L4 Attention

Question 1

Explain Inattention Blindness

Answer 1

Inattention blindness occurs when we fail to attend to an unexpected stimulus due to an attention distraction. Failure to attend results in no encoding, so things can be not noticed, and more importantly not remembered.

Question 2

Who is more likely to suffer from Inattention blindness; A Novice or Expert?

Answer 2

A novice. Because a novice needs to attend to a higher degree to a new action, requiring more cognitive resources.

Question 3

What is the Attention spotlight?

Answer 3

attention is like a spotlight; focused at the centre but more disperse at the periphery

Leberge - showed ppl a set of numbers and told them
to say when they see a number 7 eg.

     2              3                8                0             7

             RT's were slower for info at the periphery 
             because of the diffuseness of the attention 
             spotlight.

Question 4

What is an Endogenous and Exogenous cue

Answer 4

cues direct our attention to an environmental stimuli. Endogenous cues come from the centre of the attention spotlight, Exogenous come from the periphery.

Question 5

What is inhibition of return? and why do we have it?

Answer 5

Its the shift of attention after attending to a feature, inhibiting the attention of the previous feature. It is used to help us shift attention from features we have already attended.

Question 6

What is the Global and Local spotlight?

Answer 6

The two both contribute to the attention spotlight, and we can shift between the two.

Navon task - “attend to the large letter”, “attend to the smaller letters”

Question 7

what is Feature integration, and how can it be demonstrated?

Answer 7

Feature integration theory that suggests that when perceiving a stimulus, features are “registered early, automatically, and in parallel, while objects are identified separately” and at a later stage in processing.

The 8-dot task demonstrates this, as we can attend to the local motion of 4 pairs of dots rotating or we can attend to the global motion of two squares rotating.

Question 8

How can FMRI demonstrate which parts of the brain are active during global and local processing

Answer 8

Ppts undergo an FMRI scan or EEG, whilst looking at the 8-dot task. They are asked to switch attention between the global and local processing. Found that the Global processes=AIPS, Local processes=SPL.