Task 4

Question 1

attention

Answer 1

-prioritised processing of some inputs, from a larger set of selectable items

Question 2

divided attention

Answer 2

• can do multiple things at the same time but less accurately
• difficulty depends on:
• how constantly the attention is required for both tasks
• similarity between tasks

Question 3

covert attention

Answer 3

allocation of attention without making eye movements

Question 4

overt attention

Answer 4

shift in attention accompanied by shift in gaze

-attention systems are closely related to systems related to making eye movements

Question 5

spatial attention

Answer 5

-prioritisation of an area within the visual field

Question 6

feature attention

Answer 6

• attention paid to features (colors, orientation, brightness)
• visual search task -> traditional paradigm in which people are asked to quickly locate a target in an array of distractors

Question 7

object attention

Answer 7

-attention to one objects rather than another

Question 8

temporal attention

Answer 8

-surprised when we expect smth. to happen at a specific point in time but it doesn’t

Question 9

attentional blink

Answer 9

• second target often missed

- first target grabs your attention so your attention system is then out of commission for a small period after that

Question 10

cocktail party effect

Answer 10

• brain’s ability to focus one’s auditory attention (an effect of selective attention in the brain) on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of
• we choose what to perceive and process

Question 11

Lunch-line effect

Answer 11

• on some level, your perceptual system tracks the environment for particular salient stimuli
• > e.g. when name mentioned somewhere, that pulls your attention away from the convo you’re having

Question 12

Top-down/ endogenous attention

Answer 12

• voluntarily focus and purposely select info to process
• > internally controlled
• like cocktail party effect

Question 13

Posner task for endogenous attention

Answer 13

• fixate at central cross
• cue tells you where the target is about to appear (an arrow in that direction)
• try to respond to visual target as quickly as possible
• valid cue: target is where it’s supposed to be
• neutral cue: no cue
• invalid cue: target somewhere else (25%)
• timing: traget follows much later to give participants time to recover from the exogenous cue
• more valid cues than invalid cues so that it doesn’t become labelled meaningless

Question 14

Bottom-up/ exogenous attention

Answer 14

• attention doesn’t shift by choice but automatically by salience of stimuli in our environment
• like lunch-line effect

Question 15

Posner task for exogenous attention

Answer 15

• main difference is the nature of the cue
• valid cue: salient visual stimulus presented at the target location where the visual target next appears (so it’s not only an arrow pointing in the direction, but it is a cue at the exact location)
• invalid cue: location where target doesn’t appear next

Question 16

Filter theory is based on…

Answer 16

• based on dichotic listening task: earphones were used to present different spoken stories to left and right ear
• PP could usually attend to only one of the streams -> second stream was filtered out

Question 17

Broadbent’s filter model

Answer 17

• input from attended and unattended message
• > they go into the sensory store: all inputs are automatically processed on some pre- attentive level
• > selective filter: only lets some sensory inputs through, based on physical properties (e.g. pitch, loudness) , unattended
• > passes bottleneck
• > enters higher level processing stages
• > then goes to WM

Question 18

criticism Broadbent’s filter model

Answer 18

-cannot account for the lunch line effect -> you weren’t able to hear your own name based on this theory, because it would have been filtered out

Question 19

Different versions of Filter theory

Answer 19

• attenuation filter instead of hard selection filter
• > filtered stimuli are just weakened but not completely blocked, so particular salient stimuli can pass through the bottleneck

How early does the filter operate?

1) Broadbent placed filter quite early
2) alternative: filter operating at later stage, so after semantic/word meaning processing (late selection)

Question 20

the spotlight theory

Answer 20

• attention operates as a spotlight
• you have some measure of control over the seize of your spotlight, choosing to focus on larger or smaller part
• spotlight of attention has a spatial resolution -> crowding: recognition of objects away from the fovea is impaired by the presence of neighbouring objects

Question 21

Feature integration theory

??

Answer 21

??

Question 22

Resource theory of attention

Answer 22

• focuses on the allocation of attention in multiple tasks
• single resource theory: one common pool of attention which can be distributed over a number of tasks -> means that we are fundamentally limited and explains degradation of performance
• multiple resource theory: we have several resources -> better explains how some tasks combine better than others
• > e.g. sensory modality: harder to listen to 2 things than seeing something while listening to something

Question 23

Balint’s syndrome

Answer 23

• severe disturbance of visual attention and awareness
• caused by bilateral damage to posterior parietal and occipital cortex
• condition which causes:
  1) oculomotor apraxia: inability to intentionally move your eyes towards an object
  2) optic ataxia: inability to accurately reach for something you’re looking at
  3) Visual simultagnosia: inability to see the whole picture

Question 24

arousal

Answer 24

• global physiological and psychological state of the organism
• our level of arousal is the pint where we fall on the continuum from being hyperaroused to moderately aroused to groggy to lightly sleeping to deeply asleep

Question 25

selective attention

Answer 25

• not a global brain state
• it is how (at any level of arousal) attention is allocated among relevant inputs/thoughts/actions wile simultaneously ignoring irrelevant ones

Question 26

dorsal attention network …

Answer 26

…

Question 27

ventral attention network …

Answer 27

…