Chapter 7: The Control of Attention (until p. 230)

Question 1

hemispatial neglect

Answer 1

deficit in the ability to attend to the left side of space, and often to the left side of objects, typically caused by damage to the right parietal lobe. Occasionally damage to the left parietal lobe can cause corresponding deficits for attending to the right side of space, but much more rarely

Question 2

supramodal attention

Answer 2

focusing of attention on stimulus information across multiple modalities at the same time

Question 3

Balint’s syndrome

Answer 3

neurological syndrome, caused by bilateral damage to the posterior parietal and lateral occipital cortex, that has three hallmark symptoms:
- (1) simultanagnosia, the inability to attend to and/or perceive more than one visual object at a time;
- (2) optic ataxia, the impaired ability to reach for or point to an object in space under visual guidance;
- (3) oculomotor apraxia, difficulty voluntarily directing the eye gaze toward objects in the visual field with a saccade.
Simultanagnosia is the sign most closely associated with the syndrome, and the one most studied from a cognitive neuroscience standpoint

Question 4

premotor theory of attention

Answer 4

cognitive theory proposing that shifts of attention and preparation of goal-directed action are closely linked because they are controlled by shared sensory-motor mechanisms

Question 5

visual search

Answer 5

searching in a visual scene with multiple stimulus items for a particular type of item possessing one or more specific feature attributes

Question 6

pop-out stimulus

Answer 6

item in a visual scene or visual array that differs from all of the other items in the scene (distracters) in one featural dimension (such as color, orientation, texture, shape, size). Because the time taken to find a pop-out stimulus is mostly independent of the number of distracter items, its detection is thought to be accomplished by the processing of all the items across the visual field in parallel

Question 7

conjunction target

Answer 7

target in a visual search task that is characterized by having a unique combination of two visual features. Because the time taken to find a conjunction target increases linearly with the number of distracters, its detection is thought to require serial focused attention to each item till the specified target is found

Question 8

feature integration theory

Answer 8

model of attention postulating that the visual perceptual system is organized as a set of feature maps, each providing information about the location(s) in the visual field of a particular feature. The model also proposes that attention is required to integrate the feature information from these separate maps into a perceptual whole

Question 9

binding problem

Answer 9

neural and cognitive processing problem by which the multiple features of an object (e.g., its color, shape, orientation) are integrated together to yield a single perceptual object. Tends to be called a “problem” because is it still mostly unclear how this is accomplished in the brain

Question 10

illusory conjunction

Answer 10

perceptual process in which sensory features from different objects in a scene are falsely perceived as being part of the same object

Question 11

guided search

Answer 11

cognitive model positing that there are two basic components that determine the allocation of attention during visual search: a component driven by stimulus (bottom-up) information and one driven by top-down influences based on high-level factors and behavioral goals

Question 12

saliency map

Answer 12

theoretical construct of visual attention in which the importance of different stimuli in the visual field is set by a combination of top-down processes based on behavioral goals and bottom-up processes resulting from how distinctive the different elements of a stimulus are compared to the background

Question 13

N2pc wave

Answer 13

negative-polarity (“N” in N2pc) ERP component elicited by the detection of a pop-out stimulus target in a visual search array, thought to reflect either the shifting and focusing of attention to the location of the pop-out or the filtering of the nearby distracter items. It is elicited over posterior scalp sites (“p”), contralateral (“c”) to the side of the target, typically peaking at around 250 ms following the presentation of the stimulus array

Question 14

default-mode network

Answer 14

network of the brain that includes the posterior cingulate cortex, the ventral anterior cingulate cortex, and the medial inferior prefrontal cortex and that has been proposed to be engaged when the brain is either “idling,” not engaged in any specific cognitive task, or directing attention inwardly