Used in a study to determine how often students used the internet

Question 54

Operant conditioning

Answer 54

Behavior is controlled by rewards (reinforcements) that follow behaviors. The basic principle is that the best way to ensure that behavior will continue is to reinforce it intermittently.

Question 55

Why do many people have a hard time not checking their phone?

Answer 55

Operant conditioning- people will check their phone and see they don’t have any texts, but they will have a text the next time they check. This is an intermittent reinforcer that makes people continue to check their phone.

Question 56

Continuous partial attention

Answer 56

Constant switching from one activity to the other

Question 57

Mind wandering

Answer 57

Thoughts coming from within, also called daydreaming. Mind wandering is very prevalent and occurs about half the time that people are awake, and during a wide range of activities.

Question 58

Mindless reading

Answer 58

When you’re reading something and then realize you have no idea what you just read. This is an example of how mind wandering decreases performance.

Question 59

Mind wandering is associated with which part of the brain?

Answer 59

The default mode network- it becomes active when someone isn’t focusing on a task. During mind wandering, a person is no longer focusing on their task. This presents an issue when you need to be focusing.

Question 60

Inattentional blindness

Answer 60

Occurs when people are unaware of clearly visible stimuli if they aren’t directing their attention to them. The gorilla video is an example

Question 61

Inattentional deafness

Answer 61

We can also miss auditory stimuli we aren’t attending to. Visual search- involves scanning a scene to find a specific object. When participants were given a difficult visual task, they often didn’t hear the tone that was played during the task.

Question 62

How can the load theory of attention explain the effects of inattention?

Answer 62

Researchers showed that being involved in a high load task increases the chances of missing other stimuli.

Question 63

Change detection

Answer 63

A procedure where one picture is presented followed by another picture, and the task is to determine what the difference is between them.

Question 64

Change blindness

Answer 64

Difficulty detecting changes in scenes, like in spot the difference pictures. Change blindness is extremely common. It also occurs when people fail to notice continuity errors in films

Question 65

Continuity errors

Answer 65

When an aspect of the scene that should remain the same has changed

Question 66

Why does change blindness occur?

Answer 66

Change blindness usually occurs because our attention isn’t directed at the place in the scene where the change occurs.

Question 67

How do our perceptual systems ensure that we pay attention to important information?

Answer 67

Our perceptual system also has a warning system that directs our attention to motion or intense stimuli, which could signal danger. This allows us to respond quickly. You don’t need to know all of the details of what’s going on around you. You need to know whether a sidewalk is crowded, but not what color shirt the person next to you is wearing.

Question 68

Why is missing some perceptual information adaptive?

Answer 68

By focusing on what’s important, our perceptual system is making optimal use of our limited processing resources.

Question 69

Binding

Answer 69

The process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object.

Question 70

Binding problem

Answer 70

The question of how an object’s individual features are bound together.

Question 71

Feature integration theory

Answer 71

According to feature integration theory (Treisman), the first step in object processing is the preattentive stage (analyze into features), followed by the focused attention stage (combine features). In early stage processing, you see independent features. In late stage processing, features are bound together into an object through attention.

Question 72

Pre attentive stage

Answer 72

This occurs before we focus attention on an object, and attention is not involved. This stage is automatic, unconscious, and effortless. The features of objects are analyzed independently in separate areas of the brain and are not associated with a specific object.

Question 73

Focused attention stage

Answer 73

Attention is focused on an object and the independent features are combined, so the observer is consciously aware of the whole object.

Question 74

Illusory conjunctions

Answer 74

Seeing shapes that were made up of a combination of two features from different stimuli. These feature combinations are called illusory conjunctions. Illusory conjunctions can occur even if the stimuli have large differences in size or shape. Outside of a laboratory setting, individuals may still experience illusory conjunctions. Witnesses to events might mix up the colors of specific objects. This is evidence for feature integration theory.

Question 75

Why do illusory conjunctions occur?

Answer 75

Illusory conjunctions occur because in the preattentive stage, each feature is “free floating” and exists separately from the others. Therefore, these features can be incorrectly combined if more than one object is present.

Question 76

Balint’s syndrome

Answer 76

Parietal lobe damage results in an inability to focus attention on individual objects. According to feature integration theory, lack of focused attention would make it difficult for patient RM to combine features correctly. He reported illusory conjunctions even when he had viewed the stimuli for a long period of time.

