Chapter 5: Attention

Question 1

What is the definition of attention?

Answer 1

the ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment

Question 2

What is the definition of selective attention?

Answer 2

to tend to pay attention to one thing while ignoring others; focus on one input while ignoring other stimuli

Question 3

What is the definition of divided attention?

Answer 3

paying attention to more than one thing at a time

Question 4

What is distraction?

Answer 4

one stimulus interfering with the processing of another stimulus

Question 5

What is attentional capture?

Answer 5

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

Question 6

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 6

sometimes the effects of selective attention are so strong that we fail to see stimuli that are directly in front of our eyes
-the failure to see a prominent stimulus even if one is staring right at it

Question 7

What were the key findings in the inattentional blindness study in which participants were instructed to point their eyes at the fit and make judgments about + and after three trials dot was replaced by another shape?

Answer 7

immediately after when participants were asked if they saw anything different 89% said no and they were told that dot was replaced by one of these symbols and were asked which one - the responses were random

Question 8

What is inattentional deafness?

Answer 8

the auditory analog of inattentional blindness

Question 9

What is inattentional numbness?

Answer 9

the haptic analog of inattentional blindness

Question 10

What do some researchers propose about inattentional blindness?

Answer 10

that people actually fail to remember what they experienced rather than failing to perceive it

Question 11

What is change blindness?

Answer 11

-the inability to detect changes in a scene despite looking at it directly

Question 12

What is the door study for change blindness?

Answer 12

-the door study-ask directions and first experiment is replaced with someone else and pedestrian is unaware that they are talking to a different person - 50% did not notice the change

Question 13

What is are some cultural and gradual aspects of change blindness important to know?

Answer 13

if change is incremental so it is harder to grasp - gradual change is no visual perception and can have cultural change like major change in culture is hard to process but gradual might be easier to understand

Question 14

What is colin cherry’s dichotic listening?

Answer 14

-one message is presented to the left ear and another to the right ear
-participant shadows one message to ensure he.is attending to that message
-can we completely filter out the message to the unattended ear and attend only to the shadowed message

Question 15

What are the results of the dichotic listening task?

Answer 15

-participants could not report the content of the message in unattended ear
-knew that there was a message
-knew the gender of the speaker
-however info in the unattended ear is being processed at some level
-change in gender is noticed
-change to a tone is noticed
-language is not noticed

Question 16

How can we explain general insensitivity to the unattended channel and also information that leaks through?

Answer 16

-one proposal is that we block unattended inputs with a filter
-shield from already identified distractors
-but allow processing of desired stimuli
Filtering happens early in perception so we do not get a chance to process what is being said - this is an early selection model proposed by Broadbent

Question 17

What are some models of selective attention?

Answer 17

Where does the attention filter occur?
-early in processing
-late in processing
What is the early selection model?
broadbent’s filter model
What is the intermediate selection model?
tresimans attenuation theory
What is the late selection model?
McKay

Question 18

What is broadbent’s filter model?

Answer 18

-early selection model
-filters message before incoming information is analyzed for meaning - get input hits sensory memory and then it goes to the filter and then goes to detector and then to memory
-hold all incoming information for a fraction of a second before transfer to next stage
-identifies attended message based physical characteristics
-only attended message is passed onto the next stage

-bottleneck model - filter restricts the flow of information - but does not slow down the flow of information - lets the information through base don specific physcial characerstics of the information - filters the message before the incoming information is analyzed for meaning and is known as the early selection model

Question 19

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 19

information form the unattended channel can be noticed
-catches your attention and examples are your name or words of high personal significance

Question 20

What are some shortcomings of broadbent’s model?

Answer 20

-according to this model we should not be conscious of information in the unattended messages
-but participants name get through in the unattended channel with 1/3 participants detecting it
-participants can shadow meaningful messages that switch from one ear to another like the dear aunt jane experiment

Question 21

What is the Treisman attenuation theory?

Answer 21

intermediate selection model
-attended message can be separated from unattended message early in the information processing system - but selection can also occur later
-treisman said it is not a filter but is an attenuator so the information gets amplified
-analyzes incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning
-attended message is let through the attenuator at full strength
-unattended message is let through at a much weaker strength
-contains words each of which have thresholds for being activated
-dictionary unit - words that are common or important have low trhesholds and incommon words have high trhesholds
-Common or important words (e.g., your name, “fire,” “help”) have low thresholds, meaning they require only a weak signal to be recognized.
Uncommon or less meaningful words have high thresholds, meaning they need a stronger signal to break through and be consciously processed.

-unattended inputs are attenuated but not turned off
-selection is based on ordered hierarchy: physical cues, syllabic pattern, specific words, individual words, grammatical structure, and meaning
-the words fit well into structure of the sentence so the information from a task can help influence this
-the word fits well into structure of the sentence so the information from a task can help influence this

Question 22

What occurred and were the findings of the classic experiments by Hilyard and colleagues which explored how we can tune in to spatially separated auditory streams?

