University of Waterloo PSYCH 207 - Chapter 4 (Attention)

/ selective attention . . . what are the two stages of this? What is a key aspect of this?

the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus/ task by shutting down other competing tasks

Two aspects:

1. early selection (basic physical or auditory characteristics)

2. Late selection (Also meaning)

KEY: LIMITS

What is an automatic attention task?

A task that someone is so familiar with, it frees up their selective attention to do something else silly and wacky with their time like mario kart

What is divided attention?

when doing more than one thing your brain quickly switches between things (similar to multitasking)

spatial attention

Our attention processing helps us to recognize specific objects in an environment

dichotic listening task (What about the unattended to message are people able to report?)

A task in which a person hears two or more different, specially recorded messages over different earphones and is asked to attend to one of them by repeating it

KEY: They don't have enough mental resources to recall the non repeated message

KEEEY: The participants could however report if the voice was a man or a woman, and if it was speech or sound, but NOT what language it was in

filter theory of attention

Views attention as a bottleneck through which info passes, enables us to pay attention to more important stimuli and ignore others (especially ignoring the MEANING)

SUPER KEY: Selects information for later processing (KEEEY: BEFORE the meaning of the message is identified . . . social dynamics?)

Unattended-to information can pass through the filter if:

It is short and repeated a lot (doesn't require that much processing power)

The filter theory of attention has which caveat(s)

If you hear your name, you immediately start paying attention to the shadow information (KEY: Cocktail party effect)

KEY: Your filter knows which information is important enough to let pass through

SUPER DUPER KEY: Some people don't experience this name thing, meaning that processing things through your filter (sometimes called shadowing) doesn't take up 100% of your attention, there are momentary lapses (this leads to story flow point)

- People can have their attention on the main task hindered by a distraction (words going backwards) in unattended to task

/ HA! The lapses thing from the caveat of filter theory of attention might not be true because (/ is more true??). . .

When people are trying to pay attention to a story being told in one head phone, and then the story is switched to the other one, they continue to pay attention to that same story

KEY: Selection is at least partially based on the meaning of a message, something INCONSISTENT with filter theory

When there is some kind of disruption in the 'unattended' stimuli . . .

It disrupts the ability of the participants to 'shadow' (properly process the goal information)

/ Participants who detect their name in the unattended message are those who . . . What are they less able to do?

have a lower working-memory span (RAM), what a bunch of ding dongs!

SUPER KEY: A lower working-memory capacity means less ability to actively block the unattended message

/ What is attenuation theory? What are the three kinds of analysis that make this up?

Treisman's theory of attention which proposed that we "turn down" (but not completely block out . . . "ATTENUATE") some sensory ('unattended to') signals on the basis of their physical characteristics . . . but ALL information is permitted

1. Message's physical properties, such as pitch or loudness

2. Linguistic (syllables and words . . . one's name)

3. Semantic (processing the meaning) EFFORTFUL, only happens when NECESSARY

KEY: Some words (your name, FIRE!) require little mental processing to pick up, because they are so engrained

KEY: What you actually pay attention to is finalized at the 'output' stage (where some things are turned up, some things are turned down)

/ What does 'priming' mean, which theory is it related to?

Related to attenuation theory

We auto complete the sentence "the dog chased the ______"

KEY: We pick this up because it is very low effort

According to the attenuation theory people only process. . .

KEY: "people only process as much as is necessary to separate the attended from the unattended message"

However, the unattended message here is still considered a large leap from the claim of filter theory, which is that unattended to information is just thrown out

late selection theory

a theory of attention proposed by Deutsch and Deutsch in which no information about the meaning of an unattended message gets through the filter to be retained for future use (as opposed to attenuation theory which does allow some meaning information)

KEY: We do not choose to analyze things, all things are analyzes subconsciously at a surface level

SUPER KEY: The bottle neck happens after meaning has been subconsciously scrapped

What is the case against late-selection theory?

- It doesn't seem likely that the meaning of ALL stimuli is processed equally

- Could be explained by attentional lapses

- Could be explained by extreme stimuli

/ What is Daniel Kahneman's ________ model of attention? What is a key about the different kinds of processing?

"Capacity"

Attention is a set of cognitive processes for categorizing and recognizing stimuli . . . the more complex the stimulus, the harder the processing, and therefore the more attentional resources required.

KEY: There is a total budget of metal resources that can be spent on various things, and this budget varies BASED ON THE overall level of arousal, or state of alertness.

The model predicts that we pay more attention to things we are in the mood for/ are interested in

/ In Daniel Kahneman's model of attention, what can only go so far?

When the ability to perceive a stimulus depends on the quality of a stimulus rather than the amount of concentration required

KEY: Trying to hear a loud sound in a noisy room

MEGA KEY: Effortful attention can only go so far

/ What is the Stroop effect? What does this demonstrate? (What is a key alternative piece of information here to remember?)

the difficulty of naming the colors in which words are written instead of reading the words themselves

KEY: Adults have so much practice reading that it requires basically 0 effort (KEY this is called "automatic") -> we can't help this, so it interferes with trying to name the color -> this view has been challenge because you are able to alter this 'automic' reading in a way where it looks like reading 'depends' on attention.

This demonstrates a NEGATIVE aspect of automatic processing . . . ya know too much!

/ What are the three criteria for 'automatic processing'?

