determinants of attention and late selection

Question 1

what type of attention is involuntary attention?

Answer 1

• bottom up

Question 2

what type of attention is goal driven?

Answer 2

• top down

Question 3

describe the biased competition theory.

Answer 3

top down and bottom up conflict eachother for representation.

Question 4

state what kind of stimuli can ‘capture’ our attention.

Answer 4

• stimuli of high salience
• movement/ abrupt onset
• things that have personal relevance

Question 5

what comes first: bottom up or top down attention?

Answer 5

• bottom up (involuntary attention)

Question 6

did theeuwus find that colour singletons were relevant, even though task was to find the odd shape?

Answer 6

colour singletons increased RT and so new relevant.

Question 7

describe the first stage of attention.

Answer 7

• take initial sweep across visual field
• calculation of local salience
• attention to location with highest local feature salient

Question 8

what happens in the second stage of attention?

Answer 8

• if selected item with most salient was not the goal-target, the location is inhibited and we keep going until we find what we wanted.

Question 9

define the role of the attentional window.

Answer 9

• pre-attentive analysis takes place only within attentional window.
• singletons outside cued location do not capture attention.

Question 10

name the theory that contradicts stimulus-driven attention and instead believes that attention can only be captured by stimuli relevant to our goals.

Answer 10

• contingent capture.

Question 11

give evidence from spatial cuing task that supports the contingent capture theory.

Answer 11

• colour cues capture attention when target was defined by colour, and onset cues capture attention when target was defined by onset (our goals), but not vice versa.

Question 12

colour singleton should be irrelevant as target was defined by shape (circle) not colour, but did results support this?

Answer 12

no, colour singleton was found to be relevant as reduced RT.

Question 13

what was found to reduce the effect of the colour singleton?

Answer 13

adding different shapes takes attention away from the colour singleton.

Question 14

why is it important to detect abrupt onsets?

Answer 14

evolutionary reasons - enables us to detect threat rapidly to enable survival.

Question 15

give a reason as to why receding stimuli do not capture attention.

Answer 15

• stimuli doesn’t need detecting as its moving away e.g predator is getting further away so you are safe.

Question 16

what is the problem of display-wide settings?

Answer 16

we do well at attentional tasks because we are constantly monitoring for dynamic change - demand characteristics.

Question 17

give evidence that we pay attention to stimuli that has personal relevance to us.

Answer 17

spider phobics showed attentional capture by spiders.

Question 18

give evidence that familiarity/expertise influence attention.

Answer 18

expert musicians are more distracted by musical instruments.

Question 19

give evidence that value captures attention.

Answer 19

• learn that a certain colour means reward, when tested reward-associated colours captures attention.

Question 20

name key terms that are associated with cognitive control.

Answer 20

• working memory
• inhibition
• conflict resolution
• proactive/ recitative control

Question 21

name the two types of load, and the difference between them.

Answer 21

• cognitive load and perception load

- high perceptual load reduces distractor processing, whereas as high cognitive load increases distractor blindness.

Question 22

what the of load increases inattentional blindness?

Answer 22

perceptual load (less aware due to focused attention on certain target).

Question 23

do all difficult tasks focus attention?

Answer 23

no, cognitive load increases distraction.

Question 24

describe what happens during early selection.

Answer 24

• availability of perceptual capacity determines whether distractors receive further processing.

Question 25

describe what happens during late selection.

Answer 25

cognitive control required to inhibit any distractors that make it this far.

Question 26

how is working memory measured?

Answer 26

operation spam tasks.

Question 27

name individual differences in WM capacity in relation to attention.

Answer 27

• individuals with low WM showed increased stroop interference and “own name breakthrough” in dichotic listening task compared to those with high WM (65%:20%).

Question 28

name types of disorders that cause problems in attention and cognitive control.

Answer 28

• ADHD

- anxiety

Question 29

name neural mechanisms of attentional control.

Answer 29

• frontal-parietal activation

- DLPFC nad ACC.

Question 30

what relationship was found between frontal activation and behavioural interference?

Answer 30

negative relationship, implying frontal activation stops you from becoming distracted.

Question 31

name the relationship between mind-wandering and external task-irrelevant distraction.

Answer 31

• positively relate to one another, avoiding distraction from own thoughts and external env show similar mechanisms.

Question 32

describe a challenge for studying attentional control of mind-wandering.

Answer 32

the same regions that stop distraction are used in mind-wandering as well, hard to discriminate!!

Question 33

what has been found with individuals with high / low WM in relation to mind-wandering?

Answer 33

• those with high WM capacity are associated with reduced mind-wandering during attentionally demanding tasks, whereas if low attentional tasks, those with high WM capacity have increased mind-wandering.

Question 34

give reason as to why those with high WM capacity have increased mind-wandering in low attentional tasks.

Answer 34

as there is no harm in mind-wandering if task if easy to understand!