Attention and Awareness

Difference between awareness and attention

Awareness is being conscious of many sensory inputs; attention is actively focusing on specific inputs.

Divided attention

Managing attention on multiple sensory inputs at the same time (e.g., listening, watching, and observing simultaneously).

Focused attention

Attending to one thing at the cost of others, such as concentrating on notes while studying.

Limitation of attention

Attention has a limited capacity—we cannot attend to everything, even if we are aware of more things.

Example of limited attentional capacity

Driving while on the phone—people often stop talking during difficult maneuvers.

Attending to different modalities

We process different types of stimuli (faces, places) in different brain areas, allowing easier parallel processing.

Why limited visual processing?

The brain has a finite number of neurons and synapses; focusing prevents overload and supports effective action.

Selective attention

Narrowing sensory inputs so we can effectively interact with our environment.

Cocktail party effect

hearing your name in a noisy party.

Dichotic listening

Experimental task where participants hear different messages in each ear and must shadow one ear.

Broadbent's Filter Theory

All sensory info is coded, but only the attended message passes through a filter to memory.

Limitation of Broadbent's model

Studies (e.g., "Dear Aunt Jane") showed people can stitch together attended and unattended messages.

Treisman's Attenuation Model

Unattended messages are not completely filtered but "dampened" and still analyzed to some extent.

Dictionary Unit (Treisman)

Stores words with thresholds for activation; common/important words (like your name) have low thresholds and can capture attention.

Filter theory of attention

all sensory information is processed, but only certain bits are encoded

Dichotic listening

our limited ability to only retain information from one, attended ear

Change blindness

given a complex scene, we can only attend to a limited number of things

Attentional blink

brief period after attending to a specific stimulus during which we may miss new information

Bottom-up vs. Top-down processing

Perception is driven by both; bottom-up from sensory input, top-down from prior knowledge/expectations. Top-down constantly updates and can change what we perceive.

Why isn't perception just sensation?

Our perceptual system adds information—e.g., we detect motion that isn't there or see shapes that aren't present.

Object orientation and perception

We are better at identifying objects in orientations we evolved to see most often (horizontal and vertical).

Late Selection Model (MacKay)

Attention occurs after stimuli are fully processed for meaning; which message is selected depends on meaning, not physical characteristics.

Processing capacity

how much info can be processed; limit of processable information

Perceptual complexity

task difficulty

Limits on attention depend on:

Processing capacity

Perceptual complexity

High perceptual load task

Uses much of one's processing capacity (e.g., Stroop task).

Stroop Effect

Shows difficulty of ignoring highly practiced, task-irrelevant stimuli (e.g., reading words instead of naming ink colors).

Why is Stroop task difficult?

Reading words is automatic and practiced, especially when word meaning conflicts with ink color.

Inattentional blindness

reduced ability to notice changes if we are attending something else

Change blindness

Difficulty detecting changes in complex scenes, even when obvious (e.g., continuity errors in movies).

Attentional blink

Brief period after attending to one stimulus during which new stimuli may be missed; shown in RSVP experiments.

Binding problem

Brain must combine features (color, shape, motion, orientation) coded in different regions into a unified perception of objects.

Distributed representation

Different brain areas code different object features (e.g., MT for motion, V4 for color), requiring integration.

Feature Integration Theory (Treisman)

the visual system processes information in a two-step process: Preattention stage and focused attention stage

Illusory conjunctions

Incorrectly combining features (e.g., seeing a red triangle when shape and color belonged to different objects); occurs when attention is not fully engaged.

Preattentive Stage

all information about shape, orientation, color, curvature, etc. is taken in from sensory cues. Features or unbound, and errors can occur. Features can also be incorrectly conjoined with other features

Focused attention stage

To form a unified perception of an object, focused attention must be directed to it, serially (one object at a time), to integrate these basic features into a complete, coherent whole.

Brain regions in feature binding

Areas like MT and V4 send info forward to frontal regions for conscious processing which is slow and effortful.

Top down attention

consciously controlled, slow, controlled by the prefrontal cortex

Bottom up attention

automatic, fast, controlled by the amygdala