Lecture 04 Attention Flashcards

1
Q

Attention

A
  • Information is SELECTED for further processing
  • Other information is DISCARDED
  • LIMITED capacity to process all received information, so selection based on relevance or importance to current GOALS
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2
Q

Domain of Attention

A
  • Directed to locations in space
  • Space is a common dimension of different sensory systems and our motor system
    – Spotlight metaphor
  • Attention may be needed to bind together different aspects of conscious perception
  • e.g. shape and color, sound and vision
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3
Q

The Spotlight Metaphor of Attention

A

Spotlight –> salient object
1. Move e.g. in visual search
2. Zoom in or out (narrow or wide “beam”), e.g. if attending to words or attending to central letter in a word
3. Location of attention not necessarily same as eye fixation (“looking out corner of one’s eyes”)

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4
Q

Why shouldn’t spotlight metaphor be taken too literally?

A

(e.g. possible to split attention between 2 non-adjacent locations)

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5
Q

Orienting

A
  1. Covert orienting
  2. Overt orienting
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6
Q

Overt Attention

A

“Giving attention to something”
Eye movements, attention, and perception
- Saccades: rapid movements of the eyes from one place to another
- Fixations: short pauses on points of interest
- Studied by using an eye tracker

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7
Q

Bottom-Up Determinants of Eye Movement

A

Stimulus Salience

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8
Q

Stimulus Salience

A

Areas that stand out and capture attention
- Bottom-up process
- Depends on characteristics of the stimulus
- Color and motion are highly salient

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9
Q

Top-Down Determinants of Eye Movements

A

Eye movements are led by the person’s goal
- Scene schema

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10
Q

Scene Schema

A
  • Knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes
  • Help guide fixations from one area of a scene to another
  • Eyes movements are determined by task
  • Eyes movements preceded motor actions by a fraction of a second
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11
Q

Covert Attention

A

“Attention Without Eye Movements”
- Precueing: directing attention without moving the eyes
- Participants respond faster to a light at an expected location than at an unexpected location
- Even when eyes kept fixed

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12
Q

Precueing

A

Directing attention without moving the eyes
- Precue help without a person knowing
- If a person focus on a specific location they tend to process it faster

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13
Q

Exogenous Orienting

A

Attention from external cue
- Automatic
- Posner’s Reflexive attention experiments

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14
Q

Endogenous Orienting

A

Attention from internal cue
- Controlled (Motivated)
- Posner’s Voluntary attention experiments

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15
Q

What Controls the Spotlight?

A

Exogenous orienting slightly more than Endogenous orienting in Posner’s task

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16
Q

Types of Attention

A
  1. Selective
  2. Divided
  3. Distractors
  4. Attentional capture
  5. Scanning
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17
Q

Selective Attention

A

Attending to one thing while ignoring others

18
Q

Divided Attention

A

Paying attention to more than one thing at a time

19
Q

Distractors

A

Stimulus that is interfering with the processing of another stimulus

20
Q

Attentional Capture

A

Rapid shifting of attention

21
Q

Visual Scanning

A

Movements of the eyes from one location to another

22
Q

Dichotic Listening Task

A

Attending to one ear and shadowing

23
Q

What can be processed at another ear?

A
  • Own name
  • Gender
  • Change in gender
  • Change in tone
24
Q

Cocktail Party Effect

A

Hearing one’s own name at a party while being unattended

25
Q

Selective Attention Models

A
  1. Early Selection Model
  2. Intermediate Selection Model
  3. Late Selection Model
26
Q

Early Selection Model

A

Broadbent Filter Model of Attention
Sensory memory -> Filter -> Detector -> Short-term memory
­- Only attended messages pass through the filter

27
Q

Criticism of Filter Model

A
  • Cocktail party phenomenon
  • “Dear Aunt Jane” at the unattended ear
28
Q

Intermediate Selection Model

A

Treisman’s Attenuation Model (Leaky Filter Model)
Messages -> Attenuator -> Dictionary unit -> Short-term memory
- At the attenuator: Attended messages pass through with stronger strength than unattended messages
-

29
Q

Late Selection Model

A

MacKay
- Selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after information has been analyzed for meaning
- “They were throwing stones at the bank”
- Meaning of the biasing word affected participants’ choice

30
Q

Load Theory of Attention

A

Load = The difficulty of a given task

31
Q

Memory set

A

One to four characters called target stimuli

32
Q

Divided Attention

A

Remembering target and monitoring rapidly presented stimuli

33
Q

Test frames

A

Could contain random dot patterns, a target, distractors

34
Q

Inattentional Blindness

A

Unattended stimuli are left out

35
Q

Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

A

How we perceive individual features as part of the same object by proposing a two-stage process?
1. Preattentive stage
2.Focused attention stage

36
Q

Preattentive stage

A
  • Automatic
    ­- No effort or attention
    ­- Unaware of process
    ­- Object analyzed into features
37
Q

Focused attention stage

A
  • Attention plays key role
    ­- Features are combined
38
Q

Illusory Conjunctions

A

Combination of features from different stimuli

39
Q

R.M.: Patient with Balint’s syndrome

A
  • Parietal lobe damage­
  • Inability to focus attention on individual object
  • Illusory conjunctions
  • “blue T”
40
Q

Feature Search (a.k.a. Disjunctive Search)

A
  • Color, shape, orientation, or size
  • Bottom-up processing
  • Unaffected by number of distractors
41
Q

Serial Search (a.k.a. Conjunction Search)

A
  • Scanning to focus attention at a specific location
  • Top-down processing
  • eliminating stimuli
42
Q

Evidence for Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

A

“Pop-out” is not affected by number of items to be searched