Task 4

Question 1

Spotlight metaphor

Answer 1

Metaphor for attention, where attention feels like directing a light on some things and not others.

Question 2

Ventral attention system

Answer 2

System for involuntary attention, includes alerting & vigilance systems and is found mainly in the right hemisphere in
frontal, parietal, and temporal areas.

Question 3

Dorsal attention system

Answer 3

Used when we deliberately pay attention to someone speaking, or try to ignore an annoying noise to concentrate on reading our book, found bilaterally in frontal & parietal areas and mediating purposeful, voluntary, high-level attention.

Question 4

Saccades

Answer 4

The constant jumping of eyes from one fixation point to another, ) happens several times a second, whether we are aware of them or not.

Question 5

Smooth pursuit

Answer 5

The eyes can track a moving object, keeping its image on roughly the same part of the fovea. This movement is hard to make without an actual moving target and is affected by drug use and by conditions such as schizophrenia, autism and PTSD.

Question 6

Perceptual pop-out

Answer 6

• Another form of involuntary visual attention
• Searching for a slightly different stimulus in a display of stimuli
• For many such displays, there is no alternative but a serial search, looking at each item in turn to identify it.
• However, in other cases, the difference is so obvious to the visual system that the target just pops out

Question 7

Covert attention scanning

Answer 7

Looking directly at one object/place and paying attention elsewhere

Question 8

Overt attention scanning

Answer 8

Paying attention where one is directly looking

Question 9

Dichotic listening

Answer 9

A method in which 2 different streams of sounds are played to each ear.
Normally only 1 stream can be tracked at once, but certain kinds of stimuli can break through from the non-attended ear, and others can have effects on behavior without being consciously heard

Question 10

Early selection position

Answer 10

Attention operates very early in the processing of sensory information, even before semantic analysis or conscious awareness

Question 11

Late selection position

Answer 11

Attentional selection occurs after considerable analysis and processing of sensory information, closer to the stage where semantic (meaning based) processing occurs.

Question 12

Perceptual load theory

Answer 12

• In this theory, perceptual processing has limited capacity, and when a task involves dealing with a large amount of information (high perceptual load), that capacity is fully exhausted by the processing of the attended. This results in early, top-down selection effects from our current goals.
• When perceptual low is load, however, spare capacity from processing the task-related information ‘spills over’, so that we perceive task-irrelevant information vie late attention selection strongly influenced by bottom-up stimuli

Question 13

Cartesian materialism

Answer 13

An integration of Cartesian dualism with materialism, stating that mental phenomena (e.g. thoughts, consciousness, emotions) are ultimately rooted in physical processes within the brain and the nervous system.

Question 14

Premotor theory of selective spatial attention

Answer 14

Attending to a particular position is space is like preparing to look or to reach towards it

Question 15

Biased competition theory (a.k.a. Integrated competition theory)

Answer 15

Attention is a neural competition mechanism biased by feedback from a person’s goals, expectations,
emotional states etc.

Question 16

Attention schema theory of consciousness

Answer 16

• Builds on the biased competition model and on IIT & global workspace theories, and connects consciousness directly with attention.
• Awareness is the internal model of attention and it evolved as a way of modelling and controlling attention: top-down control is improved when the brain can use a simplified model of attention itself (attention schema).

Question 17

Structuring view of attention

Answer 17

Attention is contrastive: it structures our mental life so that somethings are in the foreground of others, whether or not for the purpose of action selection.

Question 18

Cognitive-unison view

Answer 18

Attention is not treated as a process in itself, but as a way in which things happen (adverb, not a noun)

Question 19

Declan Smithies’ theory

Answer 19

Attention is a form of consciousness that makes information fully accessible for use in the rational control of thought and action.