LECTURE 6- attention and performance

Question 1

What is the feature integration theory

Answer 1

stage 1= basic features processed rapidly and pre attentively in parallel across visual search

stage 2= slower serial process with focused attention

Question 2

what is an exogenous attention network?

Answer 2

Bottom up- stimulus driven, automatically shifts our attention.
Used when peripheral cues are present

May help deal with dangerous stimuli as it helps directly shift attention to something you need to act upon quickly

Question 3

what is an endogenous attention network?

Answer 3

top down, driven by our knowledge/ goal directed.
Controlled by expectations and prior knowledge
important when central cues are present

Question 4

evidence for separate attentional networks (exogenous and endogenous)

Answer 4

So an experiment by Posner= select the side a flash of light is presented- before either a central cue( a central arrow points to correct or incorrect location to where the flash will occur) or peripheral cue (outline of the flash presented in correct or incorrect location) was presented beforehand

Found- when valid Rts was faster for both central and peripheral cues. Showing no evidence for separate exogenous and endogenous systems.

Found-When invalid peripheral cues still faster for valid but central cues fts was the same and this does show evidence for separate exogenous and endogenous systems. This is because we are always going to ignore the cues when central as we know from previous knowledge these won’t be helpful. When peripheral/ stimulus driven they are still faster when valid as it doesn’t rely on our expectations

Question 5

what is the cocktail party problem (Cherry 1953)

Answer 5

in a social situation you have to attend to certain sound and ignore everything else. How do we do this? We use physical differences, we extract little information from unattended stimulus, we stimulus driven so if we hear salient information (such as your name) we are drawn towards it.

Question 6

what is cross modal attention

what is the McGurk effect?

Answer 6

• coordinate info from 2 or more modalities simultaneously. Referring to ventriloquism effect= close together in time and space, speech that happens close together in time and spaced are merged- this is an example of visual dominance e.g. thinking the doll is talking because its mouth is moving and sound is produced- so we misperceive sound coming from a different source

MCGURK EFFECT= what you see effects what you hear e.g. ba and fa- this is further evidence for visual dominance where input from vision influences auditory perception (this is experience driven)

Question 7

what is developmental trajectory?

study by Maildment et al 2015

Answer 7

does visual info improve speech identification in children. Ppts stimulated to as if they had a cochlear implant in (double frequency in speech). Ppts had to configure what was being said after looking at a visual stimulus- so sometimes just heard it sometimes heard and saw the speaker say it at the same time. FINDINGS- the youngest did not benefit from visual info so audio visual gain increased with age.

Question 8

approaches to automatic processing= traditional approach

Answer 8

controlled process have
limited capacity/ require attention and used flexibly when changing circumstances

automatic processes have no capacity limitations, do not require attention, but are hard to modify once learned

Question 9

approaches to automatic processing= definitions of automaticity

Answer 9

rejects the assumption of difference between controlled and automatic processing.

It states 4 factors are associated with automaticity

1. unconscious
2. efficient
3. fast
4. goal unrelated

Question 10

What is change blindness

Answer 10

failure to detect changes in the environment
caused by= limited attention focus in the start as they may be focused on something else/ representations may decay or be overwritten/ representations of pre changed stimulus may be limited to the unconscious/ perceptual accuracy sacrificed to have a continuous and stable perception of the environment

Question 11

what is inattentional bias

Answer 11

an unexpected object attracts attention.

causes= similarity of unexpected object to task relevant stimulus/ observers available processing resources

Question 12

what is neglect

and types of neglect

Answer 12

spatial neglect= Lack of awareness of stimuli presented to side of space on the opposite side to brain damage (typically due to right hemisphere damage so objects presented to left visual field are neglected)

object centred neglect= lack of awareness of side of objects

subject centred neglect= lack of awareness to entire side of visual field