~Chapter 6 - Lecture Section 6.1 Flashcards
What is Attention?
Attention is the allocation of mental resources
What is the function of Visual Attention?
Visual Attention serves as a mediating mechanism, enabling us to selectively grant priority of processing to certain aspects of the visual scene.
Things we are not paying attention to are less processed.
What can spotlight be used as an analogy for?
Visual Attention
What is Selective Attention?
Focusing on specific objects and ignoring others
Who said this about Selective Attention: “My experience is what I agree to attend to”
William James (1890)
Why is Attention necessary in general?
Attention is probably a general mechanism which is related to limited mental resources in an environment where there is sensory bombardment, an overload of information and you cannot process all of it, so there has to be this filter, and attention provides this filter
Why is Attention necessary for vision?
It may be related to the structure of the eye (fovea vs. periphery). There is a very high acuity visual information signal available at the Fovea, but at the Periphery, there is much more Convergence, and so there is lower acuity
Why is there is a close relationship that exists in natural viewing between what you’re looking at, and what you are attending?
For vision, perhaps due to the high acuity view of the Fovea
There is a close relationship that exists in natural viewing between what you’re ___, and what you are ___.
looking at // attending
Scanning the fovea over objects of interest allows the visual system a ___ view
High Acuity
What are Saccades?
Rapid eye movements. Rapidly moving your eyes when looking between objects in a scene. Saccade also means “jump”
What is Fixation?
The pauses between Saccades
How long are Fixation pasues?
These pauses are around ~300ms on average
How many Saccades do we make per second?
We make about 3 Saccades per second
Studying ___ between different objects gives us insight into what the person is paying attention to
Saccades