selective attention Flashcards
overview
- Definitions of attention
- The early/late selection debate
- Auditory research
- Visual research
- Perceptual load
Definition 1890
William James - “everyone knows what attention is”
William James extended
“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession of
the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several
simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.”
William James - “everyone knows what attention is” Date
1890
Definiton 1998
“no one knows what attention is” Harold Pashler
“no one knows what attention is” Harold Pashler Date
1998
Extended quote Harold Pashler
“No one knows what attention is, and … there may not even
be an “it” there to be known about (although of course
there might be).”
Cherry 1953
Dichotic listening and told to shadow the message in one ear and ignore the message in the other ear. This was to investigate SELECTIVE ATTENTION
Dichotic listening
Dichotic listening refers to the process of simultaneously listening to different acoustic events presented to each ear, often involving speech stimuli.
Cherry then asked…
how much they attended to in the unattended information, they didnt realise if the lagnuage is reversed or changes. However they could report the gender and identify if it was speech or not.
Cherry conclusions 1953
People only process unattended information only to the level of physical features.
Cherry conclusions 1953
No semantic information is available from the unattended information
These findings kickstarted the early selection process.
early selection process who?
Broadbent 1958
early selection process what?
filtering occurs early (prior to semantics). filtering out any message not having appropriate physical characteristics
early selection process process
Senses > sensory buffer > selective filter > limited capacity processor
two alternative forced choice procedure who
Moray (1959)
two alternative forced choice procedure what?
Wanted to ask Even a word repeated 35 times was not recognised unless in a third of cases it was participants own name
Split span experiment who
Gray and Wedderburn 1960
Split Span experiment what
a term for research involving bipanoramic sounds in both ears with different terms, told to focus on one ear and their name was played in the other with other terms
split span experiments findings
40% reported by ear
60% reported by meaning
seems unattended message processed for content (in 60% of ppl)
Late selection models who
Deutsch and Deutsch (1963)
Late seletion models what
All inputs are encoded and analysed in parralel to semantic level
filtering only occurs are conscious awareness level
Late selection process
senses > unconscious semantic processing> selective filter > conscious attention
Corteen and Dunn 1974 what - training
training - cities were paired with electric shock, subjects began sweating when they heard city names. measured using GSR
galvanic skin responding
Galvanic skin response (GSR), also known as electrodermal activity (EDA) or skin conductance, is a physiological signal that measures the skin’s electrical properties in response to stress or emotional arousa
Corteen and Dunn 1974 test –
once trained shadow one ear and ignore the other, press a button if you hear the city name in either ear since they are conditioned
Corteen 1974 measures
GSR and button presses
Corteen findings
42% of city names in unattended ear elicit a GSR (30% for non shock associated city names)
Corteen findings (2)
Only 2% of these trials did a participant make a button press response
Corteen findings (3)
DIfferent measures of awareness of unattended stimuli give different results
Attenuator model WHat?
unattended information is attenuated. all inputs are analysed for meaning
Attenuator model who?
Treisman 1964
Attenuator model process
senses > attenuating filter > dictionary analysis filter
Dictionary analysis
acts as the final filter in attenuator model - different words have different trigger thresholds, your name would be a low threshold
Neisser and Becklen
Videos superimposed with a lot going on at once. Monitoring one video for targets leaves people unaware of events in the unmonitored video, people incredulous when told
Simons and Chabris 1999
youll recognise this one, video where there is a game of catch and a gorilla literally just walks through. funniest shit ever. 50% of people failed to notice the gorilla when attended to team in white. More likely to notice with earier task like watching team in white
Dalton and Fraenkel 2012 what
three dimensional auditory scene, binaural recording
focusing on womens conversation and ignore the mens, men walked past saying im a gorilla, im a gorilla
Dalton and Fraenkel 2012 findings
70% of people fail to notice the gorilla when attending to women and 90% notice when attending to mens conversation. All but one noticed him in the attention control
problems with video tasks?
eye movements related to attended events, might reduce acuity for unattended events.
rock and gutman 1981
attend to shapes in one colour and rate their pleasant/unpleasantness
people unable to recognise shapes in unattended colour
rock and Gutman 1981 findings
people were unable to recognise the unattended shape. regardless of is shape is pleasant or not.
Negative priming who
Tipper 1985
Negative priming what
single stimulus two images overlapped, two different colours. attend to one. Pic of dog and foot. primed to look at dog and then told to say the probe (foot) as quick as you can.
types of priming and their reactions
attended repetitions
attended semantics
neutral
ignored semantics
ignored repetition
attended repetitions
615 ms, dog then repeat dog
attended semantics
677, dog then cat, semantic similaities
neutral
695 ms, unrelated item
ignored semantics
726, dog then flip and cat is hollow and focus is unrelated
ignored repetition
746, dog then flip and dog is hollowed and unrelated item show
slippage of attention
essentially they lose attention and get distracted, processing unattended information and why there may be some participants who fail
