Spatial Attention Flashcards
Lectures: 9/29-10/13
Describe Attention
A set of processes that interact with other processes in the performance of different perceptual, cognitve, and motor tasks
What are some traits of attention?
- Alertness
- Concentration
- Selectivity
- Control
Why do we need Attention?
We have a limited capacity to process all information based on relevance to current goals
- Attention selects the stimuli that should be further processed
Describe the difference between early and late selection
Early Selection
- Processes that occur early on
ex. hear a noise when driving
Describe Late Selection
Selectivley ignoring stimuli to selectivley focus on a certain stimulus
- ex. looking for a street wign when driving
Describe the spotlight metaphor of spatial attention
- May move from one location to another
- Can zoom in & out; have a narrow or wide “beam”
- Attended location not necessarily same as where eyes are fixated
What does the pop-out effect say about feature binding?
A sinlge trait of a stimuli allows it to pop out quickly despite the set size
What does conjunction search say about feature binding
Spotlight of attention searches each item serially to bind features
- ex. look for the blue t in a set size of many orange T’s/L’s and blue L’s
Describe the Ventral stream
Primarily concerned with identifying what an object is
- Where objects are bound
Describe the Dorsal stream
- Specialized for spatial processing
- Attending to and acting on objects
How is the salience map of space organized?
Topographically
Where is the salience map of space located?
what does it do?
located in the parietal cortex
- allocates spatial attention to intergrate or bind visual information
- Re-enterant feedback; spotlight metaphor
- binding of “what” with “where”
what is the object discrimination task?
what does it reveal?
asks subject to distinguish between two objects, and choose the non-novel object
what is the landmark discrimination task?
what does it reveal?
Monkey has to choose the well that is closest to the stimuli, test spatial location.
- Monkey with lesion in ventral stream had issues with spatial location
Describe Bailnt’s Syndrome
- what parts of the brain are damaged
- what are the symptoms?
- what does it mean to be lost in space?
Bilateral Parietal lobe damage
Patients are “Lost in Space”
- Representing space
- Acting on space
- Allocating spatial attention
Describe Agnosia
Inability to distinguish between objects
Descirbe the lived experience of Private M. Holmes, who had bilateral lesions of the parietal lobe
- Normal visual percpetion
- Could see and recognize objects
- Could not determine location of objects
- Could not accuratley reach out to grasp objects
What are the Hallmark Charactersistics of Balint’s syndrome?
- Simultanagnosia
- Optic Ataxia
- Ocular Apraxia
What is Simultanagnosia?
- Impaired awareness of multiple visual objects or whoel scene
- Can recognize single objects but cannot compute spatial relationship between objects
What is optic ataxia?
- Impaired reaching behavior under visual guidance
Describe a test for Simultagnosia
Patient is asked what they can see
1) can see a comb and a spoon individually
1) can not see the objects together, can only see the comb or the spoon seperatley
Describe a test for optic ataxia
What types of errors could be observed?
What double dissociation might be observed with agnosia vs. optic ataxia patients?
Patient is asked to put their hand through a slot in a board. The patient could not put hand in slot successfully.
- Orientation errors
- Direction errors
Agnosia Patients = Can’t consciously describe an orientation of stimuli, but are able to act as if they understand the orientation
Optic Ataxia Patients = Can tell you orientation of stimuli, but cant act according to orientation
Describe Patient DF
What skill was she normal at?
What skill was she impaired in?
A 25 year old woman with carbon monoxide poisoning, that resulted in visual agnosia.
Normal = Visuomotor Posting
Impaired = Orientation Matching (often turns it the opposite way)
Describe the ventral vs. dorsal paths in terms of patient DF & RV
Ventral path
- Object perception
Ventral stream impairment
- Conscious perception problem, but intact action ability
Dorsal Path
- Object action
- Impaired action ability, normal conscious perception