Top Hat module 5

Question 1

Attention according to William James

Answer 1

“Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.” (quote from 1890)

Question 2

Inattentional blindness

Answer 2

The failure to perceive an object or event that occurs in plain sight. The failure is not due to visual impairments, but to lack of attention (we are unable to perceive information outside of the attentional spotlight). Where you focus your attention determines what properties of a scene you are and aren’t able to report on.

Question 3

Change-blindess

Answer 3

A form of inattentional blindness in which people have difficulty detecting the difference between two versions of a picture that are alternately presented. In the case of change blindness, researchers can measure the effects of different variables on the probability that someone will notice the change at a given point in the sequence.

Question 4

Measuring change-blindness

Answer 4

One interesting question that researchers have looked at using this paradigm is the relationship between where people are directly fixating and the likelihood of noticing a change. Most of the time, people don’t notice the change until they look directly at the location where the change is taking place. However, several studies have suggested that people can miss changes even when they are looking directly at a changing object. This can explain why people fall for magic tricks, even though they focus their entire attention on figuring it out.

Question 5

Why are we prone to change-blindness?

Answer 5

It takes a great deal of processing to go from a flat, two-dimensional image to recognizable objects situated in a three-dimensional world, and we simply don’t have sufficient processing resources to compute everything all at once, especially when you include all the other senses we are constantly using (touch, audition…)

Question 6

Inattentional deafness

Answer 6

A phenomenon in which auditory information is not perceived when a different high-load task is being performed.

Question 7

Selective attention

Answer 7

A form of attentional control in which a single data stream (e.g., an object or voice) is processed while others are ignored. Because of the selective nature of our attention, many researchers liken it to a filter, in which the desired information makes it through, while other information is discarded.

Question 8

Cocktail party effect

Answer 8

The ability to attend to a specific voice in an environment in which other competing voices are present as well.

Question 9

Dichotic listening task (Cherry, 1953)

Answer 9

An experimental task designed to assess selective attention. Participants are presented, via headphones, with two different audio streams to each of the two ears and tasked with repeating only one of the streams while ignoring the other. Cherry found that his participants could identify whether the unattended channel’s message was spoken by a male or female but could remember little else. In general, Cherry concluded that unless something changed that made the new message physically distinct, the attentional filter would block its contents.

Question 10

Further research by Moray (1959) on the dichotic listening task

Answer 10

Moray found that a word could be repeated upwards of 30 times and still not be recognized by participants on a later test. This research on selective attention helped inform theories of when our attentional filter starts to block information and prevent it from further processing.

Question 11

Early-selection models

Answer 11

A model of attention that posits that unattended information is filtered based on basic physical characteristics without processing meaning. For example, at a cocktail party, because understanding the meaning of words requires additional processing, the unattended conversations would only be so much meaningless noise to your brain.

Question 12

Broadbent’s filter model (Broadbent, 1958)

Answer 12

A high amount of sensory information enters the nervous system. This high informational load is held briefly in sensory memory . Then, selective attention determines which (smaller) portion of the information makes its way through to the “detector,” which is the mechanism that processes the meaning of the information (this is what makes it an early-selection model: meaning is processed only after the filter has been applied).

Question 13

Evidence against early-selection models

Answer 13

In Moray’s (1959) study mentioned above, participants were often able to process unattended information if their name was spoken in the ignored channel. In addition, research by Grey and Weddeburn (1960) found that if a meaningful narrative was played in such a manner that each successive word alternated between the ears, people would follow the narrative. For example, one stimulus presented a letter, alternating between ears. At the same time, a sequence of numbers was presented to the opposite ear. Participants usually reported the content of the letter rather than the numbers. Both of these results demonstrate that, under some circumstances, the meaning of an unattended stimulus is processed.

Question 14

Late-selection models

Answer 14

A model of attention that posits that unattended information is first processed in terms of its meaning, and then filtered based on irrelevance to the current task. What attentional filtering is based on, according to these models, is not simple physical characteristics, but whether it fits semantically with attended information.

Question 15

Attenuator model of attention

Answer 15

A theory of attention (proposed by Anne Treisman, 1964), in which unattended stimuli are processed but at a reduced level relative to attended stimuli. It’s a compromise between the early- and late-selection models. This theory states that there is some filtering of the incoming stimulus based on its physical properties. However, some of the information makes its way through the filter.

Question 16

Attenuator model of attention - what makes info important enough to be processed?

Answer 16

The idea is that some portion of the signal makes its way through for further processing, although it is reduced (or “attenuated”). The meaning of this reduced signal may be identified if it sufficiently matches some high-priority word (such as your name) or an expected item (e.g., a word that may be more predicted by the previous words). Even reduced signals may be identified if they meet these criteria. We may think of a filtered stimulus as having reduced resolution compared with those that are attended.

