Lecture 3 Flashcards
theories of attention
- There are several theories of the mechanisms of attention
Each explains how attention is used under different circumstances
selective attention
- “Attention as a filter”
○ Filter theories believe attention acts like a bottleneck that only lets some info through at a time
The attentional filter selects attended information for processing and filters out everything else
dichotic listening task
○ Sherry’s experiments
○ Broadbent first proposed a theory of auditory attention based on results of dichotic listening tasks
○ Participant wearing headphones, two different audios in each ear, told to listen to one and ignore the other, have participant immediately repeat the ear they were listening to
○ Noticed people were very good at the task; they are good at selectively attending
People noticed sensory info in unattended ear, did not notice the meaning of the message in the unattended ear
broadbent’s early selection filter model
Input -> sensory memory -> filter -> detector -> long-term memory
problems with broadbent’s early selection filter model
□ Cocktail party effect
® People are aware of their own name in an unattended message
Participants ‘follow’ a meaningful message in the unattended ear
triesman’s attenuation model
§ Attenuator -> dictionary unit -> memory
§ Attended signal is stronger than other stimuli after passing through the filter but…
Unattended stimuli may be more intense, ‘more important’, ‘more likely’
vigilance
attention as a spotlight
posner 1980
○ Participants were most likely to notice invalid trials, then neutral, then valid
Attention acts like a unitary spotlight, moving through space
neisser and becklen 1975
○ Present 2 videos; handclapping game and participants had to count hand claps, ball passing game and participants had to count ball passes
○ In one condition, they were separate, in another they were at the same time and participants were told to pay attention and count to only one (selective attention)
We can selectively attend objects in the same spatial location
attention as a mental resource
- “Divided attention”
○ We have a fixed amount of attentional resources that we can use to perform mental work
§ More cognitive load = more attentional resources used
□ Cognitive load: how much info we can process at once
We have some control over how we allot these resources
flanker compatibility task
○ Demonstrates this attention ‘spillover’ with low load tasks
○ Flanker: something unrelated to the experiment
○ In high low condition, flanker had no effect
In low high condition, flanker had effect
automatic processes
○ Do not require attention
○ Fast
○ Parallel
○ Cannot be modified once started
With practice, controlled processes can become automatic
controlled processes
○ Require attention
○ Slow
○ Serial
Under conscious control
stroop task
Words of colours being different colours
driving cell phones
We are less able to detect sudden changes and react quickly when using cell phones will driving
attention as a feature binder
“visual search”
cowan
Suggests we can attend 4+1 items at a time
the binding problem
- overall encoding of our brain circuits for the combination of decisions, actions, and perception
- One role of attention may be to bind features
Visual search tasks involves using attention to focus on object features in a particular location
feature search
§ Green circle among blue squares
Search for green stem or circular stem
the time to find the target is not affected by the number of irrelevant distractor stimuli
conjunction search
§ Green circle among green squares and blue circles
Search for green circle
participants must consider at least two features
typical visual search task in a lab iv and dv
- Typically a visual search task in a lab has 3 independent variables
- Type of search
- Number of distractions
- Presence of target- Dependent variable
Reaction time to respond
- Dependent variable
feature integration theory pre-attentive stage
Single feature does not require attention and pops out automatically
feature integration theory
- Visual search is a 2 stage process
Object -> pre-attentive stage -> focused attention stage -> perception - preattentive and focused attention stage
feature integration theory focused attentive stage
Binding feature requires attention
