Lecture 04 Attention

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

Domain of Attention

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

The Spotlight Metaphor of Attention

Answer 3

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”)

Question 4

Why shouldn’t spotlight metaphor be taken too literally?

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Orienting

Answer 5

1. Covert orienting
2. Overt orienting

Question 6

Overt Attention

Answer 6

“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

Question 7

Bottom-Up Determinants of Eye Movement

Answer 7

Stimulus Salience

Question 8

Stimulus Salience

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Top-Down Determinants of Eye Movements

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Scene Schema

Answer 10

• 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

Question 11

Covert Attention

Answer 11

“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

Question 12

Precueing

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Exogenous Orienting

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Endogenous Orienting

Answer 14

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

Question 15

What Controls the Spotlight?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Types of Attention

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Selective Attention

Answer 17

Attending to one thing while ignoring others

Question 18

Divided Attention

Answer 18

Paying attention to more than one thing at a time

Question 19

Distractors

Answer 19

Stimulus that is interfering with the processing of another stimulus

Question 20

Attentional Capture

Answer 20

Rapid shifting of attention

Question 21

Visual Scanning

Answer 21

Movements of the eyes from one location to another

Question 22

Dichotic Listening Task

Answer 22

Attending to one ear and shadowing

Question 23

What can be processed at another ear?

Answer 23

• Own name
• Gender
• Change in gender
• Change in tone

Question 24

Cocktail Party Effect

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Selective Attention Models

Answer 25

1. Early Selection Model 2. Intermediate Selection Model 3. Late Selection Model

Question 26

Early Selection Model

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Criticism of Filter Model

Answer 27

- Cocktail party phenomenon - "Dear Aunt Jane" at the unattended ear

Question 28

Intermediate Selection Model

Answer 28

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 -

Question 29

Late Selection Model

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Load Theory of Attention

Answer 30

Load = The difficulty of a given task

Question 31

Memory set

Answer 31

One to four characters called target stimuli

Question 32

Divided Attention

Answer 32

Remembering target and monitoring rapidly presented stimuli

Question 33

Test frames

Answer 33

Could contain random dot patterns, a target, distractors

Question 34

Inattentional Blindness

Answer 34

Unattended stimuli are left out

Question 35

Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

Answer 35

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

Question 36

Preattentive stage

Answer 36

- Automatic ­- No effort or attention ­- Unaware of process ­- Object analyzed into features

Question 37

Focused attention stage

Answer 37

- Attention plays key role ­- Features are combined

Question 38

Illusory Conjunctions

Answer 38

Combination of features from different stimuli

Question 39

R.M.: Patient with Balint’s syndrome

Answer 39

- Parietal lobe damage­ - Inability to focus attention on individual object - Illusory conjunctions - “blue T”

Question 40

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

Answer 40

- Color, shape, orientation, or size - Bottom-up processing - Unaffected by number of distractors

Question 41

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

Answer 41

- Scanning to focus attention at a specific location - Top-down processing - eliminating stimuli

Question 42

Evidence for Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

Answer 42

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