Lecture 11 - Sustaining Attention Flashcards
Binding
– The process by which features (shape, color, motion, etc.) are combined to form a coherent object perception.
have to decompose the object in the environment
Steps in Binding
• First, focus on (select) the region to be analyzed.
- high acuity attention - pulling out features
• Enhance important features.
- different cells firing to diff features
• Bind those features together to
make a perceivable object.
sustaining attention
how able you are to remain focused on a task for an extended period of time
== vigilance
practice and automaticity
illusory conjunctions
taking features from different objects and combining them
different areas of the brain process features, and during recall mistakes are made
caused by insufficient attention
If attention is needed to bind features together,
then this must take some measurable amount of time.
Treisman & Schmidt (1982)
asked subjects to report numbers in black (task). They then asked what else was present.
Subjects reported illusory conjunctions,
if you’re scanning a scene looking for a single feature it should be….
really fast!
because there’s no binding you just have one highly salient stimulus
no comparison necessary: pop out effect
e.g. If you can identify the object by a single feature, this should be
very fast since no binding would be necessary (e.g. find the
woman with really blonde hair and black dress in a crowd).
Treisman & Gelade (1980) proposed Feature Integration
Theory (FIT)
argued that different filters selected for different object features. Attention then integrates them.
when trying to bind all these features, attention acts as glue. less attention = more mistakes or more features you’re looking for the longer it should take
conjunction search task
Find the target that combines (binds) multiple features in the visual display. If binding takes attention, then you should take more time as the number of items in the display increases.
One task which tests this is the conjunction search
more combined features =
the longer the search task should take
The conjunction search task suggests that we must
examine each location in the visual domain for the combination of specific target features.
Single feature searches are
easy (little binding).
even if the number of distractions goes up, it doesn’t affect you
Conjunction searches require more time as
additional features (including locations) must be processed and bound.
number of distractors increases the time
pop-out effect
When a single feature can distinguish the target from the
background (distractors), (e.g. the red X was the only red item).
spotlight of attention
When searching for a conjunction of features, we are forced to
search by means of a serial process.
It is as though we apply a
spotlight of attention to each location in the visual display.
you have a limited amount of attention you can apply to any one location or object at a time
The spotlight starts
in one location (a spatial feature) and then evaluates additional objects in space.
Overt Attention
is processing the item or location on which the eyes are focused (a).
you’re consciously aware and intentionally moving that focus of attention
The spotlight of attention seems to suggest
that we give maximal processing to the things we look at.
covert attention
eyes are focused on one place but you’re attending to something off to the side
use to process an item or location in the periphery without changing gaze
The ‘spotlight of attention’ metaphor seems most
consistent with which of the following functions of
attention?
Focusing
it’s selecting something for you to process more
Attention can be divided into many functions.
• Focusing – Limiting the number of items being processed
[channel selection].
• Perceptual enhancement – Increasing the processing of some specific channel information.
• Binding – The process by which features (shape, color, motion,
etc.) are combined to form a coherent object perception.
- Sustaining behavior – Maintaining an action in the presence of potential distractors.
- Action selection (central executive)
Outside of the laboratory, there are constant streams of
distracting information/stimuli.
How do you maintain
vigilance to your selected task?
attention is a finite capacity
Differences in vigilance can cause tremendous differences in
learning and memory.
Does attention get used up?
- your ability to maintain vigilance makes a huge difference!
• Ceci & Tishman (1984)
• did a study of learning and retention in kids with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• memory task: Children with ADHD and without ADHD were asked to study a series of picture cards (targets) in a room. The room also had brightly colored posters on the walls (distractors).
- visual learning task (go through the cards and memorize them)
• Children without ADHD had better recall of the picture cards.
Children with ADHD had better recall of the posters. Overall
memory for items was EQUAL.
• This suggests that the children were equally intelligent and had
similar memory capacities, but the children with ADHD did not
remain focused on the task
- some capacity is being used up
Attention can also be portrayed as an allocation of
limited resources.
Capacity models
suggest there is a limit to how much information a person can process at any one time.
we have some internally set amount of capacity
All tasks have a perceptual load:
− Low-load (easy) tasks use
lower amounts of processing
capacity and don’t conflict
with other low-load tasks.
− High-load (difficult) tasks use
higher amounts of processing
capacity.
it matter where you are directing your attention
did something entirely capture your attention?
or did you direct your attention (vision)?
control where you are looking but attended to the side.
always a tug of war between exogenous and endogenous
Multiple resource theories
suggest that capacities may exist
for different modalities.
sustaining behavior
– Maintaining an action in the presence of potential distractors.
e.g.studying when there’s the t.v. on
hard to study in a controlled environment because in the real world you cannot control for everything
ADHD is often portrayed as a deficit of attentional capacity.
What other attentional factors do you think are involved?
more vulnerable to exogenous cues and maybe they can’t disengage
maybe attend more covertly
maybe more susceptible to novelty
there are no simply answers
possible test example example
New tasks tend to be demanding
(high load) because….
ex?
…you need to process new information. They also have perceptual salience due to the novelty.
EX:
• When you first learned how to
drive, this was a new task and was very demanding.
• You were also (probably) highly
motivated (motivation = how much you want to attend) to attend and learn the task.
• How did you overcome the
computational complexity?
How much does practice reduce the perceptual load of a task?
- In general, practice will reduce the amount of load in a task.
- Enough practice with simple tasks can produce automaticity –
- you have left over capacity
If the perceptual load of a task goes down,
you should have more attention available for other tasks.
**Automaticity
things get easier and easier until they require “no effort” (but it’s always going to take up SOME resources)
greatly reduced perceptual load and processing time (but not free).
the degree seems to depend on how well the practice matches the task.
- consistent mapping
- varied mapping
consistent mapping
task is always the same: you get better and better and it requires less cognitive load
the task remains the same (e.g. the target always remains the same).
varied mapping
the task may change (e.g. a distractor may become a target).
Schneider & Shiffrin (1977)
consisting mapping (become a human "J" detector)
vs.
varied mapping
(become a letter detector)
the more specific the task, it won’t generalize that well
(write your own questions)
found that, under consistent mapping, reaction time decreased and flattened and was true regardless of how large the
memory set or distractor set were.
• The target seemed to ‘pop-out’ and was largely effortless.
- (sounds like perceptual learning)
• However, if switched to a varied mapping (e.g. new target chosen
from the distractors, old target now a distractor), participant
performance dropped 22% (Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977).
• So, target detection wasn’t completely automatic – just better for a specific (consistent) target.
• Schneider & Shiffrin took their results to imply that automaticity
requires a consistent mapping.
Does automaticity really require a consistent mapping?
Hirst et al. (1980)
asked participants to performs two complex tasks simultaneously.
(1) Read a short story while… (2) taking dictation.
- no consistent mapping = getting new content continuously
• Both are cognitively demanding and carry a high load. Also, there is no consistent mapping since the story and dictation keep changing.
• With practice, participants could perform both tasks, and recall
what happened in each ==>This suggested that load was reduced
and some the tasks became (somewhat) automatic.
- that both tasks got easier
In a review, Pashler (1998)
capacity sharing
suggests that people work in bursts.
The load may stay the same, but people in the above study may
have gotten better at capacity sharing.
- high load task switching to different high load task
