Lecture 7 - Attention and Distraction

Question 1

Describe the stroop effect.

Answer 1

The Stroop Task

J. Ridley Stroop 1935

PROCEDURE
3 lists:
- Congruent list
> RED word was the colour red (word matched colour).
- Control list
> XXXX was red (showed a colour, no word).
- Incongruent list
> BLUE word was red (word did not match colour).

RESULTS
- Reaction time became slower down this list.

THE STROOP EFFECT
We don’t seem to be able to ignore the words when we’re trying to focus on the colour.

Question 2

Attention can be controlled via automatic versus controlled processing.

Describe these two things.

Answer 2

Controlled (deliberate) processing
– Involves ‘mental effort’
– Limited (Broadbent, 1958) – Subject to distraction

Automatic (obligatory) processing
– Happens independently of ‘effort’
– Causes distraction when incongruent with the focal task (and facilitation when congruent)

Question 3

Describe the ‘Posner’ cueing paradigm.

Answer 3

Enhanced processing of information falling within the ‘focus’ (spotlight) of attention.
(Posner et al., 1980)

(see relevant powerpoint for the experimental slides)

Question 4

Why do we need attention?

Answer 4

So that we don’t waste limited resources processing irrelevant information.
– We can ‘focus’ our attention to enhance processing of relevant information (attention as a ‘spotlight’)

Question 5

What happens to the things we’re not attending to?

Describe a diagram that supports this.

Answer 5

‘Early’ selection model
Limitations on processing (Broadbent, 1958)

Items that are not attended to will not get selected for perceptual processing.

‘Late’ selection model Limitations on responding

All information is attended to and gets selected lateron in processing chain

(see relevant powerpoint slides for diagram)

Question 6

What can a person detect of dialog that is unattended too?

Answer 6

Listeners can tell if unattended message is voice or noise, male or female (i.e., relatively superficial, physical aspects of input).
But can’t report anything that was said (even single words repeated many times), or even if it was in a foreign language.

Question 7

Describe the ‘Cocktail Party Effect’.

Answer 7

The ‘Cocktail Party Effect’ (Cherry, 1958).

Sometimes, people hear their name being mentioned.

We want a system that responds to significant events, even when we’re
not ‘paying attention’ to them.

REFERENCE
Cherry, E.C. (1953). Some experiments on the recognition of speech, with one and with two ears. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 25, 975-979.

Question 8

READ PAGES 323-332
INFO ON:
- SELECTIVE ATTENTION
- DICHOTIC LISTENING
- COCKTAIL PARTY
- BACKGROUND NOISE
- MODELS
\+ MUCH MORE

Answer 8

Martin et al.

make notes if you wanton just teach yourself with the whiteboard