Question 77

Is feature analysis a top down or bottom up process?

Answer 77

Feature analysis is usually a bottom up process since knowledge isn’t involved, but top down processing can play a role. In one study, participant’s knowledge of the usual color of objects reduced illusory conjunctions.

Question 78

Conjunction search

Answer 78

A visual search task where you are searching for a combination of two features in the same stimulus. This takes longer than a typical feature search. Attention to location is required for a conjunction search- RM had difficulty with this. He was able to find targets when only a feature search was required, however.

Question 79

Ventral attention network

Answer 79

Controls attention based on salience

Question 80

Dorsal attention network

Answer 80

Controls attention based on top down processes

Question 81

How does effective connectivity change in the brain?

Answer 81

Different tasks don’t just shift activity from one pathway to another. They also change the effective connectivity between different areas in a network. Activation of the network can open more activity “lanes” for information to flow through. Effective connectivity could change based on synchronization of action potentials in different brain areas.

Question 82

Effective connectivity

Answer 82

This refers to how easily activity can travel along a particular pathway.

Question 83

Executive attention network

Answer 83

This network is complex and may involve 2 different networks. It is responsible for executive functions. Executive function includes a range of processes that involve controlling attention and dealing with conflicting responses. The Stroop test is an example of conflicting responses. The executive attention network helps you to resist temptations/gain willpower.

Question 84

Cherry attention study results

Answer 84

Content memory for unattended message usually was bad. (Even word repeated 35 times not noticed). Language change was sometimes detected, but not always. Relatively good accuracy for reporting changes to perceptual characteristics, like a voice gender change or a human voice versus noise (or tones)

Question 85

Why is Broadbent’s model considered an early selection model?

Answer 85

Only the attended message receives higher level meaning-based processing, and only the attended message can affect behavior.

Question 86

Limitations of Broadbent’s filter model (4)

Answer 86

1. What something important happens in the unattended messages?
2. The cocktail party effect
3. Selective attention is difficult if simultaneous messages are of similar content- meaning of unattended message is getting through
4. Shadowers sometimes follow message to the wrong ear when the streams are switched (Treisman)

Question 87

Automaticity

Answer 87

Automatic processes do not drain the pool of
the resource (attention). Occurs without intention and does not reveal itself to conscious awareness

Question 88

Controlled attention

Answer 88

Decide what to pay attention to and what not
to pay attention to

Question 89

Priming

Answer 89

Word activates or primes its meaning in memory, and also activates
related meanings in
memory. Makes related
meanings easier to access

Question 90

Proofreading

Answer 90

When counting certain letters in a word, we tend to miss letters when the word they occur in is highly frequent. Automatic “gluing” of letter to its word

Question 91

Facilitation

Answer 91

Posner cue study- a faster-
than-baseline response resulting from useful advance information (faster response to cues)

Question 92

Cost

Answer 92

Posner cue study- a response slower than
baseline because of a misleading cue

Question 93

Spotlight of visual attention

Answer 93

The mental attention-focusing mechanism that prepares you to encode stimulus information, moves the spotlight around the visual field. Independent from the actual eye gaze

Question 94

Inhibition of return

Answer 94

People are slower at responding to stimuli at a
previously cued location (around after 300 ms). People are also slower to respond to a change in an
area that was recently searched. This keeps attention from repeatedly searching the same
locations too soon. It encourages orienting towards novel locations and hence might facilitate foraging and other search behaviors

Question 95

Object based attention (Egly)

Answer 95

We notice/respond faster to an event occurring in a location. Attention can be allocated to a place on an object. The enhancing effect of attention spreads throughout the
object. Attention directed to a feature of an object can enhance
processing of other features of the object

Question 96

Problems with feature integration theory (4)

Answer 96

1. Features are not informative enough on their own
2. Features mean different things depending on the way in which they are combined
3. Possible combinations are too much- combinatorial explosion
4. Is there a higher-order way to meaningfully organize combinations of features

Question 97

Hemispatial neglect

Answer 97

Disruption or
decreased ability to attend to something in one
half of the visual field. Deficit in directing spatial attention- disengaging attention from the ipsi-lesional side (same side of lesion), and shifting attention to contra-lesional side (neglected side of the space