S1W5-Attent

Question 1

Cocktail party effect

Answer 1

Tracking one conversation in the face of distraction from others.

A binaural effect closely related to sound localisation.

Question 2

Visual spatial attention

Answer 2

Subject focuses on a point, but attends covertly to another region (without moving the eyes)

Stimuli presented in the covertly attended location are reported much better than stimuli in the rest of the field.

Question 3

Dichotic Listening (Cherry, 1953)

Answer 3

Two voices speaking different passages in each ear.

Subject instructed to attend one input and repeat it (shadowing).

Accurately reported content of attended channel, but very little of the unattended channel (could only tell gender of voice).

Question 4

Filter Theory (Broadbent, 1958)

Answer 4

Early selection theory.

Used dichotic listening.

Filter takes place at the sensory level based on physical characteristics.

Only one channel of sensory information is allowed to proceed through the filter to reach further processes of perception and cognition.

Sensory inputs > echoic buffer (short term store) > filter (selection) > processing.

Question 5

ERP evidence for early selection (filter theory)

Answer 5

Show processing of information from attended ear is enhanced 20 and 50 ms after stimulus onset compared to the unattended ear.

Question 6

Issues with Broadbent

Answer 6

Filter is too strict.

Unattended messages can be processed at a semantic level through training: Naïve participants detected 8% of non-attended channel, but an experienced subject detect 67%.

It assumes processing with no awareness BUT when a word previously associated with electric shock was presented in the non-attended channel, they showed galvanic skin response.

Question 7

Dear Aunt Jane

Answer 7

Criticism of Broadbent.

Participants told to shadow msesage in left ear “Dear… Jane” and “Aunt” was said in right ear.

They reported hearing the entire message.

Shows participants process unattended channel with awareness of meaning as they jumped from ear to ear by taking meaning into account.

Question 8

Attenuation Theory (Treisman, 1964)

Answer 8

Selective attention involves 2 stages:

Attenuator - analyse the incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language and meaning.

Dictionary unit - contains words in memory and their thresholds for activation (lower threshold words are commonly used such as names).

Attended message gets through the attenuator as well as some of the unattended message.

Question 9

Late Selection Theory (McKay, 1973)

Answer 9

Information filtered at different levels of processing depending on the task.

It is at least processed at the level of meaning.

In attending ear, participants heard ambiguous sentences
“Throwing stones at the bank.”

In unattended ear either
“river” “money”

They changed their sentence depending on the unattended word because they were processing it enough to make a judgement.

Question 10

Load Theory of Attention

Answer 10

Low load tasks that use less resources may leave resource available for processing the unattended message.

High load tasks use all the resources and so unattended message are ignored.

Question 11

Perceptual load

Answer 11

Difficulty of a task

Question 12

Processing capacity

Answer 12

How much information a person can handle at any given moment

Question 13

Forster & Lavie (2008) - perceptual load

Answer 13

Participants asked to identify a target as quickly as possible.

If the task was hard (target was surrounded by lots of other letters) the reaction time was longer.

When a task-irrelevant stimulus was flashed it slowed the easy task down more than the hard task.

As easy task has low resource load there is room to process the irrelevant stimuli and so it slows it down.

Question 14

Automatic processing

Answer 14

Low attention demands.

Associated with easy and/or well-practiced tasks.

Can occur without intention.

Question 15

Controlled processing

Answer 15

High attention demands.

Associated with difficult tasks that might not become automatic, even with high levels of practice.

Requires intention.

Question 16

Stroop task

Answer 16

Word reading interferes
with color naming even when words aren’t needing to be read.

Not intentionally controlled.

Question 17

Overt attention

Answer 17

Shifting attention by moving the eyes.

May be preceded by covert attentional shifts.

Question 18

Covert attention

Answer 18

Shifting attention whilst NOT moving the eyes.

Evolved with the gaze-control system.

Question 19

Precueing experiment (Posner)

Answer 19

Eyes kept stationary (covert) and provided with a cue as to where a stimulus will appear.

Press key as fast as possible to indicate whic side of the screen the stimulus was.

Valid trial: cue was correct
Invalid trial: cue pointed wrong way

Subjects RT faster on valid trials.

Suggests attention is like a spotlight and that when attention is focused, information processing is more effective.

