L6- attention and consciousness

Question 1

What is the definition of attention? Who made this definition?

Answer 1

William james

= the taking possession by the mind.
Focalisation, concentration of consciousness.
It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal with ithers effectively

Question 2

What are the different types of attention?

Answer 2

• Selective attention
• visual attention
• divided attention

Question 3

What is selective attention?

Answer 3

The ability to direct our awareness to certain, relevant stimuli in the environment. Whilst ignoring the irrelevant other stimuli.

The cocktail part effect uses selective attention.

Question 4

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 4

The ability to attend selectively to auditory material against a background of competing auditory stimuli.

E.g. when in a restaurant you attend selectively to the auditory material you friend is saying. Against the other peoples voices in the restaurant (selectively hear only your friend)

Question 5

What has been used to widely study selective attention? What occurs in this ?

Answer 5

Dichotic listening tasks.

The task of this is to listen to one of two messages, which are presented simultaneously. One to ear ear.
The person is then told to repeat back (shadow) the message presented to one of the ears.

Cherry 1953 ; said that the unattended message in the other ear was lost.
Wood and cowan 1985; people don’t even realise if the unattended message switches language

This task shows our selective attention is limited but we do monitor it to some degree as studies have shown…

• moray ; if a persons name is said in the unattended ear then we are likely to hear and remember it
• neilson and sarason 1981; people are good at remembering sexually explicit words presented to the unattended ear
• triesman 1960 people can follow a message even if it switches from one ear to another

Question 6

What is the model of selective attention

Answer 6

Triesmans attenuation model

Question 7

What is inattentional blindness

Answer 7

Failure to perceive an unexpected stimulus when it is plain sight

Question 8

What change blindness

Answer 8

Failure to notice an obvious change. E.g a photo we stored in our memory and seeing it again but it is changed

Question 9

How do psychologists investigate the effects of divided attention?

Answer 9

Dual task methods

Question 10

Is it possible complete to tasks at the same time?

Answer 10

It is possible with training, without a decrease in performance

Question 11

What negative effects come with divided attention

Answer 11

Real world examples where it is unsafe; driving on the phone

Question 12

What evidence is there of limited visual attention ?

Answer 12

Simons and levins asking for directions ; man changes mid way and the person doesn’t realise

Simons and chabis invisible gorilla video

Question 13

What is the definition of consciousness?

Answer 13

Philosophical approaches have a different approach to the definition of consciousness.

• dualism by Descartes says that it is not a natural phenomenon, which is miraculous and we should not hope to understand it
• additionally, Dennett- in eliminative materialism. Which says it is a natural phenomenon but we cant understand it and our brains are not capable of understanding it
• koch; consciousness is produced by activity of human brain and we should be optimistic about our ability to understand it

= “consciousness is a fundamental property of complex things”

• it is a subjective experience, and is thought of as a ‘side effect’
• easy and hard problems of consciousness

Question 14

What are chalmers 1995 easy and hard problems of consciousness?

Answer 14

Easy problems: contents of consciousness- specify a mechanism that can perform the function. Still hard but tractable.

• Ability to discriminate, categorise, react to stimuli
• Integrate information
• Report mental/internal states
• Control behaviour deliberately
• Differentiate between wakefulness and sleep
• Discovering the neural correlates

Hard problems:

• why do we have personal experiences
• what is it like to be a bat? Awareness of sensory information, why does it exist
• qualia = what is it like component to mental states

Question 15

What evidence is there that not all brain activity is consciously perceived?

Answer 15

Blindsight patients and split brain brians show this.

These studies have made progress on the easy problems

Question 16

What neurobiological models consciousness propose and what are they?

Answer 16

-astonishing hypothesis
-global work space theory
=split brain patients and blind people can still navigate obstacle course

=propose how neural activity’s might lead to consciousness (little experimental evidence to these models)

Question 17

Issues with hard problems of consciousness?

Answer 17

We dont know why we have conscious experiences, or if this is scientifically tractable

Question 18

Are attention and consciousness different?

Answer 18

Yes.
We can do things which require no attention or consciousness (rapid eye movements or change of posture)
We can do things which require our attention but not consciousness (priming
We can do things which require both too

Evidence on this on the mind map

Question 19

How is sleep studied? What is found about our sleeping pattern ?

Answer 19

Sleep laboratories often recorded in an EEG (eletroencephalograms)

Distinguishes between different parts of sleep

• Stages 3 and 4= deep sleep
• rapid eye movement (REM) (looks like the person is more awake) early stages of sleep possibly. If woken up in this you can report what you were dreaming.
• people often cycle through periods of REM and deep sleep throughout the night. Typically 4-5 cycles.

Question 20

Why do we sleep?

Answer 20

It isn’t exactly known, but is universal.

Sleep deprivation studies show that they dont perform well on cognitive tasks. Free recall is impaired (drummond et al 2000)

Sleep seems to allow us to consolidate what we learnt while were awake = sleep dependant memory consolidation. Which is somewhat related to dreaming.

Question 21

What is sleep dependant memory consolidation?

Answer 21

Sleep allows us to consolidate what we learnt when awake. This is also found to be somewhat related to dreaming.

Question 22

What helps individuals als get a good night sleep? What makes indivudals have a bad night sleep?

Answer 22

Bad :

• drinking caffeine
• drinking alcohol
• drinking hot milk- diary more likely to relate to bizarre dreams
• stressful work environment
• exposure to noise
• irregular sleeping pattern

Good:

• regular sleeping pattern
• regular exercise (4-8 hours before sleep is best)

-no effect of napping