Lecture 5: Attention and consciousness

Question 1

Aims of cognitive psychology

Answer 1

• What are the mental processes that underlie our living experience?
• How do we perceive, learn, remember and think?
• What aspects of cognition are specific to humans?
• What is the relationship between brain and mind?

Question 2

Research methods in cognitive psychology

Answer 2

• controlled laboratory experiments
• Psychobiological research
• Self-reports
• Case studies
• Naturalistic observations
• Computer simulations and AI

Question 3

The key foci of cognitive psychology

Answer 3

Cognitive psychology focuses on study of higher mental functions with particular emphasis on the ways in which people accquire knowledge and use it to shape and understand their experience in the world

Question 4

Attention

Answer 4

Attention relates to our ability to actively process aspects of our enviroment by means of our senses and also our memories

Question 5

Consciousness

Answer 5

Consiousness: includes both the feeling of awareness and the content of awareness, some of which may overlap with attention

Question 6

Attention and consciousness form partly overlapping processes

Answer 6

Actively processing limited amounts of infomation

Feeling and content of awareness but not necessarily active

Consider writing your name (consious) and writing a word you have seen or used before (attention)

Question 7

What are the benefits of attention

Answer 7

• Monitor our interaction with enviroment and adapt to situations
• Help link our past (memories) with the present (sensations)
• Maintain a sense of continuity of experience in terms of personal identity
• Helps to control and plan our future actions

Question 8

Dissociation between consiousness and attention

Answer 8

Preconscious processing

• Even though certain infomation is not the focus of our consious awareness it can still be processed
• able to shift infomation from preconsious to consious awareness

Question 9

The role of priming studies

Answer 9

• Used to investiagte our ability to process preconsious infomation
• Presentation of stimuli that affects the preception of subsquent stimuli
• Priming is recognised conducted at a preconsious level

Question 10

Dyad of triad (Bower et al. 1990)

Answer 10

Group A: is coherent if you add the word ‘card’

Playing
Credit
Report

Group B: Is incoherent

Still
pages
Music

Question 11

Preconsciousness and memory

Answer 11

• Demonstrated in the tip-of-the-tounge phenomena eg Brown and McNeill (1966)

Specific word is ‘stored’ in memory but remains at preconscious level:

• Can’t recall the actual word
• Can answer questions on the word eg, first letter, number of syllables

Question 12

Level of consciousness : automatic and controlled processes

Answer 12

Automatic processes:

• not avaliable at conscious level
• Require minimal attentional resources
• quick and effortless

Controlled processes:

• require a heightened level of consiousness and attention
• Slow and deliberate

Question 13

Automatisation

Answer 13

Widely held view is that automatization occurs through integration of smaller steps or units of activity or information processing until the whole practice becomes more efficient, becomes less effortful and eventually initiated as a single (unconscious) process

• cognitive process shifts from being controlled to automatic
• in most cases automatisation is a positive process essential for everyday life
• However, can lead to slips and errors ie. mindlessness
• frequency of ‘slips’ and ‘errors’ can be reduced by enviromental feedback

Question 14

what are the 4 main functions of consicous attention?

Answer 14

1. signal detection
2. Selective attention
3. Divided attention
4. Search

Question 15

Signal detection

Answer 15

Identification or target stimuli i the enviroment

Signal detection theory (SDT) divides responses into four categories

• Hits (true positives)
• False alarms (false positivies)
• misses (false negatives)
• Correct rejections (true negatives)

One example of his is baggage scanners

Question 16

Role of viligance

Answer 16

• Refers to a person’s ability to attend a field of stimulation over a period of time eg. detecting differences or target stimuli
• Participants were asked to watch a visual display of a clock and record anomalies (Macworth, 1948)
• Performance detoriated substantially after half an hour

Question 17

Attentional processes appear to be strongly influenced by expectations

Answer 17

• Neurological studies show that signal detection is greatest at the point where a signal is expected to appear
• Accuracy of detection falls off sharply when stimulus appears further from locus of attention (LaBerge and Brown 1989)

Question 18

Search

Answer 18

Unlike villigance (passive) search activelu seeks out the target stimulus

• Can be hampered by distractors which slow down the process
• Number of targets and also the type distractors affect the effectiveness of the search process

Some searches are said to be preattentive since detection precedes focused attention –> simuliar to detecting angry faces, sems to occur preattentively

The visual system identifies the target through a difference of curvature

The number of targets and distracters affect the difficulty of the search process

A target made up of a combination of non-unique features cannot be detected preattentively

Question 19

Feature integration theory (Treisman, 1986)

Answer 19

• Aims to account for ease of feature searches as compared to conjuction searches
• Mind contains feature maps of each stimulus
• During feature searches we scan maps directly
• However, during conjunction searches we conjoin features which involves an additional level of attention
• Can only attend to one object at a time
• Feature integration theory combines preattentive and attentional processing