Question 17

Mackay’s twist on the dichotic listening task (1973)

Answer 17

Mackay (1973) altered the dichotic listening task by having participants focus on sentences with a potentially ambiguous meaning, while in the unattended channel a word was repeatedly played that would provide context to the attended sentence. Mackay was interested in how participants’ memory of the attended sentence might change based on the word repeated in the unattended channel. He found that the “unconscious” information was somehow affecting participants’ conscious perception. These results indicate that our attentional filter is much more flexible than once believed

Question 18

Attentional load

Answer 18

A measure of how much processing resources are needed in order to perform a task. The idea of attentional load suggests that sometimes unattended stimuli may be processed even if we are trying to filter them out (ex. hearing a bag of chips at the theater: even if you are trying to just watch the movie, there may be some processing resources left over that end up processing the unwanted sound of the snack bag. ).

Question 19

Eriksen flanker task (1974)

Answer 19

A technique used to study attention in which an irrelevant distractor is included alongside experimental stimuli in order to see whether the distractor is processed, increasing reaction time. This research demonstrated that when trying to search for a target letter among distractors, the difficulty varies by what is flanking, or distracting, for the target item. Participants can’t help but process the flankers. When they were consistent with the same response as the target, it caused no decrease in performance. But when the distractors indicated a different response, they created conflict, leading to longer reaction times.

Question 20

Lavie’s version of the flanker task (1995)

Answer 20

In this case, participants have to search for a letter “O” in the two rings of letters. Next to the rings is a flanker letter that is not relevant to the task, but that may serve to distract the participant if it is incompatible. There is a “low-load” (the letters in the ring are uniform, so it’s easy to spot the target) task, and a “high-load task” (every letter is different).

Question 21

Results form Lavie’s study

Answer 21

Lavie found that the incompatible flanker only caused an increased reaction time in the low-load condition but not in the high-load conditions. She concluded that in the low-load condition, the fact that the task is not difficult means that there are processing resources left over and that these resources end up processing the flanker, even when it is not wanted, leading to distraction. In the high-load condition, however, the central task of finding the target is difficult and there are few processing resources left over. Therefore, the flanker is not processed and does not cause a distraction.

Question 22

Green and Bavelier’s twist on Lavie’s research (2003)

Answer 22

They recruited people who had a lot of experience playing first-person video games versus people with little to no experience, and compared their performance in Lavie’s flanker tasks. The non-gamers showed the same pattern of results as found by Lavie: distraction from the incompatible flanker in the low-load condition but not the high-load. However, the gamer showed distraction from the flanker in both conditions. This means that people with video game experience are better able to distribute their attention outside of the central task, even under high-load conditions, leading them to process the distracting flanker.

Question 23

So, what model is correct?

Answer 23

The role of attentional load suggests that neither the early or late theories are completely right or wrong. Attention may have a movable filter that can be applied more strictly based on the demands of a task.

Question 24

Automatic processing

Answer 24

Processing that happens even without the allocation of selective attention, typically for highly familiar stimuli or tasks (often the result of practice and learning).

Question 25

Stroop effect

Answer 25

Stroop (1935) found that people took longer to do a color-naming task when the words spelled out by the colored letters do not match the text color. This shows that people perform the perceptual task of reading words even when they have no incentive or desire to do so. This is likely because we become so good at reading over many years of training that the task becomes automatic and fewer attentional resources are needed to be devoted to it in order to read the words

Question 26

Gaming’s effects on the brain

Answer 26

Bavelier et al. (2012) found that non-gamers had to use their endogenous network to block out the irrelevant information. But for the gamers, blocking out irrelevant motion did not require much neural “effort”. Also, the activation of the area of the brain involved in motion processing was reduced for gamers. Gamers were better able to filter out the irrelevant motion stimulus and focus on the task at hand. Overall, these results suggest that the practice of allocating attention through extended gameplay increased the efficiency of these endogenous attention brain networks.

Question 27

Divided attention

Answer 27

The allocation of processing resources to multiple objects or tasks simultaneously. This is more commonly referred to as multi-tasking and, because there are so many things constantly vying for our attention, we often find ourselves trying to multi-task. Research has found that when we divide our attention among two tasks, performance on the individual tasks tends to suffer.

Question 28

Driving and phone calls

Answer 28

Drews et al. (2008) found a much larger number of driving errors for a cell-phone condition versus the number when talking to a passenger in a simulator. There appears to be something uniquely demanding about cell phone conversations since error rates are similarly higher for cell phone conversations compared to listening to the radio, or an audiobook. Also, evidence does not support the idea that talking hands-free using Bluetooth or some other technology is any safer than using a handset. This is because the problem is one of processing resources, not because you are using your hands for something other than holding the steering wheel.

Question 29

Can we actually pay attention to 2 tasks at once.

