L9 - Attention Pt 1

Question 1

What did William James say?

Answer 1

• Where we pay attention to is clear and vivid form
• It is only one thing we can pay attention to at a time - object based to some extent

Question 2

What is the COVERT paradigm?

Answer 2

• Ppts get given a fixation cross
• Subjects have to detect targets that occur at one of two locations
• Must keep eyes still - do not move eyes
• Manipulation is the type of cue
• Exogenous cues - appear near target - do not predict where target will appear: attracts attention to itself = tells us nothing about where the target was looking = are people faster when target is at the cued location (automatic and reflexive)
• Endogenous cues appear at the centre and predict where target will appear = tell ppt which square more likely to show target = nothing at location at square that drags attention = person has to deliberately move their eyes and attention (deliberate = effect is lessened when ppt is doing another mental task)

Question 3

What did Nakayama and Mackaben do?

Answer 3

• Looking at how attention comes and goes
• Fixation cross and cued a particular location
• Put up set of targets briefly - one was different than the rest = cue was always correct
• If cue and target come up at the same time = chance performs and ppts had to guess what the target was
• If cue comes on 20/30ms before target = performance increases, cue summons attention
• 100ms+ performance gets worse = cannot sustain the attentive response
• Shows effect of exogenous cue is transient (brief)
• Why we think we can see the world - attention flicks to everything so we attend to ‘everything’

Question 4

What is the Spotlight Metaphor?

Answer 4

Instead of having a brightly lit world, we have a spotlight that can go anywhere but one location in the field so we can only see in that one location

Question 5

What is the attentional network?

Answer 5

• Neuropsychological exp have identified 3 areas involved in attention and by implication neglect
• Posterior parietal lobe: disengages attention
• Superior colliculus: moves attention and moves our eyes around
• Pulvinar: enhances attention: focuses attention in on what you really want to know
• PET and fMRI imaging of the brain has confirmed the role of the parietal cortex in attention shifting in control subjects

Question 6

What was the card trick?

Answer 6

• Asked ppt to pick a card and remember it
• Another set of cards were presented and only the thing the ppt picked looked clear and vivid, but all cards changed

Question 7

What is change blindness?

Answer 7

• Modern version of spot the difference
• Two pics are presented in the same location one after another
• If presented with no time interval the difference is easy to see
• With just 0.1s between the difference is hard to see (motion detectors are about 100ms)
• Scenes appear new to the visual system = thinks there are changes everywhere
• Had to deliberately move attention and when misplaced = cannot detect difference

Question 8

Change-blindness in real life:

Answer 8

• Mudsplashes are presented at the same time
• You blink
• Cuts in film
• Saccadic eye-movement: whenever you move your eyes you go blind - brain switches off our visual system (move eyes every 3 secs)
• If we put gap between image 1 and 2, real or not, its like it is a whole new image and our exo attention cannot cope so we rely on our endo attention (deliberate)

Question 9

How can attention be more meaningful?

Answer 9

• Attention can be on objects
  STUDY:
• Had two videos superimposed on top of each other: passing basketball and ppt must count the number of times the ball was passed (most people get correct) or a hand clapping game and had to count number of times hands touched
• Each task separate was easy but if asked to do both tasks together, people miss half of them, even if video if slowed down to as if there is only one video playing.
• In a follow-up study, they looked for just hand-claps, but they failed to notice bizarre events in the other video
• Shows attention cannot be on two things at one time
• Merely looking at something doesn’t ensure attention
• Head-up displays result in crashes e.g speedometer on eye-level causes crashes

Question 10

Is attention object based or spaced based?

Answer 10

• Wanted to see if exo/endogenous cues could be object based instead of spaced based
• Two objects: red thing or green thing, ppts new one of the circles in triangle would flash
• Either press button when it flashed or whether flash increased/decreased luminance
• Could manipulate attention: cue exogenously green squares by flashing green lines = people were faster identifying green circles (cued)
• Control = take away lines = does not look like two different objects = no cue = difference reduced
• Attention must be object-based - though space is still important