Answer 22

participants hear a series of tones a target - a quieter tone presented on one or the other stream
-the critical measure is the erp to tones in the attended and unattended stream

-can see when attending to something makes an impact in processing - can measure changes in the brain or electrical potential can see how long for the event these changes have - how soon when you har the sound do you see changes in the Brainhere the same tone on the unattended side and average it and see the average change between attended and unattended - by 80ms from hearing the tone the brain processes it at a different level so this supports early selection or processing so the brain is already doing something to process it

AKA FINDINGS SUPPORT EARLY MODELS OF ATTENTION

Question 23

What is the N1 wave?

Answer 23

-negative going wave peaks around 100ms and is greatly enhanced by attention
-this suggests that attention can modify quite early cortical processing of sounds - have the N1 wave at 100ms that is enhanced by attention

Question 24

What are late selection models of attention?

Answer 24

-selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after information has been analyzed for meaning
-McKay (1973) —> in attending ear participants heard ambiguous sentences
-in the unattended ear participants heard either river or money
select they threw stones towards the side of the river or they threw stone at the savings and loan associations
-biasing words heard in unattended ear biased selection: Participants hear a sentence and there are two different meanings in one ear and a clue in the other ear and want to see how the clue affects processing - clue in unattended channel is river or money and then had to make a selection - did clue was processing and it did bias it which means they had to process the information and use it in interpreting the sentence

Question 25

What did McKay propose in regards to late selection models?

Answer 25

-mckay proposed because the biasing words affect subjects judgments the words must be processed to the level of meaning even though they were unattended -all inputs receive full processing but only important (task-relevant) inputs are entered into short term memory and eventually lead to a response

Question 26

What did researchers conclude relative to early and late models of selection?

Answer 26

-researchers realized there is no one answer and that under some conditions early selection is demonstrate and under other late selection is demonstrated -researchers started focusing on understanding the factors that control attention

Question 27

What did the study which examined bicycle and pedestrian involved accidents in cities in US and europe find in regards to where you see more accidents?

Answer 27

-in cities with the least pedestrians and bikers -more accidents where there are less pedestrians and bikers because we are not used to seeing them

Question 28

What is selection via priming?

Answer 28

-perception is vastly facilitated by priming of relevant detectors -priming can be stimulus driven = repetition priming produced by prior encounter with the stimulus -effortless, requires no resources -expectation driven - effortful and deliberate and requires resources

Question 29

What was revealed in the posner and snyder study about the two types of priming?

Answer 29

-participants see a pair of letters an dmust decide whether they are the same or different -prior to the letters there is a signal cue -neutral + -priming a letter matching the upcoming stimuli -misleading - a different letter than the upcoming stimuli 2 conditions high validity- 80% of letters are primed low validity 20% of the letters are primed -compare response time RT between conditions -When there was a letter matching the pair there is evidence of this unconscious repetition based priming - benefit of priming is higher than the low validity condition -high validity condition has very high benefit of priming and very great cost of being mislead

Question 30

What is the network model of attention?

Answer 30

-alerting -achieving and maintaining an alert state -orienting -selection of information of information from sensory input -executive -resolving conflict among responses there is alerting network which is constantly paying attention to our environment and scanning everything so you are able to see things -orienting network which shifts your resources to one specific task - this is the orienting network -exceutive network - helps with reolsving conflict between inputs or information coming in

Question 31

What did Posner and Peterson reveal about the network model of attention?

Answer 31

-participants asked to press a button corresponding to the direction of central arrow -arrows is preceded by one of four cues (spatial cue, center cue, double cue, and no cue) -Center cue and spatial cues is orienting cause it gives input on where you have to pay attention -Task is simple see five arrows and need to focus on one central arrow and then correspond to the direction have congruent trials or incongruent trials - in between trails see something to grab attention and then teh trial - this thing that gets attention is different fixation cross is no cue in otehr trials and there is double cue condition which is to alert you in a salient way that something is coming - have center cue and spatial cue (spatial cue shows arrows are on tip or bottom of the screen)

Question 32

What was the alerting network condition in the posner and peterson study?

Answer 32

-RT difference between no cue and double cue condition -larger RT difference indicating better performance -stronger alerting network larger difference because RT is faster for double cue condition

Question 33

What was the orienting network condition in the posner and peterson study?

Answer 33

-difference in RT between trials with center cue and spatial cue -larger RT difference indicating better performance

Question 34

What was the executive network condition in the posner and peterson study?

Answer 34

-difference in RT between congruent and incongruent trials -lesser RT difference indicates better performance -this is difference between congruent and incongruent trials for executive - so a smaller RT difference between congruent and incongruent means a stronger executive network

Question 35

In what tasks has the executive network been found to be important in?

Answer 35

-most important in the acquisition of literacy, numeracy, and in a wide variety of other skills -has been positively associated with school math achievement and tests of IQ and negatively associated with peer reports of anti social behavior -thus while all three systems dynamically interact to support complex behavior executive seems to be more important in educational settings

Question 36

What is mindfulness?

Answer 36

-attention to the present moment - awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment

Question 37

What is the mindfulness stop practice?

Answer 37

STOP practice S- stop pause and set it down and look away disengage T- take a breath O - observe first bodily sensation then thoughts and emotions be curious P- proceed what feels like a wise next step now?

