Week 7 : Visual Attention Flashcards
alertness
refers to a state of vigilance, we are aware, mindful and scanning surroundings… not attending to any particular stimulus but waiting to find out what we should be paying attention to
Attention
The allocation of our limited cognitive resources to one of many potential stimuli, implies selection
Awareness
Active thought about something, either physically present or in our imagination
Attention is…
A set of processes that allow us to select or focus on some stimuli
* - 4 features…
1. 1. Attention can be directed to any of our senses
1. 1. 2. Attention can be directed externally to perceptual features of the world but also internally to our thought process or imaginal process
1. 3. Attention can be sustained or temporary
1. 4. Attention can be overt or covert
Selective attention…
the processes of attention that allow us to focus on one source when many are present
How selective is selective attention… stroop task
- participants presented with word list & asked to respond w colour of the word
- conflicting cues are being presented by the text and the colour of the text and it is very difficult to direct our attention to the latter of these stimulus properties
- example of automaticity
divided attention…
the process of attending to multiple sources of information
Automaticity…
- sometimes we cannot seem to prevent stimuli from intruding on our cognitive processes
- Automaticity… refers to those cognitive processes that do not require attention, they happen automatically
- both innate and learned
- if u wanna make a learned task automatic, you have to practice a ton
Direction of gaze + fovea
- usually, we attend to a particular location in space by directing our gaze to that location
- usually, what is represented in our fovea is what we are attending to
- it is only in and near the fovea that we have enough detail to support many of the demands of attention
- BUT.. assumption in sports is that we are capable of directing our attention to places other than our direction of gaze
Overt attention…
is where our attention lines up with where we are looking (gaze)
Covert attention…
Is when your visual attention does not line up with your direction of gaze… (often used to obscure one’s intentions such as the basketball played covertly scanning for passing options)
Posner paradigm…
- the effects of covert attention on visual perception are shown by the Posner paradigm
- In this experiment… participants are asked to focus on a fixation point at the centre of the screen & told that a stimulus will appear in one of 2 positions on the screen (either right or left)
- the participants task is to indicate on which side of the screen the probe appeared
- in some trials, an arrow would appear very briefly and would serve to direct the participants attention toward one side or the other (this shift was in covert attention)
- the arrow is extinguished and the target could appear either on the same side (valid predictor) or on the opposite side (invalid) of the arrow
- sometimes had stimulus onset asynchrony… difference in time between occurrence of one stimulus and the occurrence of the other (e.g. 200ms)
Results of Posner paradigm…
- in the neutral position condition where covert attention was not directed away from the centre of the screen it took an average 260ms to respond to the target
- when attention was directed away (invalid) from the target stimulus, reaction times were longer
- when the arrow was predictive of the target’s location (valid) reaction times were faster
- this suggests that the direction of covert attention towards the target
what does Posner paradigm tell us about attention?
- tells us that we can devote attention covertly
- there is a spatial limit to attention, visual attention has a size and in the spotlight we can process what we see there in a more efficient matter than if spotlight not directed there
- the spotlight could be directed away from the region a person is actually looking at
Attention functions as a spotlight
- the work of Posner and others led psychologists to model visual attention as a spotlight
- suggesting that attention can be directed toward a specific place within visual field… this can help you better resolve details within that region… and draws resources away from the regions to which attention is not being directed
Bottom-up drivers of selective attention
What directs this attentional spotlight towards a particular region in space?… come from top-down and bottom-up sources
* within our visual field there are particular features that are unique, high in contrast, colourful etc. which direct visual attention there
Top-down drivers of selective attention…
- if you understand the context of a visual scene you can make more informed choices about where to direct visual attention.. (if u know how actors are gonna move across stage, u know where to put spotlight)
- e.g. watching a baseball game
Egly et al. spotlight cueing
- participant fixated at centre of screen and visual targets could appear at one of 4 locations; ABCD
- when a cue appeared at the same location but the target subsequently appeared at locations B/C
- both were longer reaction than at position A
- Reactions to B faster than C
- this suggests that the perception of visual objects influence the effects of covert attention
- if attention was cued to the object at right, reaction times were faster for all locations within the object
focused attention
- gorilla experiment
- demonstrates power of focused attention + the unintended side effects of focusing on the spotlight
- inattentional blindness
Inattentional blindness…
- the phenomenon in which an object remains outside of conscious perception because visual attention is focused elsewhere
Inattentional blindness lab setting…
- participants asked to maintain fixation at cross in centre of screen & make response regarding a stimulus presented in the surrounding visual field
- on some trials the fixation point was changed to a diamond but participants were unaware of this change cuz their attention had been directed to the stimuli in the periphery
- changes to an object under direct observation were imperceivable when attention was directed elsewhere
- remember radiologists one with the gorilla in the CT scans
Stimulus salience
- Stimulus salience refers to the features of objects in the environment that attract our attention (e.g. hearing ur name)
- novel or unexpected capture our attention
- also a stimulus associated with reward ought to attract our attention
- Semantic meaning may also capture our attention in a visual scene, if that meaning is presented in the fovea
novelty and violation of expectation
- novelty and violation of expectation capture our attention for visual processing
- spent more time looking at the printer on the stove (violation of expectation) than a pot on the stove
- We are adept at ignoring features of the environment that are not changing over time (imagine everything captures your attention)
visual search… Feature search…
- we can consciously direct our visual attention towards a unique feature or set of features (looking for person in crowd)
- scanning visual field for object with special feature
- conjunction search… 2+ features… task becomes more difficult as number of distractors increase
- spatial configuration search… shape of the target stimulus is the defining feature among a field of similarly shaped distractors… even harder