Question 20

Alfred Yarbus (eye movements)

Answer 20

Eye movements of visual scenes depended on the task at hand.

Focus on eyes and mouth if asked questions about the face.

Focus on body if asked about stature.

Question 21

Inattentional blindness

Answer 21

A stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though a person might be looking directly at it.

Question 22

Change Blindness

Answer 22

Inability to detect a change in the environment. (e.g. continuity errors in films).

Question 23

Divided attention

Answer 23

Practice enables people to simultaneously do two things that were difficult at first.

Question 24

Schneider and Shiffrin (1977) - divided attention

Answer 24

Divide attention between remembering 1-4 target characters and paying attention to distractor stimuli (dot patterns).

55% correct at start of experiment.

900 trials to reach 90% accuracy.

Automatic processing facilitated successful divided attention.

Question 25

Strayer and Johnson (2001) - driving

Answer 25

Simulated driving task where they had to apply brakes at a red light.

Using a cell phone caused them to miss twice as mant red lights and increased time it took them to apply the brake.

Question 26

Strayer & Drews (2007) - driving

Answer 26

Examined effects of hands-free phone use on simulated driving.

Even when looking directly at objects in the driving environment, they were less likely to create a durable memory of those objects when using a phone.

Supports inattentional blindness

Question 27

Feature Integration Theory (Treisman)

Answer 27

Explains how binding takes place.

Two stage process:

Preattentive stage and focused attention stage.

Question 28

Binding

Answer 28

Features such as colour, form and motion are combined to make a perception of a coherent object.

Question 29

Treisman and Schmidt (illusory conjunction)

Answer 29

Four coloured shapes with two black numbers were simultaneously flashed on a screen

Followed by a masking slide (to get rid of residual perception).

Told to report black numbers first and then what they saw where the shapes had been.

18% subjects reported seeing objects that were made up of a combination of two shapes (illusory conjunction).

Question 30

Free floating shapes

Answer 30

Illusory conjunctions happen because in the preattentive stage the features exist independently.

E.g. red colour is not associated with a specific object and so they are “free floating” to be associated with any object.

Question 31

Preattentive stage

Answer 31

Objects analysed into separate features (color, motion etc.). Each happens in a different area of the brain and so they are independent.

Question 32

Focused attention stage

Answer 32

Free floating features are combined and perception occurs.

When asked not to report the black numbers in the Treisman experiment, the shapes were correctly named.

Focusing the attention solely on the shapes meant that illusory conjunctions were eliminated.

Question 33

Top down processing (illusory conjunctions

Answer 33

Can reduce illusory conjunctions.

When subjects are told that they will be presented a ‘carrot’ a ‘lake’ and a ‘tire’ instead of just left to see an orange triangle, blue circle and black ring, illusory conjunction were less likely to occur.

We often perceive every day objects as familiar using top down processing which combines with feature analysis to help perception.

Question 34

Conjunction search (visual search)

Answer 34

Used to study binding.

Instead of finding a single green horizontal line in a load of green vertical lines (feature search).

You find a green horizontal line in a load of orange, green, vertical and horizontal lines.

You have to combine two features (conjunction) to carry out the task.

Reaction time increases the more objects there are on the screen.

Question 35

Grapheme-colour synaesthesia

Answer 35

Individual’s perception of numerals and letters is associated with the experience of colours

Question 36

Default mode network

Answer 36

Brain regions that are active when the individual is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest.

Has been hypothesized to generate spontaneous thoughts during mind-wandering and may relate to creativity.

The attentional control system would be activated for demanding cognitive tasks and the DMN would be activated when the mind is wandering.

Question 37

Distributed attentional processing

Answer 37

Alerting – achieving a high sensitivity to incoming stimuli.

Orienting – focusing attention where visual targets might appear.

Executive control of attention - for tasks that involve conflict, such as the stroop task.

ALL happen over various brain regions.

Question 38

Datta and DeYoe (2009) - fMRI

Answer 38

Subjects directed attention to different areas of a circular disk whilst keeping eyes on the centre.

Focusing attention on a specific area activates a specific area of the brain.

Created an attention map for each participant.

When a participant was told to focus on a secret area they could tell where he was focusing from the attention map.