Preattentive because ‘colour map’ and ‘orientation map’ at the feature level are processed in parallel. Conscious attention is dedicated to the master map of conjoining features, i.e. green and shape

Question 20

Support for feature-integration model

Answer 20

Neuropsychological support:

• Evidence of specific neural feature detectors (Hubel and Wiesel, 1979)
• More recent research suggests that brain activation is not increased during feature searches, but specific neurons can distinguish between target and distractors (see Sternberg, 2014)

–> note how cognitive findings seek biological support to confirm and build theories ie. finding of mental processing seek material explainations

Question 21

Guided search theory (Cave and Wolfe, 1990)

Answer 21

All feature searches involve two stages:
- parallel stage resulting in a subset of activated ‘potential targets’

• following this is a serial stage in which all activated potential targets are subjected to another search process

Predicts that searches in which more items have shared feature with target will be easier

Question 22

The cocktail party effect

Answer 22

Cherry (1953)
- Dichotic listening experiement

• Shadowing task
• Attended message and unattended message

Moray (1959)
- Participants were aware of their own names but unaware of other semantic content

Shadowing task: listening to two different messages but repeating one message out loud

Attended vs. unattended ear/message.

While attending to one message, people were able to notice physical, sensory changes in the the unattended message (e.g. tone, voice, gender) but not semantic changes

They even failed to notice if the unattended message shifted from English to German or played backwards

A third of participants responded to the unattended message if their name was mentioned/presented

Question 23

Why do certain semantic cues breach the unattended channel?

Answer 23

• Why do certain semantic cues breach the unattended channel?
• Dualities of attention: conscious vs. unconscious, bottom up vs top down processing
• Do we have limited capacity or do we ‘filter’ infomation
• Dominant metaphors of the mind ie. infomation processing

Question 24

Early-selection theories

Answer 24

Donald Broadbent (1958) devised a model to explain Cherry’s results

• Broadbent proposed a filter metaphor to explain Cherry’s results
• Broadbent’s model is regarded a bottleneck model…
• We have a limited capacity to process information
  Inputs remain initially and briefly in the sensory buffer store
• The filter, which selects one channel for attention, does this only on the basis of physical characteristics (e.g. pitch, loudness, accent)
• According to Broadbent, the meaning of any of the messages is not taken into account at all by the filter (hence the notion of ‘bottleneck’)
• All semantic processing (decoding the meaning to understand what is said) is carried out after the filter has selected the channel to pay attention to
  So whatever message is sent to the unattended ear is not understood

Question 25

Broadbent’s model of selective attention

Answer 25

• Filtering occurs before infomation processing
• Consistent with the shadowing task data
• But unable to explain the cocktail party effect
• Assumes that perceptual analysis is preconscious and semantic anakysis is preconcious and semantic analysis is conscious
• Perceptual analysis can be processed information about these physical features before we pay attention to them.

Semantic analysis must be conscious: if semantic analysis is performed after information has passed through the attentional bottleneck, then it cannot be performed unconsciously.

Question 26

Anne Treisman (1964) propsed an attenuation model

Answer 26

Treisman’s model has been called a ‘leaky filter’ model – because some information gets through the attenuator

Question 27

Triesman’s attenuation model of selective attention

Answer 27

• Filtering ‘attenuates’ (weakens) rather than eliminates infomation
• We attenuate infomation which is less revevant
• Explains the cocktail party effect and Moray’s result
• Treisman found evidence of processing unattended content

If unattended message is identical to the attended message everyone notices it, they notice even if the message was slightly out of synchronisation

• Bilinguals noticed if the unattended message was a translation of the attended message

Question 28

Tresiman’s attenuation model of selective attention

Answer 28

• overcomes some of the problems associated with Broadbent’s Filter Model
• Does not explain how exactly semanic anaylsis works
• The nature of the attenuation process has never been precisely specified
• A problem with all dichotic listening experiements is that you never be sure that the participants have not actually switched attention to the so called unattended channel

Question 29

Deutch and Deutch (1963) and Norman (1976)

Answer 29

Developed a model where filtering occurs later

Question 30

All sensory input channels are analysed fully, simultaneously and in parallel

Answer 30

• Parallel processing
• Attention is deployed after infomation is analysed
• Selection occurs according to relevance
• Attention is required for the selection of a response not the selection of input
• In early-selection theories, attention is required for the selection of input
• In late-selection theories, attention is required for the selection of a response. For this reason, late-selection theories are also sometimes called response-selection theories

Question 31

Ulric Nesisser (1967) proposed a synthesis of early-selection and later-selection theories

Answer 31

• Preattentive processes: automatic, rapid and occur in parallel
• Attentive, controlled processes: executed serially, effortful and consume attentional resources

