Vusaul Attbetion Flashcards
Everyday experience of attention
Limitation to how much we can pay attention to at once
Some things appear to grab our attention , sometimes we are distraftsbke and unable to sustain attention, others rewuire less attention
Who says everyone knows what attention is
William James 1890
Who says no one knows what intelligence is
Harold 1998
What is visual attention for
Detection/orientation of stimuli (tend to foveate an image on our retina and ensure it’s processed by both cerebral hemispheres
Sensory input is filtered for all relevant information in to STM. Attention acts as a gateway so only most important info enters
What is the spotlight theory of attention by posner 1978
Attention can only focus on one region at a time, only illuminated items enter awareness. Attention is a cognitive phenomenon not tied to eye movements, can be overt/covert
Attentional shifts can be voluntary/involuntary
Spatial cuing task:when visual cues are valid there are shorter rwction times
What does parietal lobe damage do?
Disengages attention
Rafael and Robertson 1997 studied them and they seemed unable to orient contralesional stimuki(stimuli opposite side to brain lesion)
They can move their eyes freely
Problem disengaging with ipsilateral stimuli (same side as lesion)
What does damage to the midbrain do Rafal et al 1998
Patients with progressive supranuckear palsy, impaired moving eyes in the vertical plane and shifting of attention
What does damage to the pulvinear do?(thalamus)
Ability affected to engage/disengage attention freely
Deficiency in ability to filter out attention
Attention should be regarded as what according to eriksen and st James 1986
Zoom lens, attention can be expanded/contracted depending if we want to focus on the details
What did duncan 1984 do?
Subjects had to report two features of a stimulus display that varied by large/small, line slant left/right, gap placement, line dashed/dotted
Painters were slower when objects belonged to different objects rather than the same
What did egly driver and rafal 1994 do?
Following valid/invalid cue had to respond as soon as dark square appeared in a target box
The same object condition was faster than between objects that cannot be explained by distance
What does fink et al 1997
Object based task: is box in left/right if the line
Space-based task: is box in left/right if the cross
Control is the line long or short
Shifting attention between objects activated right and left superior parietal cortex, shifting attention within activated left medial occipital cortex
Why are some types of information processed without visual attention
Visual pop-out (shape, colour, orientation, texture)
Doesn’t matter how many items in visual processing takes the same processing time
What are preattebtionak properties
Number, size, length, width, artistic properties…
What do you need to process attention
E.g. When greeen and red different letters to find one- have to process multiple thinggs
More letters- longer to process it
What is the feature integration theory?
Treisman and gelade 1980
The visual system is spilt in to two main stages: visual pop-out is taken as evidence that basic visual features such as colour, orientations and texture. Automatically coded in parallel across visual field prior to attention
The difficulty of conjunction search is taken as evidence that focused attention to bing single features such as colour and oreientstion into unified forms
What did treisman and Schmidt 1982 do
Predicted if attention is needed for binding when attention is widely fistrubuted attention can bind features incorrectly
Pairing wrong colour and letter occured 39% of the time, sbsent features reported 15% of the time
What is perception without awareness?
Based on subjects verbal report, accurate response indicates unconscious processing
E.g. Williams 1938 showed participants with a circle triangle and a square. They said didn’t see anything but when asked what saw reported correct three above chance
However can never be sure have on a conscious level
What are objective measures of perception without awareness?
Stomulanoresented at theeshold and designed to give conciliation perception of stimulus
Marcus 1983 shows words at a brief exposure unable to say the word but they reacted faster to this word on the list as they’re semantically primed
Criticised as consciousness is perceived and claimed state of mind so can’t be objectified
What did Mack and rock 1998 do?
Devised a paradigm where made describing decisions one spatial location whilst irrelevant info was presented
Did you see a longer arm of the cross did you see anything else on the screen
60% failed of the word, yet 47% chose the correct word in subsequent list
What is negkect syndrome
Neurological disorder where patients fail to report/acknowledge stimuli on the side of space opposite side of the lesion
What did nattingley et al 1997 do?
Prison fentered in right inferior parietal lobe marks was to report either quarter segments are removed from the left
Patient missed most left-side segments could not be grouped. This suggests left sided stimuli were covertly represented and when grouped with right sided stimuli could influence performance
What did Marshall and Halifax 1988 do?
Are the houses same or different if fire on the left say same but would rather live in one with no fire so consciously aware??
