Lecture 4 Flashcards
Oblique Effect:
brain better at fine distinctions for horizontal
and vertical orientations than others, because we see
them a lot
What is Fovea and periphery?
Fovea: where image is focused
Periphery: the rest of the area
What problems does attention have?
Limited capacity: Uses selectivity to pick what we should attended to as there is too much detail in the world
Vigilance(sustained attention) cant be maintained indefinitely
ie. if ur looking for something that rarely happens ur likely to miss it, (lulu roaming top level 2)
Attention is not always a conscious choice i.e. a kids crying so you pay attention even if u dont want to
what did Colin cherry (1953) do?
dichotic listening experiment (attend to one input and ignore the other)
- Attention is selective and can be thought of as a filter or gate to awareness
what did Broadbent (1959) do?
tried to answer the question “how and when does attention filter info”
Attention as an absolute gatekeeper: if you attend to something, that info goes on for further processing, if you do not, it is gone (incorrect theory)(^early selection model)
What is the late selection model what are the problems with it?
Argue that attention only comes into play after you know what everything is
- If attention was this late then you should have information about everything
Problems with late selection:
- Not every task irrelevant bit of info is detected
- Some relevant info makes it through, even if it is not explicitly relevant
Evidence against early selection model?
1) Cocktail party effect: you can be in a crowded room full of people talking, and you will notice your name in conversation
2) Moray’s 1959 experiment: dichotic listening paradigm- participants listened and repeated what they heard and were told they could stop
What is the Attenuation model of attention
Treisman’s Attenuation Model (1964)
- attention is not a gatekeeper, it is more of a filter
- Attending to one thing does not block out everything else
What did Treisman’s (1980) Feature Integration Theory argue?
attention is what bound features into objects
in other words attention is the tool used to represent what an object is
What is attentional capture
Attentional Capture is when something salient in the environment draws your attention to it involuntarily
What is Overt Attention
Overt attention: attending where you’re
looking; can either be driven by the intrinsic
nature of the stimulus (bottom-up) or by the
observer’s own goals (top-down)
What is the difference between bottom-up, top down attentions
Bottom up processing is essentially interpreting your senses. So it comes in to the brain via physical sensation and then your brain interprets what it means.
Top down processing is the reverse. It is projecting your knowledge onto the world that you perceive with your senses.
What is Covert attention
attending where you are not looking
this is why eye tracking isnt always the answer for studying attention
Where is the attention in the brain?
Contralaterally organized in the right and left visual fields in the brain
Molly Potters experiment (RSVP) with 3 tasks to measure how fast attention can be
Potter used 3 tasks (all with RSVP)
* Remember all pictures, and test one of the set observers saw
* Show an image in advance, ask when they saw it
* Give a category, report when you see member of category
(ocean, say when you see a fish)