Question 32

Dual-task paradigms require individuals to perform two tasks simultaneously

Answer 32

• Watching a basketball game superimposed on a hand-slapping game (Neisser and Becklen 1975)
• Reading a story and taking dictation (Spelke, Hirst and Neisser 1976)
• Watching two groups of people pass a basketball (Simon and Chabris 1999)

Spelke, Hirst, & Neisser, 1976
Task A: read a short story silently
Task B: take dictation
Task C: task A and B simultaneously

Repeated over 85 sessions across many weeks

• Performance improved over time and eventually participants could perform both tasks together at the same rate as each task separately prior to study
• Simultaneous reading and dictating became automatized

Uses up less of that limited capacity

• Inability to detect changes in objects or scenes to which we are attending.
• So the more attention to put into one task, the less that you have left for the other
• Counting task is quite hard because they are moving around
  So not much attention left for anything else
• And the gorilla doesn’t have the physical characteristics or the semantic characteristics to make him pop out

Question 33

Dual-task paradigm show that human processing resources are limited and shareable

Answer 33

• Attention is based on ‘mental effort’ (Kahenman 1973)
• Participants have difficulty monitoring both tasks, but performance improvew with practice (Neisser and Becklen 1975)
• When two tasks involve the same modality it becomes more difficult to concentrate (Navon and Gopher 1979)
• Divided attention causes ‘inattentional blindness’ (Mack and Rock 1998)

Tasks involving the same modality, e.g. listening to a chat show and writing an essay, are more difficult
Listening to music and writing involve different modalities

Question 34

Multi-tasking and attention

Answer 34

• some claim that multitasking is a ‘mythical activity (Hallowell 2007)
• Many studies reveal severe interference even when very simple tasks are performed simultaneously (Pashler)

In terms of gender, women may be involved in more multitasking than men there are no gender differences with regard to ability (Floro 1999)

Hembrooke and Gay (2003) conducted a simple study confirming that laptops in lectures affect memory recall of lecture content. They interpret their results using Lang’s Limited Process Capacity model.

As far as listening to music is concerned, even small sounds can reduce learning.

Question 35

‘Driven to distraction’ (Strayer and Johnston 2001)

Answer 35

Dual-task study of simulated driving

• control conditions
• dual task radio condition
• Dual task= hands free mobile phone condition

Green light: ignore it and carry on driving
Red light: hit the brakes

Just drive
Talk and listen

It is illegal to use a hand-held mobile

• Though it is legal to use a hands-free mobile, it is much much safer if you do not
• Thelawcurrently says drivers canuse hands-free phones, sat navs and two-way radios, but if the police think thedriveris distracted and not in control of the vehicle, they could get penalised

Results:
- significantly greater probability of a miss in the mobile phone condition

• No difference between the radio and the control condition

Question 36

Divided attention is automatied

Answer 36

• Attentional processes are resource -limited
• Resources are allocated to two kinds of processing
  –> controlled (consious and deliberate)
  –> Automatic (unconcious and innate)
• Controlled processes became automatised with practice
• Automatisation reduces cognitive demands on attention

Question 37

Two different aspects of how our minds attend to stimuli:

Answer 37

Bottom up processing:
- Attention is stimulus-driven, driven by the properties of the object themselves; can be volitional or non-volitional

Top-down processing:
- Attention is also goal-driven, purposive, consious and deliberate; related to executive functions of working memory

Question 38

Factors which impact attention

Answer 38

• Anxiety (state and trait): Eysenck and Byrne (1992)
• Physiological arousal: Yerkes Dodson (1908)
• Task difficulty and skills: Spelke, Hirst and Neisser (1976)

Question 39

What is ADHD: Attention Defiict Hyperactivity Disorder

Answer 39

Predomiantly inattentive ADHD

Main characteristics of ADHD: inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness

The causes of ADHD are complex, multifactorial and predominantly unclear

Maternal smoking and drinking alcohol during pregnancy; lead exposure; brain injury; food additives (esp. sugar and certain dyes)

The dual pathway model of ADHD links inattention and deficits in executive functions to impairments in the prefrontal-striatal circuits whereas hyperactivity is linked to dysfunctions of reward response and motivation related to the frontal-limbic system (i.e. amygdala, nucleus accumbens, dopamine signalling)

Several kinds of ADHD

Question 40

Conclusion

Answer 40

• people use selective attention to track one message and simultaneously ignore others, eg. cocktail party effect
• Attentional processes are also involved during divided attention when people attempt to process mutiple tasks
• Performance improves when one task is automatised while another is controlled
• Theories of attention employ filter/bottleneck metaphors to explain selective attention
• Attentional-resource theories suggest that people have fixed resources
• Resources theories and bottleneck theories may be complementary