Introduction to Attention Flashcards
What are the two types of attention?
Covert attention : paying attention to one thing whilst appearing to pay attention to another
Overt attention: turning head to look at something
What did HARROLD PASHLER (1998) say about attention
No one know what attention is, and there may not even be an ‘it’ to be known about
What is the cocktail party effect
Even though there is a lot of noise we are able to filter it out and focus on the person we are talking to
What is voluntary attention?
Intentional
Goal driven
Knowledge used to guide information processing
What is reflexive attention
Unintentional
Stimulus driven
Something catches our attention
What did the study by Cherry (1953) do
Gave ppts two streams: one unattended and another attended
Were able to repeat what was said in attended stream
Could identify some properties of unattended stream such as gender if voice or if it was a human versus musical instrument
Draw the diagram from Donald BROADBENT (1958) that looks at the bottle neck if attention
- ——-> ——————>
- ——-> ————–>
- ——-> ——————>
Draw the diagram from BROADBENT that show the process of early selection
Input > detection > > recognition >
> detection > x
Draw the POSNER cuing paradigm - endogenous cuing
Valid trial >. + *
Invalid trial. <>. +*
Describe the results from POSNERs cuing paradigm
When it was a valid trial the ppts responded quicker than when it was an invalid trial
What is the problem with early selection theories?
We can often recall our own name or highly relevant information from unattended channel
Describe the study by MACKAY (1973) that looks at ambiguous sentences in a dichotic listening task
Ppts given ambiguous sentence string
Also given a bias word in unattended channel
The bias word influenced their interpretation if ambiguous sentence
Draw the diagram of late selection as seen in DEUTSCH and DEUTSCH
Input > detection > recognition > >
> detection > recognition > x
What evidence is there to support early selection from event related potential
FMRI studies show evidence for attention effects in primary visual cortex activation
What did the study by WOJCIULIK et al (1998) show
Shows FMRI evidence for modulation of higher level visual processing by attention
What has neurobiology shown for attention
Can generate both early and late in the visual processing stream
What does high perceptual load mean?
Current task doesn’t leave any attention for distractors
What does high perceptual load support
Early selection
What does low perceptual load mean
Current task leave attention for distractors
What type of selection does low perceptual load support
Late selection
What are the effects of cognitive load on visual cortex activation
High cognitive load = worse focused attention
Why do perceptual load and cognitive load have an opposite effect on attention
Slower reaction time with low perceptual load
Faster reaction time with low wm load
This is because perceptual = bottom up and cognitive = top down
What does this mean for attention (the fact that perceptual and cognitive loads have different effects)
It has a limited capacity and can only process a subset of sensory inputs
Attention can be early or late
How does attention decide what gets into consciousness?
(Duncan and DESIMONE (1995) : biased competition model
Items compete for attention
Top down bias signals select which stimulus wins attention
Describe the study by Hopfinger et al (2000)
On monkeys
Attacked monkeys to electrode and showed that when given juice reward they showed bigger spikes when given good stimulation
Describe the study by morishima et al 2009
Don’t know the answer - need to read
What is Anna triesmans feature integration theory
Need to learn
What did POSNERs paradigm show about cues on attention
Cue facilitates RTs at short cue target intervals
Cue slows RTs at longer cue- target intervals
Why did POSNER find the results they did
Inhibition of return: slower RTs to locations that were recently cues relative to uncued locations
Why do we have slower RTs to locations that are recently cues relative to uncued locations
Ability to distinguish between threatening and non threatening events essential for survival
Useful to initially orient attention to surprising events
Once registered as non-threatening, useful to suppress orienting to that event in order to focus in current task goals
What was the conclusion of POSNER
Trenton enables us not inky to attend to important information but also to suppress processing of irrelevant distractors
Is there attentional enhancement or suppression at short cue target intervals
Enhancement
Is there attentional enhancement or suppression at long- cue target intervals
Suppression
What type of attention does visual search require
Both voluntary and reflexive
What is a popout search
Target can be distinguished from distractors by a single feature
What is a conjunction search
Target can only be distinguished from distractors by combination of features
Faster reaction time for popout or conjunction search
Triesman
Popout
What is the Anne triesman feature integration theory
Elementary stimulus features are analysed pre attentively and in parallel within specialized feature maps
When targets differ from distractors by a conjunction if features, information from feature maps must be integrated into a single object
This feature integration process requires attention to be directed to each item individually
What is selected? Objects, locations, or both?
Evidence reviewed to date suggests attention operates on spatial locations
We are very good at recognising objects
Objects are typically situated in a particular location
What did Egly et al do
Used a cuing paradigm to direct the attention of participants to different objects and locations
What is the FMRI evidence for object based attention - o’craven et al
The face or the house moved, subjects attended to either the face, the house or the direction of motion
Activation in FFA and PPA depended in which stimulus was being attended to
Key prediction of object based attention: attention selects whole objects
What does attention to motion do
Leads to selection of the whole objects
Evidence for object- based attention
What is hemispatial neglect
When one side of brain is damaged
What is the evidence from neglect for object based attention
They only draw half the flowers
What type of stimulus catches spatial attention in neglect
Fear related stimulus
Spiders- vuilleumier and Schwartz 2001
What did patient have trouble with on ipsilesional task
Impaired orienting to contralesional stimuli
Inability to disengage from ipsilesional stimuli
Neglect is an attentional disorder
Describe spatial working memory deficits in neglect
They leave large sections out (e.g stars on a page) manly et al 2002
What did Robertson et al show
There is sustained attention deficit in neglect
What did Robertson et al show
Phasic alerting reduces neglect
How can we be sure dorsal frontoparietal regions are the source of top-down control signals?
1) activation in frontoparietal regions linked to the cue
2) when subjects passively attended the cue, frontoparietal activation was not observed
What did the study by morishima et al show
Combined TMS and ERP evidence for top-down bias signals originating in frontoparietal cortex
