~Chapter 6 - Lecture Section 6.1

Question 1

What is Attention?

Answer 1

Attention is the allocation of mental resources

Question 2

What is the function of Visual Attention?

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

What can spotlight be used as an analogy for?

Answer 3

Visual Attention

Question 4

What is Selective Attention?

Answer 4

Focusing on specific objects and ignoring others

Question 5

Who said this about Selective Attention: “My experience is what I agree to attend to”

Answer 5

William James (1890)

Question 6

Why is Attention necessary in general?

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Why is Attention necessary for vision?

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Why is there is a close relationship that exists in natural viewing between what you’re looking at, and what you are attending?

Answer 8

For vision, perhaps due to the high acuity view of the Fovea

Question 9

There is a close relationship that exists in natural viewing between what you’re ___, and what you are ___.

Answer 9

looking at // attending

Question 10

Scanning the fovea over objects of interest allows the visual system a ___ view

Answer 10

High Acuity

Question 11

What are Saccades?

Answer 11

Rapid eye movements. Rapidly moving your eyes when looking between objects in a scene. Saccade also means “jump”

Question 12

What is Fixation?

Answer 12

The pauses between Saccades

Question 13

How long are Fixation pasues?

Answer 13

These pauses are around ~300ms on average

Question 14

How many Saccades do we make per second?

Answer 14

We make about 3 Saccades per second

Question 15

Studying ___ between different objects gives us insight into what the person is paying attention to

Answer 15

Saccades

Question 16

There are many ___ features of a scene, so characteristics that can determine where we will look

Answer 16

Bottom-up

Question 17

What are Scene Characteristics?

Answer 17

High saliency features grab our attention (e.g. high contrast, bright colors)

Question 18

What is Saliency?

Answer 18

Saliency means the noticeability of a stimulus, so things that are high contrast or bright colours, attention-grabbing things.

Question 19

What is an example of Saliency?

Answer 19

A man in a red shirt is sitting in a crowd of people wearing white shirts, he is attention-grabbing and Salient.

Question 20

What is Attentional Capture?

Answer 20

Occurs when a high Salience feature causes an involuntary shift of attention (sudden movements, loud sounds).

Question 21

What is a Saliency Map?

Answer 21

A “map” of a visual display that takes into account characteristics of the display such as colour, contrast, and orientation that are associated with capturing attention. (6)

Question 22

How is a Saliency Map made?

Answer 22

Orientation + Colour + Contrast

Question 23

What features on a Saliency Map appear as lighter pixels?

Answer 23

Extended contours, high contrast, or differences in colour, show up as these high Salience features.

Question 24

Saliency often drives the first few fixations, but later scene scanning is influenced by ___.

Answer 24

cognitive factors​​

Question 25

We use ___ and ___ to apply knowledge of what is normally contained in a typical scene.

Answer 25

Scene Schemas // Semantic Regularities

Question 26

Where you will look depends on ___.

Answer 26

What you expect to find

Question 27

Attention can also be directed by ___ and ___.

Answer 27

interest // goals

Question 28

Different parts of a scene or objects are important for different ___.

Answer 28

goals

Question 29

A single scene filled with multi-dimensional stimuli can evoke different patterns of eye movement, Saccades and Fixations, depending on the ___.

Answer 29

Goal

Question 30

There are very distinct patterns of Saccades and Fixations depending on what the person is trying to ___ when looking at the picture.

Answer 30

accomplish

Question 31

The pattern of Saccades and Fixations will also depend on the ___.

Answer 31

task demands

Question 32

Task demands involve more ___ viewing.

Answer 32

Naturalistic

Question 33

What are task demands?

Answer 33

This is more naturalistic viewing where gaze is directed to various objects with specific timing or order as the task unfolds, so everyday tasks will produce a stereotypical order of bodily movements and they will be preceded by a very stereotypical order of eye movements.

Question 34

In a task demand, where you’re going to look depends on ___.

Answer 34

What you need to do

Question 35

Eye movements usually ___ a bodily motor action by a fraction of a second.

Answer 35

precede

Question 36

Can you pay attention to things without fixating on them (i.e. without eye movements)?

Answer 36

Yes

Question 37

What is Overt Attention?

Answer 37

Overt Attention is where you are looking at the thing you are paying attention to

Question 38

What is Covert Attention?

Answer 38

You are paying attention to something you are not looking at.

Question 39

When a basketball player is executing a “no-look” pass, what are they doing?

Answer 39

The player is using Covert Attention to give the other players an impression that they’re heading one way, then passing the ball the other way