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PSYC2050 > PSYC2050 - Wk6 Attention > Flashcards

PSYC2050 - Wk6 Attention Flashcards

1
Q

If the world was not always so busy why did evolution give us a mechanism for attention?

A

It’s necessary to allow us to extract important information, eg a predator lurking in the grass. So it has always been relevant.

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2
Q

Even though we have such large brains we have _____ capacity for processing at any one time

A

Very limited

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3
Q

How many things can we do at one time?

A

Usually only able to make one decision at a time.

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4
Q

Can we choose a response for one task without causing a delay in selecting a response for another task?

A

No

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5
Q

What makes a stimulus capture our attention? 3

A

Sudden onset
Intense
Unexpected in the situation

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6
Q

How do cognitive processes affect attention capture?

A

Having a “target” make stimuli that share features with that target more likely to capture attention

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7
Q

What is bottom up attention?

A

Stimulus features in the environment (external - exogenous)

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8
Q

What is top-down attention?

A

Expectations guide what captures attention (internal - endogenous)

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9
Q

How do you test selective attention?

A

Asking people to respond to a relevant stimulus and ignore an irrelevant stimulus

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10
Q

How do you make selective attention tasks more difficult? 2

A

By making the irrelevant (ignored) stimulus more relevant: by using it as a relevant stimulus on a previous trial, or by making it similar

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11
Q

What is called when attention is split over multiple concurrent tasks?

A

Divided attention

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12
Q

How do researchers manipulate divided attention? 2

A
  • priority of tasks

- temporal overlap of various task component

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13
Q

Where is divided attention relevant in the real world? 1

A

Medical setting e.g. surgery

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14
Q

What does “below 10,000” mean?

A

In flying, below 10,000 feet is where all the difficult stuff happens, eg taking off and landing. It’s a shorthand for ‘shut up, I’m busy’

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15
Q

What is attention according to William James?

A

“Withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others”

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16
Q

What is attention in cognitive psychology?

A

Selecting what is relevant from sensory input and processing it for appropriate action

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17
Q

What is attention in general?

A

Prioritising of cognitive operations

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18
Q

What are two ways we can direct attention?

A

Maintaining (sustained attention) vs shifting (flexibility)

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19
Q

What type of attentional control is voluntary and directed by current goals? Eg1

A

Endogenous (top-down)

Eg tuning out of dull conversation and listening in to another somewhere in the room

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20
Q

What type of attentional control is automatic and in response to important stimuli? Eg1

A

Exogenous (bottom-up)

Eg when attention is captured by hearing your best friends name in a distant conversation

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21
Q

What is inattentional blindness?

A

When people miss things which are in plain sight because they are focusing attention on something

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22
Q

What is change blindness?

A

When changes in a scene are missed because they occur alongside a brief visual disruption (eg image flicker)

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23
Q

What do change and inattentional blindness tell us about how attention really works? 3

A
  1. More than where eyes are directed
  2. We perceive only a small fraction of the world.
  3. What we see is what we set (notice what we look for)
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24
Q

How can attention be divided in terms of neurophysiological processing?

A

What vs where (ventral vs dorsal streams)

25
Q

For people with Balint’s syndrome, in what condition do they perceive more than one stimulus? And what does this tell us?

A

When red and green dots are connected by a line, instead of showing red and green dots across space. This shows us that grouping stimuli into objects helps with attentional processing

26
Q

What is balint’s syndrome called? And what is it?

A

Simultanagnosia: bilateral damage to dorsal V stream prevents people from perceiving more than one stimulus at a time

27
Q

What are structure metaphors for attentional limitations?

A

Bottlenecks, gates, stores

28
Q

What are process based metaphors for attentional limitations?

A

Capacity, resources, types of task demand, spotlight

29
Q

What is the strategic view of attentional limitations? How fixed is attention in this view?

A

There are no capacity limitations in attention! Instead this is a byproduct of internal processes which prioritise information needed to co-ordinate intended actions. With training, these limitations can be overcome.

30
Q

According to Neumann, what do attentional limitations help us avoid?

A

Chaos from having to simultaneously perform all possible actions

31
Q

What did Helmholtz find in regard to overt and covert attention?

