intro into attention Flashcards
who said that attention is the taking possession of the mind, in a clear and vivid form of one, out of what seems like several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts?
James (1980)
Eysenck (2020): what is the definition of attention?
attention is the means by which we actively select and process a limited amount of information captured by our senses and other cognitive processes
sd&v, s, sa, da
what are the 4 main functions of attention?
- signal detection and vigilance
- search
- selective attention
- divided attention
MFoA: what is signal detection?
- attention that allows us to detect a specific stimulus among the vast amount of stimuli
- e.g., lifeguard
MFoA: what is vigilance?
- ability to maintain our attention for a prolonged period of time, to detect a specific stimulus
- e.g., fishing
MFoA: what is search?
- attention that allows us to actively search for a specific stimulus
- e.g., when firefighters smell smoke, they may try to search for the location of the fire
MFoA: what is selective attention?
- attention that allows us to choose or focus on a specific stimulus and ignore others
- e.g., we pay attention to listening to a lecture on attention while ignoring other people having a conversation
MFoA: what is divided attention?
- attention that allows us to direct or shift our attention resource between multiple tasks
- e.g., we may pay direct attention or shift our attention between our baby and our work - multitasking
who proposed that there are 2 attention control systems?
- Posner (1980)
- Corbetta & Shulman (2002)
what are the 2 attention control systems?
- goal-directed attention
- stimulus-driven attention
what is another term for goal-directed attention?
- ENDOGENOUS control
- top-down
- voluntary control
what is another term for stimulus-driven attention?
- EXOGENOUS control
- bottom up
- involuntary control
what does Posner (1980) say about goal-directed attention?
- the endogenous system is controlled by an individual’s goals or intentions
- voluntary control
what are some ways to test/check goal-directed attention?
- Posner (1980): spatial cueing task/covert attention task
- Yarbus (1967): overt attention task
- dorsal attention network
G-DA: Posner (1980) - how does the spatial cueing/covert attention task work?
- pp’s see 3 squares
- pp’s see a cue (arrow):
- valid: indicating the location of target
- neutral: no info (equally often to right or left)
- invalid: indicating the opposite location of the target
- pp’s have to detect a target by pressing space bar
what is the definition of a covert attention task?
attention to an object WITHOUT eye movement
G-DA: what were the results for spatial cueing/covert attention task?
- pp’s eye movements were monitored and trials with eye movement were excluded
- pp’s attention was VOLUNTARILY directed by the cues (goal-directed)
- pp’s were faster for valid and slower for invalid (relative to the neutral cues)
- if pps’ attention was not affected by knowledge and current goals, we should not see any difference between the three conditions (invalid, neutral, valid)
