Lecture 3 - The Attending Brain Flashcards
What is inattentional blindness?
Failure to be aware of a visual stimulus because attention has been directed away from it
What is pseudo-neglect?
Failure to attend to left side of space
What is the Posner spatial cueing task?
Spatial attention - fixation on computer screen, followed by a cue indicating location of target. After delay, target presented at cued location or different location. By comparing reaction times = examine effects of spatial attention on information processing. How attention can enhance the processing of info while suppressing distractions.
What is exogenous orienting?
Attention that is externally guided by a stimulus
What is endogenous orienting?
Attention is guided by the goals of the perceiver - VISUAL SEARCH, SCANNING!
What is inhibition of return
A slowing reaction time associated with going back to a previously attended location. In the Posner cueing task - flashlight / invalid cue causes PPT to be slower at attending to the target - distracting
What is Feature Integration Theory (FIT) - Treisman & Gelade, 1980
How attention selects perceptual features of objects - when a single letter differs in colour to the others it will stand out (feature detection) - pop out affect. When there are two or more features - attention is required to SEARCH
What are illusory conjunctions?
Visual features of two different objects are wrongly perceived as being associated with only one object
What is the ventral route?
Connects visual cortex to temporal lobes - WHAT PATHWAY associated with recognition of objects and faces. Processing without awareness
What is the dorsal route?
Connects visual cortex to parietal lobe - WHERE PATHWAY (spatial processing). important for conscious experiences
What is allocentric space?
Map of space coding the locations of objects relative to each other. Stored in Hippocampus
What is peri-personal space?
Space within reaching distance - the space that surrounds us
What is the frontal eye field?
Part of the frontal lobes responsible for voluntary eye movement
How does neglect arise?
Loss of neurons dedicated for representation to that space - failure to shift attention - often after a stroke to right hemisphere
Mort et al., 2003 - Is the visual field affected in neglect?
Neglect is not a disorder of low-level visual perception as objects in neglected visual field still activate visual regions. However neglect is most commonly observed in the visual modality.