Question 38

What are some things mindfulness has been found to improve?

Answer 38

Science of Mindfulness -attention - numerous studies have shown improved attention including better performance on objective tasks that measure attention -emotion regulation - mindfulness is associated with changes in the brain that correspond to less reactivity and a better ability to engage in tasks even when emotions are achieved -compassion - people randomly assigned to mindfulness training are more likely to help someone in need and have greater self compassion calming - studied find that mindfulness reduces feeling of stress anxiety and distress when placed in stressful situations

Question 39

What are brain changes for mindfulness?

Answer 39

-amygdala - a key component for emotional processing people with anxiety and depression have greater amygdala volume and mindful training is associated with lower amygdala volume and lower level of activity while processing emotional stimuli -hippocampus - key in memory and emotional regulation and learning and have an increase in gray matter volume and activation -increase activation in pfc - which is key for attention and executive function -synchronization - functional connectivity changes and is better in different nodes of neural network in attention executive function emotional regulation and mind wandering

Question 40

How do you increase awareness through mindfulness?

Answer 40

-Increasing awareness -triangle of awareness - gentle curiosity, non judgment, intestinal and moment to moment -attention is thoughts and emotions and body sensation -can personally be more aware of thoughts and emotions and body sensations -see others negatively if your are negative -if you feel angry you are going to communicate with others in angry way

Question 41

How do increase attention through mindfulness?

Answer 41

-focused attention meditation cyclical process -alerting network - default network - salience network - executive network - orienting network - back to alerting network

Question 42

How is mindfulness related to the attention networks?

Answer 42

alerting network - focused on producing and maintaining an optimal state of vigilance orienting- focused on prioritizing and limiting sensory input executive - focused on resolving conflict

Question 43

What do people pay attention to?

Answer 43

contrast faces novel stimuli movement and individual interest -visual prominence -interests like indiviudal difference -importance - context related -beliefs or expectations - ultra rare item effect americans pay attention to main character and Japanese paid attention to seen and the dynamics of other characters and more focused on emotions of others and what is happening in the rest of the scene so collectviitism affects how we process environment compared to individualism

Question 44

What is endogenous attention?

Answer 44

goal directed attention what we choose to pay attention to interests and importance

Question 45

What is exogenous attention?

Answer 45

reflective and automatic -models of visual saliency now do an excellent job of predicting where we will move our eyes based on image features like brightness contrast color and movement

Question 46

What did berhamnn and tippe find in reagrds to attending to objects or posiitons for left neglect syndrome patients with damage to the parietal cortex?

Answer 46

-more focused on targets shown in red circle and after rotation continued to focus on red circe two part account - spatially defined bias in preparation for stimuli and once presented the target object defines focus neuroscience support: -attention to space is dorsal and attention to objects is ventral

Question 47

What is part of dorsal attention for where?

Answer 47

FEF and IPS frontal eye fields and intraparietal sulcus

Question 48

What is part of the ventral attention for what?

Answer 48

TPJ - temporal parietal junction VFC - ventral frontal cortex

Question 49

What is divided attention?

Answer 49

refers to the skill of performing multiple tasks or inputs simultaneously -our limited cognitive capacity restricts how well we can multitask -different sensory tasks can be combined together

Question 50

What is the specificity of resources in divided attention?

Answer 50

-dividing attention is easier id the concurrent tasks are different from each other - verbal and spatial tasks can be performed at same time cause require different mental resources

Question 51

What were the findings of the specificity of resources study?

Answer 51

-participants had words presented in one ear that they had to shadow -presnted with anotehr list and were suppose to remember in three conditons - hearing words or visual presentaion or pictures - words heard worst then words seen then pictures -very low error in pictures because have association in mind for visual images and object and do not need the name of the object

Question 52

When does attentional blink occur?

Answer 52

200-500ms after the first stimulus

Question 53

What do resource different tasks compete for?

Answer 53

energy supply and perceptual load -drivers were asked to estimate is their vehicle will fit between 2 parked cars -if judgment was difficult they were less likely to notice a pedestrian on the side of the road -high perceptual load - more inattentional blindness -mental tools or executive control

Question 54

What mechanisms does executive cotnrol allow for?

Answer 54

-control thoughts -keep goals in mind -organize mental steps -shift plans and change strategy -inhibit automatic responses -strongly connected with working memory -goal oriented behavior -plans strategy -can only handle one task at time -control my thoughts -working memory - need to pay attention to surroundings and listening and processing what is going one which means your memory is intact and this could affect your ability to see something - basically are filtering out things that are not needlessly necessary - interference Is greater when the tasks are similar

Question 55

What are some key take away points about divided attention?

Answer 55

between task interference increases as task similarity increases -interference is also evident even when concurrent tasks are quite different -tasks will interfere with each other if their combined demand for a resource is greater than the amount of the resource is available

Question 56

How does practice diminish resource demand?

Answer 56

-practiced skills require fewer resources or less frequent use of resources this leads to a decrease in interference between tasks

Question 57

What is automaticity?

Answer 57

tasks that are well practiced and require little or no executive control