1. It must occur without intention

2. It must occur without involving conscious awareness

3. It must not interfere with other mental activity

What is an example of automatic processing?

When trying to find a specific letter amongst a group of other characters, it doesn't matter how many more numbers you add, it only matters how many letters you add (which impacts finding speed)

SUPER KEY: This means that for automatic processing, many targets of the same group can be processed in PARALLEL

What are the 3 characteristics of controlled processing? Automatic processing?

1. Operates SERIALLY

2. Requires deliberate ATTENTION

3. Capacity LIMITED

1. Operates PARALLEL

2. UNCONCIOUS, no INTERFERENCE with other activities

3. Capacity is UNLIMITED

divided attention

concentrating on more than one activity at the same time

Talk about the concept of dual task performance . . . what is the key example?

The test is one group just reading a story and one group reading while also dictating the story. They perform about the same as far as comprehension, even though one group has their attention divided

Three explanations:

1. This effect is not due to some kind of switching back and forth on behalf of the dictators, because there is no lag between the two, and they cross balanced the design so this behavior

2. Could be that one of the tasks is being performed 'automatically' but neither of them fit the criteria for this

3. (real one) It takes time and practice, but people are able to combine tasks together to the point where they take much less attention (practice is the only thing that effects this)

/ Psychological refractory period? What is the ____________________ due to?

a delay period during which a person seems to put planned action "on hold" while executing a previously initiated action

People believe this bottle neck is due to:

- When given two tasks in a row, attention on the second task is halted by attention to the first task still being processed (second task has to wait)

- ALTERNATE: Task load between two things is SHARED, so when presented with something right after, first suffers

/ attention hypothesis of automatization? What is evidence for this?

Attention needed during the PRACTICE phase of a task DETERMINES what gets learned during practice.

KEY: Most current

Evidence: Participants are better at learning words that have been consistently paired with some other meaningless word (rather than repeated paired with different random words), because it takes less energy/time to process these non-target words

/ Why is talking on the cell phone while driving so dangerous compared to ____________? What is the spesific contrast of using words we are looking for here

It is dangerous compared to talking to someone in the car because the person in the car can tell when you'll require extra focus.

KEY: Generating words is more dangerous than shadowing them

visual search . . . what the duelling elements of this?

search for a target in a display containing distracting elements

- Under conditions where an item differs from a background in one critical feature, all items in the group could be processed in parallel (very quickly) . . . KEY: when you are doing the opposite of this: a 'conjunction search', you are processing more than one piece of information (which are the targets with a certain feature I want, and also which specific one do I want) . . . this is done SERIALLY

/ Spatial cue . . . what are some elements of this? what does your brain have to PAY for?

A cue that directs attention to a particular area in space

- There is a reaction cost to not having your attention in the right place when a stimulus appears

/ feature integration theory . . . what is required to detect what?

the idea that focused attention is not required to detect the individual features that comprise a stimulus, but is required to bind those individual features together

KEY: two distinct stages:

1. Pre-attentive - analyzing shape and color

2. attentive - GLUING together communal aspects of the shape shared with the background with the unique, desirable aspects (takes way more time)

SUPER KEY: When mentally taxed, people mistakenly report only on conjuncted feature of a target item (really a red X, report it is a blue X or a red T)

inattentional blindness . . . example?

The phenomenon of not perceiving a stimulus that might be literally right in front of you, unless you are paying attention to it.

EX. Gorilla throwing basketball

How does the parietal lobe relate to attention?

Damage to the parietal lobe on one side makes patients neglect visual information on the other side

What are the three distinct mental operations needed to __________? Three aspects? What is this called?

Needed to switch attention to a different location

1. Disengaging (from what was previously attended to)

ASSOCIATED WITH Posterior parietal lobe

2. Move - ASSOCIATED WITH superior colliculus (midbrain)

3. Enhanced - ASSOCIATED WITH pulvinar, in the Thalamus

Called "Posner and Raichle's enhance operation"

/ What are Posner and Raichle's three aspects of an attentional network?

Updated version of "enhance operation"

1. "alerting network" - achieving and maintaining an alert state (frontal and parietal lobes of right hemi)

2. "Orienting network" - Selects information for sensory input (frontal and parietal lobes)

3. "Executive control network" - Resolves conflict among different responses (prefrontal cortex baby! love that shit)

/ event-related potential (ERP)

Electrical changes in the brain that correspond to the brain's response to a specific event; measured with EEG.

"While once attention was compared to a bottle neck . . . "

" . . . today people liken attention more to a pool of resources that can be allocated in a fairly flexible manner"

The most common metaphor to describe spatial attention seems to be a . . .

" . . . 'spotlight' (although some disagree on how far that metaphor extends). The idea here is that attention can vary in effectiveness, just as a spotlight, aimed at one spot, more or less lights surrounding areas, depending on SIZE and INTENSITY

KEY: if it is in the spotlight, it gets picked up

Describe the difference and similarities between filter theory, attenuation theory, and late-selection theory

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What real world phenomenon is predicted by Kahneman's capacity model of attention

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How could studies on divided attention be used in training workers who need to process a great deal of information from different sources?

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// Visual neglect . . . what is this caused by? What is it actually? What is a KEY aspect of it

AKA hemispatial neglect or unilateral neglect

- People think midline of sight is different

- Parietal lesions

- Attentional deficit rather than sensory

- One can IMPLICITLY recognize words on their bad side