Chapter 4: Attention (Lecture Material)

Physical regularities

physical properties that occur frequently in the environment

Oblique effect

horizontal and vertical lines occur more frequently in our environment, making them easier to perceive

Light from above assumption

light comes from above more frequently

Semantic regularities

characteristics that occur frequently in a particular environment

Scene schema

knowledge of what a given scene typically contains

Bayesian inference

Our estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by the prior probability and the likelihood of the outcome

Prior probability

internal belief about the probability of an outcome

likelihood

the extent to which the evidence is consistent with the outcome

Double dissociation

damage to brain region X affects task A, but not B; whereas damage to brain region Y affects task B but not A

Action pathway

landmark discrimination

Perception pathway

object discrimination

Mirror Neurons

neurons that respond in the same way when performing an action as when watching that action being performed

Selective Attention

attending to one thing while ignoring others

Divided Attention

paying attention to more than one thing at a time

overt attention

shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes

covert attention

shifting attention without moving the eyes

Dichotic listening task:

two different auditory messages in each ear; repeat the message in one ear (attended) while hearing a message in the other ear (unattended)

Broadbent's filter model

Information is filtered out early based on physical properties, early selection "bottleneck" model

Cocktail party effect

the ability to focus on one (attended) conversation where there are lots of other (unattended) conversations

Treisman's attenuation model

information is first attenuated based on physical properties and then filtered out based on meaning

Attenuator

assigns different strengths to information based on physical characteristics (pitch), language (syllables, words), and meaning

Dictionary unit

determines the threshold needed to detect information based on word frequency or importance

Intermediate selection models

unattended information is "filtered" out early and late in processing

Late selection models

unattended information is "filtered" out late in processing

McKay's late stage model

information is filtered out after being analyzed for meaning

Processing capacity

how much information a person can handle at any given moment

Load

amount of information to process, which is realted to the difficulty of a given task

Low-load (easy)

tasks use less processing capacity, lots of remaining processing capacity

High-load (difficult)

tasks use more processing capacity, minimal remaining processing capacity

Load theory of attention

the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on the load of the task

Spotlight theory of attention:

attention is like a movable "spotlight" that focuses on targets in a serial manner

Stimulus salience

physical properties of a stimulus (color, movement, volume)

Precuing method

present a cue to direct attention to a target without moving the eyes

Same-object advantage

directing attention enhances performance to other parts of the same object

Mind wandering

internal thoughts that drift from the task at hand

Inattention Blindness

visual stimuli that are not attended to are not perceived

Change Blindness

difficulty detecting changes in scenes

Binding

the process by which features are combined to create our perception of a coherent object

Feature Integration Theory

proposes that features are first analyzed (pre-attentive stage) and then combined (focused attention stage)

Preattentive stage

automatically separates objects into their features without effort or attention

Focused attention stage

features are recombined in a way that is guided by attention

Single Feature Search task

search an array for a target that differs by a single feature, "pop out", effortless, automatic, little to no variance

Conjunction search task

search an array for a target that differs by two or more features, difficult, attention-demanding, can no longer rely on pop out