Lecture 3 - Attention Flashcards
What is social referencing?
Tendency to look to social partners for guidance about how to respond to unfamiliar or threatening
events
What are the 3 networks for attention?
Orienteering, alerting, executive
Is there evidence for the independence of the three networks?
- Lack of correlation between reaction times
suggests independence of networks - But this could also be due to noise and lack of
reliability (hard to interpret null findings) - Overall negative relation between reaction
time and accuracy is consistent with past
literature and known trade-of
Study on inihibitory control
- Give child a marshmallow
- Say you can have it now or have two when I get back
- There is developmental progression of this also individual differences
- 90s research seemed to link it with later life outcomes like career but there is more criticism of recent research saying it did not account for socio-economic research etc also about trusting the adults or not
What is joint attention?
The more social part of attention. It is attention is joint or shared when a person coordiantes attention between an object or another person.
Also called triadic attention.
- Joint attention in toddlerhood (24 months)
- Looked at when the mother and infant shared attention on the same page of a book during shared book reading
What is intersubjectivity?
- Critical part of socio-cultural theory. Understanding that people share during communication. In experiments we often see it in terms of turn taking (contingent interactions) like stuff like peek-a boo as a way of operationalising it.
When do infants start directing their attention?
- Infants start directing their attention of others
around 10-11 months - Checking back (9-10 months)
- Pointing (10-12 months)
- Pointing & checking back (24 months)
What is Brandes-Aitken et al study?
What are some examples of executive function?
Executive functions in early childhood (48 months)
- Can involve working memory, imhibition, task switching.
- They used 5 different tasks and mentioned them briefly in their methods section. One was called the picture game (on the slides).
Brandes-Aitken et al: Relations between joint attention and executive function
Animal go / no go study?
Animal go / no go study findings?
- Does attuned caregiving (15 mo) relate to subsequent joint attention (24 mo) and executive functioning (48 mo)? YES
2. Are individual differences in joint attention (24 mo) related to executive functioning (48mo)? YES
3. Does this vary based on income-to-needs ratio? YES
4. Does joint attention mediate relations between caregiving and executive function? YES
Note: Also controlled for maternal education, job prestige, infant focused attention,
maternal language input, race, etc.
Tell me about alerting
Arousing the attentional system through a cue that indicates
both that a stimulus is about to occur and includes some
information about target
Present in infancy but undergoes refinement through early
primary years (e.g., response times to cues improve through 10 years) – response times becomes more prompt
More prominent in left hemisphere, especially in frontal and
parietal areas and in thalamus
Associated with norepinephrine
Tell me about orienting
Drawing attention to a region
Early-emerging and most primitive
Fully operational in infancy and little subsequent
change
Involves cortical brain regions (superior parietal
lobes and frontal eye fields) and subcortical regions
(superior colliculus and pulvinar nucleus)
Tell me about executive
- Executive Function: collection of cognitive activities
involved in goal-directed tasks and problem-solving - Includes inhibitory control, error correcting/shifting, working
memory - all involved in attention development
- Relatively late-emerging; develops through adolescence up until about 30 years.
- Frontal areas of brain involved (pre-frontal cortex)
- Associated with dopamine
