Lecture 7 Flashcards
Introduction to attention
Attention
a cognitive process which selects small but useful amounts of incoming information from our environment to be processed, while excluding other concurrently occurring information
a lot of information is out there that lands on our senses
we pay attention to a lot of this information but there is lots of distractions so often you miss information that is right there in front of you
selective attention
presented with two or more stimuli, but we attend to or respond to only one of them
divided attention
“multi-tasking’
when we are presented with multiple stimuli and attend to or respond to all of them
active attention
top down
purposeful, deployment of attention e.g. paying attention in lectures
passive attention
bottom up
attention is deployed because of external stimuli e.g a loud noise
you’ll miss it
if changes take place when you aren’t paying attention you will fail to notice these changes
sensory buffer
holds information coming from the senses
has a large capacity, but decays fast
blocks incoming information long enough for attention to select the relevant information
too much information
you cannot perceive it all
we can’t notice everything
it doesn’t matter where something is in our visual field if we don’t expect if we won’t see it
unilateral neglect after right parietal lobe damage
unable to attend to the left side of their visual field
left side doesn’t exist unless you purposefully attract their attention
optical illusions
attending to different parts of the images means you may perceive different things
low level information
basic, concrete and often sensory information
involves direct experiences or immediate data that can be easily measured
high level information
more abstract, complex, and conceptual understanding
involves reasoning, problem-solving and the integration of information across different domains
how was selective auditory attention studied?
Dichotic listening task
participants are presented with an auditory message in each ear
participants hear the same voice at the same intensity to both ears, but with different messages
participants asked to repeat one of the messages
shadowing methodology
used in dichotic listening task ensures participants conform to instructions and repeat the message from one ear and ignore the message in the other ear
Cherry 1953
used dichotic listening task to examine how much information is retained from the unattended ear
participants shadowed a message from one ear and a different message was played in the other ear
then asked questions about the message played both in the attended and unattended ear
Cherry results
participants recalled information in the shadowed ear very well
in the unattended message they noticed the switch from voice to tone and switch from male to female voice
they missed a switch to new language and forwards vs backwards speech
much of the information in the unattended message was very poorly remembered
only basic physical characteristics were encoded and remembered
Replications of these results
Moray, 1959
presented in the unattended ear the same word 35 times, yet participants still failed to notice it
Dutch, 1986
low-level shadowing a melody in the attended ear, meant that participants struggled to have any knowledge of the melody playing in the unattended ear
cocktail party effect
we can follow one conversation in a cocktail party situation, as long as we pay attention to the person speaking
attention to our conversant allows us to block all other conversations out and have little knowledge of them
attention is a filter system
right before attending to stimuli you select one to attend to
Broadbent
incoming information form multiple channels is initially processed in parallel and placed in a sensory buffer
information in one of those channels is selected to be allowed to pass through a filter based on its physical characteristics
while the selected information is passed on for further processing, the message in the unattended channel is blocked by the filter and remains in the sensory buffer, during which time it is decaying
issues with broadbents filter theory
access to information presented in the unattended ear was analysed beyond the purely physical
model doesn’t allow for any of the unattended information to ‘leak through’
Treisman attenuation theory
the filter is more flexible
all stimuli is processed at low level
then if there is enough capacity in the processing system the stimuli are processed at the level of meaning
Support for Treisman
Gray and Weddeburn (1960)
participants shadowed the left ear
participants should report Dear 7 Jane
but participants actually reported Dear Aunt Jane
this suggests that participants were aware of some information from the unattended ear
Similarities to Broadbent’s theory
attention acts as a filter
this filter prevents the unattended input interfering with the attended input channel
which information is selected depends on physical characteristics
Differences to Broadbent’s theory
the unattended channel is attenuated
top-down processes are important - sometimes listeners report words from the unattended ear. such breakthroughs occur when the word is expected int he context of the attended message
Deutsch and Deutsch response selection theory
the filter operates after extensive perceptual and semantic analysis
the role of attention is not to aid perception but to aid action by selecting certain stimuli to respond over others
almost all incoming information from the senses are sent o for further processing with final section happening only just before a response
Support for Deutsch and Deutsch theory
Corteen and Wood (1972)
presented participants with lusts of words some of which were paired with mild electric shocks
then asked participants to shadow a message played on one ear, whilst in the other ear words from the [revious list were presented
during shadowing the attended ear, they recorded the participants galvanic skin response
there was a GSR on 38% of the words associated with he shock, despite participants denying having heard the words in the unattended ear
evaluation of late section evidence
some attention switching goingg om, which meant that the supposed unattended ear would receive some attention - supported by Dawson and Shell (1982)
