Week 9.3 and 10.1 Attention Flashcards
what is attention
focalization, concentration of consciousness
withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others
6 varieties of attention
external - attend to stimuli in world
internal - attend to one line of thought
overt - direct a sense organ to a stimulus
covert - attend without giving outward sign
divided - splitting between two stim
sustained - continuously monitoring
visual attention
selection of visual stim for further visual + cog analysis
moving visual attention - splotlight model (posner 1980)
attention = like spotlight which moves + selectively attends to parts of visual word
- areas within spotlight = extra processing
orienting attention - posner, davidson and snyder (1980)
- examined covert shifts of attention
- the effect of visually pre-cueing regions of space on detecting presence of potential target
- if shift of attention in space improved processing of stimulus
theories of attention - zoom lens (eriksen and yeh, 1985)
attended region can grow/shrink depending on size of area to be processed
visual search - feature search
target defined by presence of single feature
visual search - conjunction search
target defined by co-occurence of two or more features
spatial configuration search
target + distractions contain same basic features
efficiency of visual search
efficiency = vg increase in RT for each item added
measured in search slope or ms/item
larger slope = less efficient
binding problem
challenge of tying diff attributes of visual stim (handled by diff brain circuits) to appropriate object –> perceive unified object
colour+motion+orientation = separate neurons
treisman’s theory of visual attention
a limited set of basic features can be processed in parallel preattentively
other properties (i.e. binding of features to objects) require attention
preattentive stage: processing of stim that occurs before selective attention is deployed
illusory conjunction
erroneous combination of two features in a visual scene
provide evidence that some features = represented independently + need to be correctly bound with attention
problem for spotlight theory
attention appears to be object not location based
yarbus (1967) experiment proved
human eyes fixate on visual elements that carry essential/useful info
more info contained = longer eyes stay on it
distribution of fixation on elements of a scene = depends on purpose of observer
thinking affects seeing
real-world visual search
real-world guides visual search
scene-based guidance: info in our understanding of scenes helps find specific objects
cognitive ethology kingstone et al 2008
cog ethology advocates studying behaviour under realistic conditions
two incorrect assumptions in lab-based studies
i) the processes that help cognition are regular across conditions
ii) situational variability can be reduced without affecting the nature of the process being measured
lab restrictions
2d
limited res
size of display
unnatural responses
constrained head movement
savelsbergh et al 2005
gaze behaviour of goalkeepers during video sim of penalty kick
- they incorrectly assumed the behaviours observed during sim were consistent + represented real-world behaviour
dicks et al 2010
replicated savelsbergh et al 2005 study
- with inclusion of real-world condition
observed similar behaviour in sim condition as savelsbergh
- simulated condition - high percent of fixation toward legs of penalty taker
- real world - goalkeepers fixated almost exclusively on the ball
