Chapter 7 Flashcards
selective attention
the ability to focus awareness on one stimulus, thought, or action, while simultaneously ignoring others. Selective attention can be directed at spatial locations, at object features, or at an entire object.
Inattentional blindness
is the failure to notice a fully-visible, but unexpected object, because our attention is focused elsewhere
Properties of Selective attention
-Prioritizing some “things” for cognitive processing while deprioritizing or ignoring other things
Voluntary (top-down) vs reflexive (bottom-up) attention
-reflexive (exogenous) – catches eye, attention drawing, incoming stimulus that draws our attention to it
-voluntary (endogenous) – higher level of processing
overt attention
major shifting of attention by moving the eyes or body (outside). For example, when a person moves his or her head in the direction of an object, they are paying overt attention to the object
covert attention (Herman von Helmholtz)
shifting attention from one place to another without moving the eyes; Spatial attention is often thought of metaphorically as a “spotlight” of attention that can move around as the person consciously desires
voluntary attention
Top-down, endogenous (internal decision): purposely directing your attention; focused and choose to focus. For example, cocktail party event - focus on specific conversation among large group of people (voluntary).
reflexive attention
Bottom-up, exogenous (what is driving the attention outside), stimulus-driven process in which a sensory event, such as a flash of light, motion or smn yelling your name captures our attention, even when you didn’t try to listen to it. (intrusion) The more salient the stimulus, the more easily our attention is captured: Think of how we respond to rapid movement that we see out of the corner of the eye (eek! a rat!) or the shattering of glass in a restaurant.
dichotic listening task? which kind of attention?
two different auditory stimuli (different speech) are presented simultaneously on different sides of headphone, person pays attention to one side and most can’t remember any details what other side said (unattended ear). In fact, all they could reliably report from the unattended ear was whether the speaker was male or female. Attention—in this case voluntary attention—affected what was processed.
cocktail party effect
when you speak with a friend in a busy room, but your attention may be drawn away if you hear something interesting in another conversation (covert attention)
global arousal vs selective attention
Global arousal is a physiological and psychological brain state, a general ability to be alert (general awareness), which includes 2 global states: wakefulness and sleep; whereas selective attention describes what we attend and ignore (pay attention to or not)
spatial cuing paradigm
When a cue correctly predicts the location of the sub- sequent target, it is a valid trial. If the relation between cue and target is strong—that is, the cue usually (say, 90 % of the time) predicts the target location—then participants learn to use the cue to predict the next target’s location. Sometimes, the target may be presented at a location not indicated by the cue, so the participant is misled in an invalid trial. Finally, the researcher may include some cues that give no information about the most likely location of the impending (coming) target—a neutral trial
It’s an example of spatial, covert and voluntary attention.
What is the benefit and cost of spatial attention?
The benefit of spatial attention is that we have a lower reaction time for the right fixation (valid) and the cost of spatial attention is that we have a higher reaction time for the left fixation (invalid)
Early vs Late selection
Early-selection - marking something as important before it has been fully processed, only the “most important,” or attended events pass through, which shows that we can focus on so much input at once. For example, cocktail party experiment.
2) the idea that a stimulus can be selected for further processing at early processing stages
* Only attended objects get high level processing and irrelevant stimuli are tossed out before perception
In contrast, late-selection - attention would act only after complete processing of the sensory inputs; ex: if your name was spoken in the other side of a dichotic listening task and you don’t know what was said but you know you heard your name
2) it argues that all information reaches higher processing stages
* Selection determines what information gains access to awareness
Attention function
Attention influences how we process sensory inputs, store that information in memory, process it semantically, and act on it.
What do descending auditory pathways show us about the early vs. late selection debate?
-outer hair cells see changes in otoacoustic emissions activity when we actively pay attention to stuff
-descending auditory pathways may modulate early auditory processing basically as early as auditory info enter the cochlear nuclei
What do ERPs in dichotic listening tasks show us about the early vs. late selection debate?
-larger N1 deflection/response when a person pays attention to sound being played
-smaller N1 deflection when person is not paying attention to sound
-proof that attentional selection in auditory sys. is treated differently early on
Where is evidence for early auditory attentional selection from MERFs found?
localized in primary auditory cortex
ERP in spatial attention tasks
-Covert change in spatial attention
-brain shows bigger attentional selection response (P1) when paying attention to correct side of screen
-evidence for early selection
What parts of the visual process are influenced by attentional selection?
visual cortex and thalamus
What does the Bestmann study show us about visual processing?
Attention modulates visual processing, even if the stimulus bypasses (miss) the thalamus and goes directly to the visual cortex
-evidence of late selection w/o early selection
V4 vs V5
V4 - processing of color and shapes (achromatopsia: total colorblindness, different from regular colorblindness)
V5 - How objects are moving (damage leads to akinetopsia)
Ocular apraxia
inability to make voluntary eye move. When the physician overlapped the spoon and comb in space as in Figure 7.1c, the Bálint’s patient should have been able, given his direction of gaze, to see both objects, but he could not.
Simultanagnosia (Balint’s Syndrome)
difficulty in seeing more than one part of a scene at once (the whole scene), such as when the patient saw only the comb or the spoon, but not both at the same time (Figure 7.1).
Optic ataxia
Type of dorsal stream/perception damage for action where a person has trouble using eyes for guiding movement
Ex: not having your hand in the correct position to grab an object/can’t put a card into a slot (action tasks)
(If the doctor had asked the Bálint’s patient to reach out and grasp the comb, the patient would have had a difficult time moving his hand through space toward the object.)