Week 3 Lecture

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

The ability to focus on specific stimuli or places in our environment

Question 2

Sensory Modalities

Answer 2

term sensory modality is often used interchangeably with sense. The basic sensory modalities include: light, sound, taste, temperature, pressure, and smell.

Question 3

Dichotic Listening Procedure

Answer 3

• Cherry 1953
• Presenting different stimuli to the left and right ears.
• Participant “shadows” one message to ensure he is attending to that message.
• Participants could not report the content of the message in unattended ear.

Question 4

Moray 1959

Answer 4

Cocktail Party Effect

Question 5

Lavie `995; 2000 - Load Theory of Attention

Answer 5

Visual Search: Easy vs Hard

It is easier to get distracted by unimportant stimulus when doing an easy task because we have more processing capacity left for potential distractions

Distractions are less intrusive when doing harder tasks because we have only small amount of processing capacity available which won’t let small distractions through

Question 6

Value Driven Attentional Capture (VDAC)

Answer 6

• Stimulus gave reward before so it grabs attention now.
• This can sometimes be a distractor if there is a new target stimulus
• Learned Reinforcement Value

Question 7

Same Object Advantage

Answer 7

• Egly 1994
• Enhancing Effect of attention spreads throughout an object
• Reaction time was fastest when target appeared with the cue

Question 8

100 Car Naturalistic Driving Study

Answer 8

• Dingus 2006
• Recorded 2,000,000 miles of driving
• Found 82% of crashes and 67% of near crashes driver was inattentive in 3 seconds prior
• Accident risk was 4x higher when using a cell phone

Question 9

Strayer & Johnson 2001 -Distracted Driving Study

Answer 9

• People on phone missed2x the red lights and had longer reaction times
• Same result using Hands Free, Siri or Cortana
• Found having a human passenger improved performance - maybe due to extra cues from passenger assist their performance

Question 10

Stimulus Control

Answer 10

• Behaviour that happens when Stimulus is present
• Behaviour is absent when the stimulus is not

e.g. Answering a phone - If the phone is not ringing we do not answer the phone; the ringtone is the stimulus that controls behaviour

Question 11

Lovaas et al 1971

Answer 11

• Tested responses to Auditory, Visual, Tactile and Complex stimulus
• Subjects were children with ASD and Neurotypical
• ASD Kids overselected auditory stimulus and underselected tactile stimulus
• ASD Kids don’t learn about tactile reinforcement due to overselecting another stimulus
• This is significant because overselectivity blocks out learning from other stimulus - Denny didn’t learn about the tactile stimulus

Question 12

Rincover & Koegel 1975

Answer 12

• Overselectivity leads to difficulties with Acquisition, Maintenance and generalisation of behaviour
• Subject was not responding to Trials in many different settings and with people
• Therapist would show candy to John before giving the command
• John responded to candy before being given the command was not actually responding to verbal cue.
• John responded to hand movement of the candy not verbal cue

Question 13

Rincover & Koegel 1975 - Cliff

Answer 13

• Similar to John but Cliff overselected when there was a table and chair between himself & Therapist
• When table & Chair was taken outside Cliff would respond
• Cliff overselected the table & Chair stimulus which resulted in him not being able to follow the command in any other setting

Question 14

Stimulus Salience - Leader et al 2009

Answer 14

• Found that overall ASD kids were less focused on colour of stimulus in general
• There was a large difference between typical and ASD kids when the salience was unequal
• Stimulus that was more salient was more likely to capture attention

Question 15

Reinforcement History

Answer 15

• Dube & McIlvane 1997
• Delayed Matching to Sample - Matching one feature of a compound sample
• Found that DMTS task had greater accuracy if the stimulus had been reinforced first even if there was no value in this stimulus during this task

Question 16

Two theories as to Why Overselectivity Occurs

Answer 16

1. Attention Deficit Theories - Subjects don’t observe or attend to stimuli during training so they are not learned
2. Comparator (Performance) Theories - Subjects attend and learn all stimulus but this is not demonstrated in behaviour. Selects most appropriate stimulus to control behaviour

Question 17

Comparator/Performance Theory of Overselectivity

Answer 17

• Subjects attend and learn all stimulus they encounter but this is not shown in behaviour
• Comparator mechanism compares the stimuli and selects the most appropriate one to modify behaviour
• This is a problem in performance and responding not a learning issue
• Learning is not expressed in behaviour

Question 18

Dube et al 2010 - Attention Deficit Theory of Overselectivity

Answer 18

• Failure to observe or attend may underlie overselectivity
• When answering correctly their eyes observed the stimulus
• When incorrect their eyes hardly ever observed the stimulus

Question 19

Inattentional Blindness

Answer 19

• When we don’t observe a stimulus that is obvious because we are attending somewhere else
  e. g. Invisible Gorilla experiment

Question 20

Change Blindness

Answer 20

• Simons & Levins 1998
• People more likely to notice change if they were in the same age group
• If we give markers such as a uniform ppl remember even less details
• suggests in group/out group bias

Question 21

Treisman Feature Integration Theory

Answer 21

• Perception is divided into stages
• Preattentive stage is automatic and requires no effort

Object ⇒ Preattentive stage ⇒ Focused Attention Stage ⇒ Perception