Lecture 10 Flashcards
Describe Carrasco et al study
This suggests a shift of attention led to an effect on perception (and changed
the perceived contrast: how different the light and dark bars appeared to be)
Describe the O’Craven study
Rather than using binocular rivalry they had two superimposed images
presented to both eyes, though one was moving and one was stationary
Attending to the face stimuli increased activity in the FFA
- Attending to the house stimuli caused enhanced activity in the PPA
- An area specialized for movement, MT/MST, also showed activation when attending
to whichever image was moving
Describe Datta and DeYoe
found that instructing participants to covertly direct
attention to specific areas of space in their visual field corresponded with
maximal activation across different areas of visual cortex
Describe inattention blindness
People can be unaware of clearly visible stimuli,
even if looking direct at something, if they aren’t directing focussed attention
towards it
- Cartwright-Finch and Lavie (2007): most participants fail to notice a minor
change in the stimuli that begins appearing after the first five trials (only 2/20
reported seeing it!)
Describe research on inattention deafness
Finding a parallel with inattention blindness, and conforming to predictions
made by load theory, participants were less likely to notice an auditory tone
played during a difficult visual search, as compared to an easier one (Raveh &
Lavie, 2015)
Describe Simons and Chabris study
Simons and Chabris (1999): participants
instructed to count the number of times
one ‘team’ (people wearing white shirts)
passes a basketball
- Many participants (46%) failed to notice
a person in a monkey costume entering
the scene partway through
Describe change blindness
Change blindness refers to the common experience of failing to notice a
change across two visual stimuli that are presented one after another
What is an example of change blindness?
Continuity
errors in film are
often missed by
viewers,
providing plenty
of real-world
examples of
change
blindness
Describe Dingus study
Dingus et al. (2006) documented 82 crashes and 771 near crashes in a
naturalistic (i.e. correlational) study
- In 80% of crashes the driver was inattentive during a three-second window
preceding the crash (67% for near crashes) - More than 22% of near crashes involved ‘button pushing’
Describe Strayer and Johnston study
Strayer and Johnston (2001) used a driving
simulator to manipulate smartphone use
- Effect occurs for both hands-free and handheld
devices, implicating attention (not just having
one less hand available!)
Describe Ward et. al study
What is the central task?
determine whether letters flashed in the centre of the screen are the same
or different
What are peripheral tasks?
Picture task: determine whether
picture flashed in bottom right
contains an animal
- Coloured-disc task: determine
whether coloured disc flashed in
bottom right is ordered ‘red-
green’ or ‘green-red’
Describe Li study results
Performance was good when doing the
secondary picture task (~90%), though not when
doing the secondary coloured-disc task (~50%)
- Results suggest properties of scenes can be
processed with little/no attention (i.e. while doing
the central task) - Poor performance on the secondary coloured-
disc task may essentially represent the sort of
binding error predicted by FIT when focussed
attention is lacking
Describe load theory
Load theory begins with the premise that people
have a particular perceptual capacity, which
represents a sort of ‘upper-limit’ on the amount of
perceptual information their system is able to
process at any one time
Describe low load tasks
Low-load tasks use relatively little of our total
perceptual capacity, leaving some/lots of residual
‘resources’ to process other things
Describe high load tasks
High-load tasks use most/all of our total
perceptual capacity, leaving no/few residual
‘resources’ to process other things
Describe task irrelevant stimuli
Task-irrelevant stimuli are stimuli that do
not provide information relevant for whatever
is considered the primary task
Describe distractor and low load
Load theory predicts that task-irrelevant
stimuli (e.g. distractors) will be processed to
a greater extent under conditions of low load
Describe Womelsdorf study
- Monkey fixates on white dot in upper left while covertly attending (i.e. without moving it’s
eyes away from the fixation point) to either:
A. the green diamond on the left
or
B. the blue circle on the right - Yellow indicates area of receptive field
with largest response, which changes
with their covert attentional shift
What is ecological validity?
- Ecological validity refers to the degree to which the
conditions, stimuli, and procedure used in experiments
match those present in the natural world
What is self produced information?
information that we generate ourselves by acting
in the environment
Describe invariant information
source of information that are present in the environment
across different contexts
- The way our senses work together (i.e. multimodal integration)
What is optic flow?
the pattern of apparent
motion perceived by an observer as they
move through space (i.e. relative motion)
