Cognitive Psychology - Attention and Distraction Flashcards
What does The Stroop Task involve/look like?
- Colour naming errors
- Congruent list < Control list < Incongruent list
E.g. RED (red coloured) etc < XXXXX (blue coloured) etc < BLUE (green coloured) etc
Who developed The Stroop Task
J. Ridley Stroop (1935)
What is selective attention?
A process that controls our awareness of particular categories of events in our environment
What does selective attention allow us to do?
Select one “message” and suppress others
Who said that we need selective attention?
Broadbent (1958)
Why do we need selective attention?
Broadbent (1958): Brain has limited capacity for conscious processing
What is The Stroop Effect?
An experimental paradigm that allows us to study selective attention mechanisms
How does The Stroop Effect work?
- Stroop incongruent condition creates a situation where 2 attention processes are in conflict with each other, allowing us to measure their effect on each other
Place the colour/word conditions in order of quickest to slowest reaction times
Congruent < Neutral < Incongruent
What are the 2 key types of processing?
Automatic and Controlled
How can attention be controlled?
Via automatic versus controlled processing
What is the main difference between controlled and automatic processing?
Controlled processing is deliberate, while automatic processing is obligatory
Describe controlled processing
- Involves ‘mental effort’
- Limited (Broadbent, 1958)
- Subject to distraction
Describe automatic processing
- Happens independently of ‘effort’
- Causes distraction when incongruent with the focal task and facilitation when congruent
How can we study attention processes?
- In tasks where they are in conflict with each other (Stroop incongruency combined with congruency or neutral trials)
- In tasks where they help each other (object-action compatibility)
Why do we need attention?
- So that we don’t waste limited resources processing irrelevant info. We can focus our attention to enhance processing of relevant info (Posner et al., 1980)
- Focus of attention on context/goal relevant info
Can automatic and controlled processes be biased by cues?
Yes, both automatic and controlled processes can be biased by cues (Posner paradigm: exogenous/endogenous cueing effects)
Who conducted an experiment on object-action compatibility?
Ellis, R (2009) - cup study, what hand did they use to grasp
What are the 2 kinds of Models of selective attention?
Early selection models and Late selection models
What do early selection models argue?
Items that are not attended to will not get selected for perceptual processing
What do late selection models argue?
All information is attended and gets selected later on in the processing chain
Who looked at ‘early’ selection - limitations on processing?
Broadbent (1958)
Give the order of Broadbent’s (1958) ‘early’ selection model on limitations on processing
Multiple sensory Inputs > Sensory analysis > Selective filter (Bottleneck) > Perceptual filter > Perceptual system > Short-Term memory > Further analysis (meaning etc) > Response
What theory did Broadbent propose?
The Bottleneck theory - info and stimuli are filtered so most important info is perceived (limited capacity)
Who looked at ‘late’ selection - limitations on responding?
Deutsch and Deutsch (1963)
Give the order of Deutsch and Deutsch’s (1963) ‘late’ model on limitations on responding
Multiple Sensory Inputs > Sensory analysis > Perceptual system > Short-term memory > Further analysis (e.g. meaning) > Selective filter (Bottleneck) > Response
What do studies into dichotic listening (shadowing) show?
- Listeners can tell if unattended message is voice or noise, male or female (superficial, physical aspects of input), but can’t report anything that was said (even single words repeated many times), or even if it was in a foreign language.
But… - In later recall tests, meaning of non-attended message was processed (answer depends on how the dependent variable is measured)
Who looked at the Attenuation model (as a compromise) - weakened processing of unattended information?
Treisman (1964)
Give the order of Treisman’s (1964) Attenuation model
Multiple Sensory Inputs > Sensory analysis > Attenuating filter (Bottleneck - unattended info is weakened, physical features filtered out) > selective filter > Perceptual filter > Perceptual system > Short-Term Memory > Response
How do we know that unattended information is processed?
- Dichotic listening studies have shown that unattended channel can influence responses (auditory modality)
- Priming studies have shown that unattended information can influence responses (visual modality)
What is priming?
Exposure to 1 stimulus influences the processing of a subsequent target stimulus without conscious guidance or intention
What are the 2 types of priming?
Positive priming and Negative priming
What is the the difference between positive and negative priming in terms of their effect on processing
- Positive priming enhances processing of target (faster naming times, less errors)
whereas - Negative priming inhibits processing of target (slower naming times, more errors)
What does research into priming tell us about frontal lobe patients?
Metzler & Parkin (2000): Frontal lobe patients show positive instead of negative priming (deficits in distractor suppression not target facilitation)
What is negative priming?
When unattended information influences subsequent responding i.e. must’ve been processed to an extent
Who proposed the Attenuation model?
Treisman (1964)
What does the attenuation model tell us about negative priming?
Treisman (1964): Unattended material is processed in a weakened, attenuated form
what did Cherry (1953) do?
Conducted some experiments on the recognition of speech, with one and with two ears