A

He could hold his attention on one thing and also process things in the periphery

32
Q

What is the cocktail party effect?

A

We can tune into a different conversation when we hear our name

33
Q

What is attention and memory encoding?

A

How much you can tell about information that is not attended to

34
Q

What is the dichotic listening paradigm?

A

Separate message played in each ear, one is shadowed (repeated aloud) and then we test unattended message

35
Q

What can people report about unattended messages in the dichotic listening paradigm?

A

Physical features (eg speech vs music, or gender, pitch, tone of voice) BUT not meaning.

36
Q

What is broadbent’s filter theory?

A

Early selection - perceptual features used to filter out irrelevant messages. So filter stops information flowing to higher processing in the brain

37
Q

How do we know that some meaning can still be processed from an unattended message (in dichotic listening)?

A

Attended message had an ambiguous holograph, which was interpreted depending on what was presented in the unattended ear. Bank = river or money. So some meaning is extracted, not just physical characteristics.

38
Q

What is the theory of late selection?

A

Messages are processed up to the level of meaning and then filtered. Whereas early selection says it is just physical features which are filtered.

39
Q

How does perceptual load mediate early vs late selection?

A

Low perceptual loads uses late selection for periphery
High perceptual load use early selection for periphery

The key is how much attentional resource can be spared. Is the central task difficult? No, then late selection. Yes, then early selection.

40
Q

Why does high working memory load actually increase distractions?

A

Because when more things have to be held in memory, you are more likely to make an error in attention and process distractions

41
Q

What is Kahneman’s theory of processing capacity?

A

Attention is about allocating resources to inputs. The amount of concurrent tasks depends on the resource demands.

42
Q

In processing capacity theory what happens when arousal is increased?

A

The pool of available resources is increased

43
Q

What happens if two tasks can’t be done concurrently?

A

One must be delayed.

44
Q

What is the idea of automaticity in capacity theory of attention?

A

Task demands decrease with practice, the better you get the easier it is.

45
Q

How does extensive practice reduce capacity demands? 3

A
  1. Restructuring tasks
  2. Memorising solutions
  3. Establishing rules for the task
46
Q

What is the feature search technique?

A

Target feature is distinctive. (Red X amount black Xs) search time is not a function of set size due to parallel processing

47
Q

What is the conjunction search tehcnique?

A

There is overlap between target and distractor objects. search time is a function of set size, showing serial processing.

48
Q

In what visual search condition would a bigger amount of distractors slow finding the target?

A

When there are overlapping features ie conjunction search

49
Q

What is feature integration theory? 4 steps

A

A way of understanding visual search

  1. ‘Automatic’ processing of stimulus into elementary features
  2. Individual feature maps give location of specific features
  3. Individual maps project onto single location map
  4. Activity in individual map can be read without focused attention
50
Q

What does attention do in feature integration theory?

A

Attention is required to bind features into an object

51
Q

What are the two types of visual search? 4 aspects of each

A

Preattentive:

  • features
  • parallel
  • pop-out
  • flat slope

Attentive:

  • conjunctions
  • serial
  • no pop-out
  • steep slope
52
Q

What are the limitations of Feature Integration Theory?

A
  1. There are conditions where single features dont pop out
  2. There are instances where conjunctions do pop out
  3. Neglect for similarity of target to distractors
  4. Heterogeneity of distractors (search is harder if distractors are different
53
Q

What is guided search theory?

A

All search is attentive, it just depends on how difficult the target-distractor discriminability is.

54
Q

What does RSVP stand for?

A

Rapid serial visual presentation

55
Q

What are post-target intrusions in RSVP?

A

When the cue is presented the stimulus preceding it is actually reported. This is because processing starts but latches onto the wrong target. This shows that attention is involved in the binding things together.

56
Q

What is lag-1-sparing?

A

Targets are processed as one event when they occur together.

57
Q

What is the attentional blink?

A

A dip in detecting two targets when the gap between them is increased.

58
Q

In attentional blink how does making T1 easier affect the perception of target 2?

A

Making it easier reduces attentional blink, this is related to working memory and perceptual load.

59
Q

What do pattern masks do in attentional blink?

A

They make it difficult to process the target.

PSYC2050 (8 decks)

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