L7: Looking

Question 1

What are the 3 components of Posner’s (2012) attention model?

Answer 1

Alerting: high intensity state of arousal (Dorsal & Ventral attention system)
Orienting: Selective direction of attention
Executive control: Involves cognitive functions such as conflict resolution - very complex
Executive network: return or take action (regulates individuals response to stimuli

Question 2

What age does the executive & orienting network develop?

Answer 2

Orienting: running from day 1 (fully developed by age 2)
Executive network: requires more time to develop (slowly improves past age 7)

Question 3

What is attention?

Answer 3

Ability to focus on specific stimuli of interest
Maintaining attention is not easy
Implications for many domains of research
- MH, memory, socio-cognitive development

Question 4

How can we measure attention using Posner’s Attention Network task?

EXPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 4

Computer task involving pressing buttons
Fixation cross cue appears
Cue appears briefly which activates alerting system
Target appears - can be incongruent, congruent or simply a response stimuli
Ppt has to make a response to the target after it disappears
EX. Target: Fish swimming in a school left - congruent
Fish swimming diff ways - incongruent

Question 5

How are the reaction times calculated for alerting, orienting, conflict?

Answer 5

Alerting: RT for no cue minus RT for double cue trials
Orienting: RT for central cue minus RT for spatial cue
Conflict: RT for congruent trials minus RT for incongruent trials (attention remains where target is as cue hasn’t moved)
If you’re mouse is in the right spot it benefits your RT

Question 6

How can this task be used with converging methods?

Answer 6

This task can be behavioral but can also be used with neuroimaging to assess attention
EX. Eye-tracking & EEG

Question 7

Examples of methods measuring executive network?

EXPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 7

Stroop task: Ppt asked the color of the word not the word which is spelled out (can be adapted for infants e.g., day/night cards)

DCCS: matching on shape
Testing to see whether infant can keep up with the rule change

Question 8

What is attention bias?

Answer 8

The tendency to prioritize the processing of certain types of stimuli over others

Question 9

What is Macleod’s attention bias task?

EXPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 9

Present facial stimuli to infants to get RT:
Starts with fixation cross
There’s two faces acting as a priming stimulus
One face is neutral & one is emotive
When the faces disappear target appears where emotive or neutral face was
Aim: Look at how attention grabbing the stimuli is for the infant (removes a behavioral response from the task)
We can use eye-tracking & simple coding measures to do this

Question 10

What do infants show regarding attention early in life? (Fantz, 1925)

EXPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 10

Fantz (1925) brought infants in to see two panels with stimuli presented (such as polka dots & stripes)
Presented infants w/ 10 trials
Measured where infants were looking when presented stimuli (Did they look at different stimuli or same?)

Results: Around 2.5-3 months of age, infants shifted their looking behaviour- initially looked at pattern & the at age 2.5-3 they shifted looking to novel (different pattern)

Highlighted infant’s ability to show preference for familiarity in earlier life & later in life this turns into novelty

Question 11

Adapted measures of infant novelty

Answer 11

Habituation paradigm
Violation of expectation

Question 12

Emergence of measuring complex cognition in infants

Answer 12

Object permanence
Theory of mind
Basic physics

Question 13

What is the preferential looking paradigm? (Craighero., 2011)

IMPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 13

Infants are presented with side by side video of hand holding or reaching for a ball
With a preferential looking technique, a hand grasping a ball was the observed movement
In the away condition, when the hand moved out to grasp the infant spent more time looking at the video of the natural grasping behaviour (hand moving externally towards the world
Newborns prefer a movement directed toward the external world only when it may develop into a purposeful movement because of the presence of the to-be-grasped object
Results: Infants were already showing preference for this grasping behaviour

Question 14

Limitations of preferential looking paradigm?

Answer 14

Side bias : Do infants simply just prefer a side? (Fix this with counterbalancing)
Age of infant

Question 15

What is the habituation paradigm?

IMPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 15

Typically used in older infants
Method used for investigating the ability of infants to discriminate between stimuli by measuring preferential looking times
Repeated exposure to stimuli in habituation phase is followed by the presentation of a new stimulus in the test phase
If infants are able to discriminate looking time should be greater for novel stimulus

Question 16

Somerville et al., 2005: Habituation using bear and ball stimuli

IMPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 16

Habituation event: Created event (stimuli) using bear and ball - hand reaches for ball (repeat over & over until looking time decreases)
New path event: When infant is bored (hand reaches to bear instead of ball)
This should increase looking time for infant
New goal event: Hand reaches for bear
Infants’ sensitivity to the actor’s goal was correlated with their engagement in object-directed contact with the toys

Question 17

Limitations of habituation paradigm

Answer 17

Takes a long time to test infants
Similarity of perceptual properties (need to be careful that stimuli isn’t too complex otherwise it’s too difficult)

Question 18

What is the violation of expectation? (Baillargeon., 1987)

IMPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 18

Technique for studying infant cognition based on habituation & dishabituation procedures
Increases in an infant’s looking time at an event or other stimulus are interpreted as evidence that the outcome he or she expected has not occurred (IT VIOLATES THEIR EXPECTATION)
Habituation: p’s get comfortable with environment
Placing the box
Possible event
Impossible event
If they have some understanding that the physical presence of this box it will prevent it from flipping

Question 19

What is Baron Cohen’s (1985) theory of mind task?

IMPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 19

Testing children’s theory of mind
The test presents the child with a character, Sally, who leaves a desirable object such as chocolate or a ball in a basket, then Sally leaves the scene
In her absence, another character, Anne, moves the object from the basket into a box
Children are asked to predict where Sally will look for the object when she returns
4 year-olds tend to pass the test - correctly attributing a false belief to Sally while younger children tend to fail
Since then many different forms of the false belief test have been used to determine whether individuals have theory of mind

Question 20

Onishi’s (2005) violation of expectation task in 15 month old infants

IMPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 20

Task presented to 15 month old infants
Familiarization trials: presented with watermelon, green box, yellow box (shows watermelon being placed under green box)
Trials 2 & 3: Watermelon is moved the yellow box

If infants have theory of mind: they will look longer & will be surprised that the experimenter reaches for the yellow box as experimenter repeatedly put it in the green box

Question 21

What is eye-tracking?

IMPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 21

Assessing implicit attention tasks
Non-invasive way of measuring eye movements using infrared light & see how light moves

Question 22

Cannon & Woodward., (2012) eye-tracking paradigm study

IMPLICIT MEASURE OF ATTENTION

Answer 22

Infants shown stimuli: hand or claw reaches towards one of two objects (red or green object) (similar to habituation paradigm)

Infants either saw hand or claw
Objects swapped in location
Looked at whether infants looked at ball in top corner (where the hand or claw originally reached for object during familiarization trials

Question 23

Points to consider for looking time research

Answer 23

Do infants prefer one stimuli over another? Research comes down to have the infants looked at a particular stimuli?
Do infants prefer one stimuli to another?
Do infants detect a change of stimuli?

Question 24

Points to consider for eye-tracking paradigms?

Answer 24

Where/what do infants look/ at on stimuli?
How do infants shift their attention during a task?

Question 25

Points to consider for behavioral tasks?

Answer 25

Richer history of tasks adapted to assess info of attention & knowledge
EX. Inhibitory control e.g., Stroop, NoGo task
Task Switching e.g., DCSS
Monitoring e.g., discrimination tasks

Question 26

What are some limitations of looking time studies?

Answer 26

Infants have to maintain alertness
Visual acuity: visual system is still developing in infants (environmental stimuli helps it develop) - quite blurry up until 6 months old

Question 27

What are some limitations of eye-tracking?

Answer 27

Individual differences
Makeup, glasses

Question 28

What are some limitations of behavioral studies?

Answer 28

Need to be developmentally appropriate
Including instructions, working memory, attention, gaze

For attention tasks consider results may be due to infant’s age rather than their attention span

Question 29

Explicit measures vs. implicit measures

Answer 29

Explicit: Measures attention explicitly- requires more development, attention, language & motor skills

Implicit: Measures require careful control - experimentally & inferentially