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PSYC3302 > Lecture 6 > Flashcards

Lecture 6 Flashcards

0
Q

What is attention?

A

The mechanism which allows certain information to be more thoroughly processed in the cortex than non-selected information.

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1
Q

Is consciousness objective or subjective?

A

Subjective because it is actually a reconstruction of reality.

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2
Q

What is consciousness?

A

The contents of awareness.

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4
Q

Attention affects which modalities?

A

All modalities, that is, all of the sensory modalities e.g. vision, audition.

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5
Q

Binocular rivalry…

A

Presents different information to each eye

Is of a relatively long duration and can therefore be detected in brain imaging studies

Creates the effect of each stimuli oscillating between awareness

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6
Q

What is visual crowding?

A

The visibility of a stimulus in the periphery is impaired because another stimulus crowds it .

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7
Q

What is visual masking?

A

A stimulus is presented briefly
Followed by another stimulus
You report the first stimuli

Very hard to do when they appear in close succession.

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8
Q

What is flash suppression?

A

Presents an image to one eye and then flashes noisy stuff to the other eye and can suppress the image for up to a minute

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9
Q

What is the brain’s goal?

A

Mapping a stimulus to an appropriate response.

Extracting relevant information from irrelevant information.

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10
Q

What types of information can attention relate to?

A

Both internal representations and external information.

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11
Q

What is object based attention?

A

Give your attention to a particular object. If another stimulus is part of the stimulus, you will also attend to that stimulus. Example of the phone on the table.

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12
Q

What is top-down attention?

A

Biasing your attention based on an internal goal.

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13
Q

What is bottom-up attention?

A

Capturing your attention rapidly. It is stimulus driven. You were not expecting a car to drive through the window, but it still captures your attention.

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14
Q

What is a vegetative state?

A

Awake but show no signs of awareness. Normal sleep-wake cycles.

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15
Q

What methods are there to measure consciousness?

A

Detection
Signal detection theory
Alternative forced choice

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16
Q

What is the problem with detection?

A

You are open to biases. Example of snake phobia in Mt Cootha.

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17
Q

What is signal detection theory?

A

A mathematical theory of detection which involves discriminating a signal from noise in which it is embedded.

Takes into account subjects’ willingness to report detecting stimuli (biases).

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18
Q

What is alternative forced choice?

A

You present a stimuli and make subjects make a choice between alternatives.

e.g. are the arrows moving left or right?

19
Q

What is the downfall of alternative forced choice [1]?

A

Influence of a subset of trials.

When you average over the entire experiment, it may look like people were responding at chance. However, you must look at the trials individually to check whether there is an influence of some trials.

20
Q

What is the downfall of alternative forced choice [2]?

A

Inattentional amnesia.

People may be conscious at some part of the trial but have forgotten it at the end of the trial when asked.

21
Q

What methods are there to render the visible invisible?

A 
Visual masking
Crowding
Binocular rivalry
Motion induced blindness
Inattentional blindness
Change blindness
Attentional blink
22
Q

What is visual crowding?

A

Placing distractors around the target to make it harder to detect.

23
Q

What is a problem with masking?

A

You have different stimuli for conscious vs unconscious stimuli.

Mask-target-mask (unc)
Mask-target-mask with larger interval (c)

Because you have the larger interval, the stimuli is technically different. This means it is hard to conclude whether it is a consciousness effect OR just a stimulus effect.

24
Q

What is a problem with crowding?

A

You have different stimuli for conscious vs unconscious stimuli.

The change-same and change-different stimuli are slightly different so you have to be careful as it might be a stimulus effect.

25
Q

What is another problem with masking?

A

Brief presentation.

You can only present the stimulus briefly.

The BOLD response is slow, hemodynamic responses are slow by nature.

26
Q

What is another problem with crowding?

A

Foveal vision in the centre is best, peripheral vision is not as good. How do we know that it is not simply because the outer stimuli are harder to see? i.e. low level visual problems.

27
Q

Detection vs identification.

A

It is important to get different patterns of effect for conscious vs unconscious conditions.

This can tell you that you are really targeting something different.

Same patterns for both - could be a subset of trials effect.

28
Q

What types of stimuli do we use in binocular rivalry studies?

A

We use face and place pictures. The reason we do this is because these two types of stimuli activate very different brain areas, this allows us to discriminate the stimuli based on brain region activity.

29
Q

What are the benefits of binocular rivalry and motion-induced blindness?

A

No difference in stimuli between c and unc trials (unlike visual crowding and masking)

Relatively long duration is possible (unlike others again)

30
Q

What are the disadvantages of binocular rivalry and motion-induced blindness?

A

Unpredictable fluctuation in perception. You don’t know when it will oscillate.

Sometimes it is hard to judge whether the perception has switched.

31
Q

What is continuous flash suppression similar to?

A

Binocular rivalry. It is really an amped up version of binocular rivalry. Can suppress for 1 min, so can be used in scanner.

32
Q

What is an example of inattentional blindness.

A

The basketball players and gorilla video. Because you’re focusing so hard on one thing, you miss another prominent thing.

33
Q

What is the benefit of inattentional blindness and change blindness?

A

It is a real world example. Not lab based.

34
Q

What are the disadvantages of inattentional blindness and change blindness?

A

Only a single trial, not everyone shows it. You can never miss it again.

How do we know that the effect is due to attention and awareness rather than just not having high acuity vision at the target area.

Different stimuli for c and unc trials.

Inattentional amnesia.

35
Q

What are the benefits of the attentional blink?

A

Occurs for a variety of stimuli and everyone shows it

Occurs in central vision, no lack of vision confound

Occurs even when you know the manipulation

36
Q

What is the disadvantage of the attentional blink?

A

There is a short time window (relevant for scanners)

Fast stimuli

Attention and consciousness are intertwined assumption.

37
Q

In which types of studies do you see awareness effects in early visual areas?

A

Masking
Binocular rivalry

Changes are seen in the early visual areas.

38
Q

In which types of studies do you see awareness effects in late processing areas?

A

Change blindness
Inattentional blindness
Attentional blink

Changes are seen in the prefrontal cortex.

39
Q

Where is awareness in the brain?

A

It is all over the brain. It very much depends on the task’s characteristics.

40
Q

Do all tasks tap the same process?

A

There are many different types of attention.

41
Q

What are low level and high level neural correlates?

A 
Low level (e.g. v1)
High level (pre-frontal cortex)
42
Q

What is the global workspace theory?

A

The extent to which stimuli activate connections between distinct brain areas.

43
Q

What do doubly dissociating studies indicate if they are able to dissociate attention and consciousness?

A

It would have the implication that we are learn nothing about the other when studying one.

They are failing at proving this though.

PSYC3302 (8 decks)

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