Answer 29

One theory is that what people are doing when they multitask is quickly switching their attention from one task to another. Task-switching has been shown to take time as the brain readjusts from the old task to the new task. Interestingly, people who multitask most often actually show the greatest deficits in task switching. Thus, someone who claims to be good at multi-tasking may actually be particularly bad at it.

Question 30

Evidence supporting the idea that we can multi-task

Answer 30

There is some evidence that people can pay attention to multiple objects concurrently. People can engage in multi-object tracking, keeping track of a set of targets as they move around on a screen among distractors. Research using multi-object tracking suggests that people can keep track of around four to five objects concurrently.

Question 31

The purpose of attention

Answer 31

One role of attention may be in terms of pre-activating, or readying, the processing needed for specific stimuli that are present or are about to be present. In this way, attention can make us more sensitive to stimuli and quicker to respond to them.

Question 32

Treisman’s feature-integration theory (1980s)

Answer 32

A theory of attentional function that holds that attention is necessary in order to bind together discrete features of an object unto a unified whole. Treisman found that when subjects were told to identify simple shapes or letters, their memory for objects would have predictable errors. For unattended stimuli, participants would sometimes only remember individual features correctly, not their conjunction. However, when participants were given meaning to the objects they were viewing, the attentional binding wasn’t necessary.

Question 33

Conjunction errors

Answer 33

A failure to accurately bind together the discrete features of a single object. Treisman theorized that they were due to the lack of attention binding them together. According to feature-integration theory, attention is needed in order to combine each of the properties into unified objects.

Question 34

Visual search paradigm

Answer 34

An experimental task in which participants must search for a target object among distractors. Treisman and others observed that when people have to search for a target that is different from distractors based on a single property, such as color or shape, the search was easy. Research shows that even if additional distractors are added to this kind of display, search times for the target do not get longer. The task becomes more difficult when the target is defined based on 2+ properties.

Question 35

Single-feature search

Answer 35

A version of a visual-search task in which the target is distinguished from the distractors based on a single feature.

Question 36

Conjunction search

Answer 36

A version of a visual-search task in which the target is distinguished from the distractors based on a several features. Experimental research on these kinds of displays shows that as the number of distractors increases from one simple feature to two, the amount of time it takes people to find the target increases linearly.

Question 37

Why does conjunction search take longer?

Answer 37

This is because it is necessary to attend to each stimulus in the array. As we attend to each stimulus, attentional processing is helping to bind the separate features (e.g., line orientation and color) in order to combine each item’s features to determine whether it is the target or not. This phenomenon suggests that a critical role of attention is to combine or integrate features into unified objects.

Question 38

Attention’s role in parallel processing

Answer 38

When there are several pieces of information to integrate in order to locate an object, attention may be operating across two channels and helping to complete parallel processing to more quickly discard items that are obviously not the target. However, attention’s role in guiding search functions and aiding perceptual processing cannot be simply reduced to acting as a binding agent or differentiated into serial and parallel processing models.

Question 39

Exogenous attentional control

Answer 39

Control of attention that is driven by factors external to the individual. The stimulus can draw attention to something automatically, whether we want to pay attention to it or not.

Question 40

Endogenous attentional control

Answer 40

Control of attention that is driven by factors internal to the individual. It occurs when a person chooses what to pay attention to, based on their goals or intentions (ex. choosing to focus on what you’re reading).

Question 41

Overt attention

Answer 41

Selective attention of a location that is accompanied by eye fixation of the same region. Looking directly at something is a way of maximizing the amount of visual information we can obtain about it.

Question 42

Covert attention

Answer 42

Attentional selection and processing of a location while eye fixation is maintained elsewhere.

Question 43

Why do we have both overt and covert attentions?

Answer 43

One possibility is that the direction of human gaze is easily detected by others and we don’t always want to reveal to others where we are attending. Another reason is that attention may sometimes precede eye movements by a short amount of time, as a way of scoping out the best place to move them.

Question 44

Attention in the brain

Answer 44

Certain forms of attention have been shown to be responsible for preparing relevant regions for activity (ex. occipital cortex). This form of attention that is based on anticipation and goal-directed appears to be a partially separable network than exogenous, bottom-up directed attention. In particular, it appears that regions in the posterior parietal lobes serve to control which of other brain areas are activated.

Question 45

Medial temporal lobes (MT)

Answer 45

A portion of the cortex that has been been established as a region that processed visual motion and near the occipital lobes, within the ventral stream of visual processing.

Question 46

fMRI study on attention (findings)

Answer 46

Participants had to report whether the dots were moving in the direction the arrow had pointed. fMRI showed that their MT was active. They also found enhanced activity around the intraparietal sulcus as well, even though it is not essential in processing motion. Instead, this suggests that the parietal lobe was active in modulating the activity of the medial temporal lobe. That is, the parietal lobe controls which portions of the brain are paying attention.

