Selective attention Flashcards
Selective attention: __
Cognitive processes that enable organisms to process relevant inputs, thoughts or actions while ignoring irrelevant or distracting ones
Selective attention is divided into:
- Voluntary: __
- Reflexive: __
Top-down, goal directed influence. Our ability to intentionally attend to something;
Bottom-up, stimulus driven. When a sensory event captures our attention
Cognitive neuroscience research on selective attention has three aims:
- Understand how attention enables and influences the
- To describe the computational processes and mechanisms that enable these effects
- To uncover how these mechanisms are __
detection, perception and
encoding of stimulus events;
implemented in the brain circuits and systems
The study of attention, neglected because of behaviourism until the 1950s, is the study of __
the constraints and limitations in how information is processed
Because attention has a capacity limitation, the system must make decisions about what __ and what __.
is selected for extended processing;
gains access to awareness
The selection, or filtering, of inputs permits high priority information to gain access
and pass processing __.
bottlenecks
The early selection bottleneck theory is the idea that:
a stimulus need not be completely perceptually analysed before it can be selected for further processing or rejected as irrelevant
The late selection bottleneck theory is the idea that:
attended and ignored inputs are processed equivalently by the perceptual system, with the bottleneck occurring at higher levels
prior to entering awareness or further attentional processing.
The Posner Cueing Task is a measure of endogenous attention because __
the orienting of attention to the cue is driven by the subject’s goals, rather than merely its physical features
In voluntary cueing studies the time taken between the presentation of the attention-directing cue and the presentation of the subsequent target varies from study to study, generally from __ to __.
100ms;
1500ms
In voluntary cueing studies, reaction times to valid trials are significantly faster than neutral or invalid, and this benefit increases with __.
cue period length
Despite attending centrally to the cue, and maintaining fixation (often checked
with eye tracking), the benefits of the valid cue are argued to result from __.
an internal shift in covert attention (a mental ‘spotlight’) to the cued visual field
Neural mechanisms underlying voluntary spatial attention have been investigated since the 70’s with __
event-related potentials (ERPs)
The P1 ERP component is seen on EEG over the occipital lobe 70-90ms after __.
a visual stimulus is presented
When a visual stimulus appears at a cued location is a Posner cueing type paradigm, the
P1 ERP is significantly larger in amplitude than when __.
the same stimulus appears at the same location but attention is focused elsewhere
The early effects of selective spatial attention on ERPs are not found when __ is based on other stimulus features, such as colour, spatial frequency, orientation, or higher order features such as object
properties (e.g., attend to chairs but ignore tables). These attentional effects will be seen in later ERPs.
attentional selection
fMRI allows you to examine how activity in visual processing areas is influenced by selective spatial attention.
In essence, sensory processing of visual stimuli is more robust when __
either covert or overt attention is applied to the stimulus
Reflexive attention is exogenous because __
the orienting of attention to the cue is driven by the low-level physical features of external stimuli and not by internal voluntary control
Reflexive attention to a location will be short-lived, stops you getting stuck at a location for too long (usually less than __)
You also get inhibition of return: __
300ms;
Recently reflexively attended locations become inhibited over time, such that responses to stimuli in those locations are slowed
Short-lived nature of reflexive attention is necessary for coping with our dynamic environment, otherwise we’d be __
constantly distracted during complex tasks such as driving a car
Voluntary, goal-directed attention involves a dorsal pathway or network, that includes the __
intraparietal cortex and superior frontal cortex
Reflexive attention, which is bottom-up, is ventral network largely lateralised to the right hemisphere and includes the __.
Specialised for detecting __, acts a circuit breaker for the dorsal stream
temproparietal cortex and inferior frontal cortex;
behaviourally relevant stimuli (salient)
Balint’s syndrome is __.
It is caused by __.
Most often diagnosed after __
a severe disturbance of visual attention and awareness;
bilateral damage to posterior parietal and occipital cortex;
stroke/CVA
In Balint’s syndrome, only one or a small subset of available objects are __.
Also mislocalised in space.
perceived at any one time
