The attentive brain

Question 1

what is attention

Answer 1

The process by which certain information is selected for further processing and other information is discarded.

Question 2

selection

Answer 2

• spatial location
• bottom up processing (exogenous attention) things in the environment that capture our attention
• top down processing (endogenous attention) atteneding to what i want to attend to

Question 3

Event related potentials (ERP)

Answer 3

it is the measured brain response that is the direct result of a specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event.

Question 4

how do we select things in our attention

Answer 4

• selection is based on objects not parts

- bias to the big picture rather than what it makes up

Question 5

The attentional blink

Answer 5

T1 processing delays allocation of attention to T2

- this leaves T2 vunerable to decay or masking

Question 6

Bottleneck model

Answer 6

1: incoming stimuli
2: Detects potential targets
3: non-targets remain in Stage 1
4: potential targerts gain access to stage 2
5: memory consolidation response planning
* bottleneck inhibits things being processed so it can process T1 howver it over writes T2 and it gets combined with something else stuck in stage 1

Question 7

Inattentional blindness

Answer 7

An inability to report avtarget stimulus if it appears soon after another target stimulus.

Question 8

Change Blindness

Answer 8

A failure to notice the appearance/ disappearance of objects between two alternating images.

Question 9

Salient objects

Answer 9

Any aspect of a stimulus that, for whatever reason, stands out from the rest.

Question 10

Oreintating when attending

Answer 10

The movement of attention from one location to another.

Question 11

Covert orientating

Answer 11

The movement of attention from one location to another without moving the eyes/body.

Question 12

Overt orientating

Answer 12

The movement of attention accompanied by movement of the eyes or body.

Question 13

Inhibition of return

Answer 13

A slowing of reaction time associated with going back to a previously attended location.

Question 14

Exogenous orienting

Answer 14

Attention that is externally guided by a stimulus.

Question 15

Endogenous orienting

Answer 15

Attention is guided by the goals of the perceiver.

Question 16

Visual search

Answer 16

detecting the presence or absence of a specified target object in an array of other distracting objects.

Question 17

What are the two pathways that are for attending to different information

Answer 17

1- ventral route (temporal): (what pathway). concerned with identifying objects
2- dorsal route (parietal) (where pathway). concerned with locating objects in space.

Question 18

Lateral intraparietal area (LIP)

Answer 18

Contains neurons that
respond to salient stimuli in the environment and are used to plan eye movements.
- responds to stimuli that are unexpected or relvant to the task

Question 19

Sallience mapping in the LIP

Answer 19

A spatial layout that emphasizes the most behaviorally relevant stimuli in the environment.

Question 20

Saccade

Answer 20

A fast, ballistic movement

of the eyes.

Question 21

Remapping

Answer 21

Adjusting one set of spatial coordinates to be aligned with a different coordinate system.

Question 22

Frontal eye field (FEF)

Answer 22

Part of the frontal lobes responsible for voluntary movement of the eyes.

Question 23

Hemispatial neglect

Answer 23

A failure to attend to stimuli on the opposite side of space to a brain lesion.

Question 24

Pseudo-neglect

Answer 24

In a non-lesioned brain there is over-attention to the left side of space.

Question 25

define: Phenomenal consciousness and Access consciousness

Answer 25

Phenomenal consciousness: The “raw” feeling of sensation, the content of awareness. Access consciousness: The ability to report on the content of awareness.

Question 26

What is the feature intergration theory

Answer 26

perceptual and attentional theory that explains how an individual combines pieces of observable information about an object in order to form a complete perception of the object. stage 1- pre attention stage stage 2- focused attention

Question 27

define Pop-out

Answer 27

The ability to detect an object among distractor objects in situations in which the number of distractors presented is unimportant.

Question 28

Illusory conjunctions

Answer 28

A situation in which visual features of two different objects are incorrectly perceived as being associated with a single object

Question 29

Early selection theory

Answer 29

A theory of attention in which information is selected according to perceptual attributes.

Question 30

Late selection theory

Answer 30

A theory of attention in which all incoming information is processed up to the level of meaning (semantics) before being selected for further processing.

Question 31

Negative priming in the FIT model for late selection theory

Answer 31

If an ignored object suddenly becomes the attended object, then participants are slower at processing it.

Question 32

Biased compeititon theory

Answer 32

- rejects spotlight theory - implies that attention isn’t a dedicated module in the brain, but rather a broad set of mechanisms for reducing many inputs to limited outcomes and there is no clear division between attentive and preattentive stages. - competition occurs at multiple stages rather than at some fixed bottleneck - attention is not deployed serially, but rather perceptual competition occurs in parallel.

Question 33

Biased competiton theory - define extinction

Answer 33

Extinction - damage to the partietal lobe: | In the context of attention, unawareness of a stimulus in the presence of competing stimuli.

Question 34

premotor theory of attention

Answer 34

spatial attention is the consequence of activation of the motor system, and that shifts of attention are achieved by planning goal-directed actions such as reaches and eye-movements

Question 35

Neglect as a disorder of spatial attention and awareness

Answer 35

fail to attend to stimuli on the opposite side of space to their lesion—normally a right-sided lesion resulting in inattention to the left side of space.

Question 36

how do you test for neglect

Answer 36

- line bisection | - cancellation task

Question 37

Perceptual versus representiational neglect

Answer 37

established that neglect can occur for spatial mental images and not just for spatial representations derived directly from perception.