Question 47

Exogenours attention in the brain

Answer 47

There is evidence that regions localized to the right hemisphere, such as the temporoparietal junction, are responsible for capturing our attention to unexpected stimuli.

Question 48

Frontal Eye Fields (FEF)

Answer 48

A portion of the frontal lobes associated with allocation of attention via eye movements. This portion of the cortex is one area with a retinotopic map, which means that the spatial layout on the retina is preserved in the cortex, which in turn preserves the spatial layout of the visual world. The FEF appears to be engaged in the allocation of both overt and covert attention.

Question 49

Primary visual cortex

Answer 49

The portion of the occipital lobe that is the primary processing center for vision and organizes visual information for further processing throughout the occipital lobe. It also contains a retinotopic map.

Question 50

ADHD

Answer 50

Most commonly diagnosed in children and is associated with an inability to stay focused on a central task. Evidence supports that this distractibility is, at least in part, due to failures of the frontoparietal networks to control attention and suppress impulses.

Question 51

Go/no-go task

Answer 51

An experimental procedure used to test cognitive control and the subject’s ability to control impulsive responses. These tasks require a subject to press a button as quickly as possible when a target is present but stop pressing it when a different, but similar, target appears. The majority of stimuli are typically “go” stimuli, creating a situation where cognitive control is strongly needed to suppress the button-hitting response.

Question 52

Go/no-go task and ADHD

Answer 52

A study in 2003 found that children with ADHD completed more errors by responding to the no-go stimulus more often. Additionally, the researchers used fMRI to examine neural activity while participants responded, and found that control participants had a relatively increased level of neural activity in the frontoparietal regions when suppressing responses to the no-go stimuli. Participants with ADHD inefficiently activated these regions while responding to no-go trials. This demonstrates that there is a dysregulation in attention control networks that may increase levels of impulsive behaviors in ADHD patients.

Question 53

ADHD treatments

Answer 53

Symptoms of ADHD can be treated by behavioral management strategies that support both parent and child. Training programs can help provide parents with behavioral management strategies, as well as provide emotional support. Depending on the age of the child, training programs may be combined with medication (stimulants).

Question 54

Balint syndrome

Answer 54

A neurological disorder typically resulting from damage to both parietal lobes (ex. after a stroke) that carries several attentional deficits including occulomotor apraxia (the inability to execute visually guided movements) and simultanagnosia.

Question 55

Simultanagnosia

Answer 55

The inability to identify or use more than one object or property in a scene at a time. Paintings by Guiseppe Arcimboldo are sometimes used to test and demonstrate attentional deficits in patients with simultanagnosia. Patients with simultanagnosia focus on local features and struggle to see the global, holistic feature. While it can appear like some form of blindness, or even dementia, careful analysis of these patients reveals that it is attentional.

Question 56

Visual neglect

Answer 56

A deficit of attention in which the individual fails to notice or process a particular location in space, typically the left visual field due to right parietal lobe damage. Therefore, this is commonly referred to as left neglect syndrome. While it can appear that they are blind in that visual field, this is not the case. If an exogenous cue draws their attention to the left visual field, they will see and describe what is there. Instead, this is a deficit of attention: The damaged parietal lobe is causing the brain to ignore the left visual field.

Question 57

Left vs right parietal lobe and attention

Answer 57

Interestingly, damage to the left parietal lobe does not typically lead to neglect of the right visual field. This suggests that while the left parietal lobe only generates attention to the right visual field, the right parietal lobe can generate attention in both visual fields.

Question 58

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Answer 58

A developmental disorder that can lead to deficits in language, impaired social behaviors, repetitive actions and general delays in cognitive development. ASD is generally thought of as being due to atypical brain development (although the cause is unknown).

Question 59

ASD and eye contact

Answer 59

People with ASD tend not to make eye contact. Research demonstrated altered visual tracking of facial expressions in ASD patients. Using eye tracking, the researchers compared the ability of individuals with and without autism to identify emotions being displayed by facial expressions and monitored where participants looked to make their decisions. Controls tended to look first at eyes and their visual paths concentrated around the center of the faces while those with autism avoided the eyes and center and instead tended to fixate outside regions of the face. It is possible that individuals with autism struggle to identify the emotions of others because they are not paying attention to the same information as controls.

Question 60

Why do people with ASD not engage in as much eye contact as others?

Answer 60

The origins of this tendency are not clear. It might be that people with autism have difficulty interpreting the mental states of others; this may make the eyes less useful as a site of fixation and so they fixate on other parts of the image. On the other hand, it may be that atypical fixations behaviors are part of autism from the beginning. hese abnormalities early on (as young as 6 months old) may contribute to the inability or the difficulty people with autism have of reading emotions and intentions on others’ faces.