Week 11: Attention Flashcards
What is attention based around?
Prioritising and enhancing certain information
Attention enhances processing of sensory area
What is arousal/alertness?
About vigilance and sustained attention
The reticular activating system (RAS) controls this
What is selective attention?
Our senses are constantly bombarded with info so SA decides what we should pay closer attention to
What is divided attention?
Involves performing more than 1 task at a time
What is voluntary attention?
Intentional, top-down, goal directed, endogenous model
It is guided by goals, knowledge and experience
What is reflexive attention?
attentional capture, bottom-up, stimulus driven, exogenous
Automatic
What is overt attention?
Move, eyes, head, body towards region of interest
What is covert attention?
Attention by spatial locations independent of eye gaze
Was discovered by Hermann von Helmholtz
What is the cocktail party effect displayed through?
Dichotic listening task
- covertly attending to other stimuli
- attention to one ear leads to better encoding and loss of degradation of info from unattended ear
What is early selection?
Broadbent bottleneck theory
Selection prior to completion of perceptual analysis
Only 1 input gains access for higher level analysis
What is Late selection?
selection occurs after some semantic encoding
Some info gets through filter, therefore all info has some form of low level analysis
What is unilateral spatial neglect?
Neglect of 1 side of space following unilateral damage to cortical or subcortical areas - fail to attend opposite side of lesion
Is transient so will usually improve over time
What is extinction in unilateral spatial neglect?
Failure to perceive or act on stimuli contralateral to lesion when simultaneously presented with stimuli ipsilateral to lesion
What is Balint’s Syndrome?
Inability to perceive more than 1 object at a time (Simultanagnosia)
Inability to reach in direction of an object under visual guidance (optic ataxia)
Inability to voluntarily shift gaze to new visual stimuli (occular apraxia)
What are the 3 attentional control networks?
Alerting - general level of arousal/vigilance
Orienting - directing of attention to prioritise external information
Executive Control - higher level regulation of information from other systems
What is the alerting network?
Automatic/arousal based originating in Locus Coerulius and is a part of the RAS
Cognitive tasks include Tonic alerting, phasic alerting
What is the orienting network?
Prioritise info by selecting location, feature, modality etc and has 2 underlying network (dorsal and ventral systems)
Mediated by acetylcholine
Cognitive tasks include Posner cueing, visual search and feature selction
What is the executive control network?
Top down control over other systems (fronto-parietal and cingulo-opercular network)
Mediated by dopamine and implicated in ADHD
Cognitive tasks include flanker, stroop and wisconsin card sorting
What is the dorsal control network?
Goal directed, spatial attention
Top-down, visuospatial - involved in the frontal eye field and parietal regions
What is the ventral reorienting network?
Reflexive, non spatial right lateralised
Important for detecting novelty and multimodal attentional reorienting
Damage is associated with neglect
What are the 2 subcortical areas of attention?
Superior colliculus
Pulvinar of the thalamus
What is the role of the superior colliculus?
Detect and shift attention to salient locations via reflexive eye movements
What is the role of the pulvinar of the thalamus?
Important for covert and overt engagement of spatial attention
Filters distracting information
