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What was developed in the 1950s that contributed to early attention research?
Information processing model
Shows cognitive processes happen in distinct stages
Selective attention
Attending to one thing while ignoring others
Dichotic listening (selective attention)
Different messages presented in each ear
Participants are asked to focus on and repeat the message in one ear (shadowing)
once the message is over, participants are asked questions about the unattended channel
Findings of Dichotic Listening (Cherry and Moray)
Cherry (1953) - Participants can only attend to the meaning in one channel, only physical characteristic of the unattended channel are noticed
Moray (1959) - A word that is repeated 35 times to the unattended ear goes unnoticed
Cocktail party effect
People can attend to certain information in the unattended ear
Their own names
Life-threatening messages (Fire!)
Inattentional blindness
Failure to see when attention is directed elsewhere
No conscious perception without attention
Change blindness (subset of inattentional blindness)
Inability to detect changes in scenes participants are directly looking at
Early selection models
Stimuli are filtered before they are analyzed for meaning
Filter for one specific message
Determine meaning
We pick out our message early and block everything else out
Late selection models
Stimuli are not selected for final processing until after they are analyzed for meaning
Determine the meaning of all presented messages
Filter for meaning
We look at all messages, and then we determine meaning and filter out what has no meaning to us
Broadbent’s bottleneck theory (early selection models of attention)
Sensory memory: Holds all incoming information info in memory for a fraction of a second- transfers to filter
Filter: Identifies the message to be attended, dependent on physical characteristics- transfers to detector
Detector: Analysis of the content in the attended ear (meaning)- sends to short term memory
Short term memory: Holds info for 10–15 seconds, then passes to long-term memory for future access
Named as bottleneck theory because little information passes through filter
Early Selection Theory because filter eliminates unattended information early
What’s in a name? (Moray, 1959)
Participants are told to only report what they hear in the right ear, the right ear just plays letters, but the left ear plays a name. When participants are asked if they heard a name, 33% said they did.
Shows that the unattended channel can be used to gather context/meaning
Treisman’s attenuation model of selective attention (1964) (leaky filter model)
Attenuator analyzes messages on: Physical characteristics, Language, Meaning
Acts as a volume knob: Volume for unattended message is low, volume for attended message is high
Dictionary unit: Threshold (Familiar words have a low threshold, which means they can be noticed earlier. Nonfamiliar words have high thresholds, which means it is not recognizable and needs to be in attended channel to make it through)
Also an early selection theory, but some of the unattended message gets through
What is the difference in brain activation for attended vs unattended stimuli?
About 80-100 ms after stimuli have been presented
(during early sensory processing - too early for meaning computation)
McKay late selection model study (1973)
Participants listen to a sentence within the attended channel, “they were throwing stones at the bank”
In the unattended channel, they hear either “river” or “money”
Then they are asking which sentence was closer to what they heard, “they threw stones at the side of the river yesterday” or “they threw stones at the savings and loan association yesterday”
Participants chose the same sentence for which they are biased semantically at the study
Showed that: Because the meaning of the word river or money was affecting the participants judgments, the words must have been processed to the level of meaning even though it was unattended
Attentional Blink (Late selection models)
Inability to report a second target when it closely follows a first (still seeing/hearing the target but having a problem committing it to memory)
What is processing the meaning of unconscious words evidence of?
Late selection
Not processing the meaning of unconscious words is evidence for early selection.
N400 ERP compnent
Reflects semantic mismatch between a word and its context
“the man wore blue trousers and a green shirt” = no N400
“the man wore blue trousers and a green bucket” = yes N400 (because people do not typically wear buckets)
Attentional blink study
First, participants are show a word as the context word
Then they show participants a bunch of strings of random letters
There are two targets in these strings
T1: Is a string of the same number (333333)
T2: is a target word (XTHUMBX)
End of the trial they are asked if the number of T1 was odd or even and was the word of T2 related or unrelated to the context word
Attentional blink study findings
Behavioral results (priming): BIG drop in accuracy - attentional blink!!
N400 - N400 component present across lag times - word meanings were processed
Behavioral results depend on lag; electrophysiological (N400) results do not
Selective attention can happen early or late
Priming
Changing response to a stimulus because you have been previously exposed to another stimulus
Selective priming
Priming if detector has been used recently or frequently in the past
Priming from expectations
Cognitive resources needed for priming (expectation vs repetition)
Expectation priming - Cognitive effort (ex. being told to only listen in one ear and not the other)
Repetition priming - No cognitive effort, priming produced by a previous encounter with a stimulus
Posner and Snyder warning signal study (1973)
Participants are shown a “warning signal” and then are told to press a button when the signal comes up
Neutral signal followed by test stimulus
Primed signal followed by test stimulus
Misleading signal followed by test stimulus
Showed:
Low validity = Warning signal is a bad indicator of test stimulus to follow; 80% of low validity comes from the misled condition
High validity = Warning signal is a good indicator of the test stimulus to follow; 80% of high validity in primed condition
It is much harder to adapt when we have been misled
Spatial Attention
Ability to focus attention on a specific area in space
See what’s around you without moving your eyes
Spatial attention by Posner et al. (1978)
Introduced pre-cueing - Show where the stimulus is going to end up with an arrow, spotlight etc.
When the pre cued location is where the square ends up, reaction time is faster
If the pre cued location is not where the square showed up, it is slower
Showed that information-processing is faster at the location that attention is directed
Unilateral neglect syndrome
Damage to one parietal lobe, damage to the right lobe makes them completely neglect the left side, damage to left makes neglect right
Only dressing one side of the body, only doing makeup on one side of the body, only writing on one side of the paper
Divided attention
Performing multiple task simultaneously
Verbal resources (divided attention)
Involves words and word processing (ex. reading, listening to music)
Visual/spatial resources (divided attention)
Vision and calculation of space (ex. driving a car)
Which divided attention resources are hard to do together and easy to go together?
Visual and visual is hard (ex. studying and listening to music)
Visual and spatial/verbal is easy (ex. driving and listening to music
When you do something using the two same types of resources, it is harder to focus on both
Task that tap different type or resources can still interfere with each other, just not as much if they use the same resources (ex. drinking and driving)
Mental load (divided attention)
When the mental load of a task is low there are enough resources to process other information
But when the mental load of a task is high, the system is already using all of its resources. Meaning no more resources are available for processing other info (no divided attention)
Response selector (divided attention)
Selects and initiates responses
coordinates timing of mental activities
can only initiate one response at a time
can do more than one task at once, but slower and less efficient that if either was preformed on its own
Executive control (divided attention)
Task-general mental resource; sets goals, chooses task priorities, and avoids conflict among competing habits or responses
Maintains desired goal in mind
Inhibits automatic or habitual responses when they are not helpful
Working memory
A system for holding and manipulating memory temporarily
Executive control as a limited resource study (divided attention)
Working memory capacity influenced by executive control
Participants: Group 1 - High working memory, Group 2 - Low working memory
Task: move eyes toward cue (easier because it’s an automatic response to look at attention giving stimulus), move eyes away from cue (harder because of automatic response, but the executive control system should help if your goal is to preform well on this study)
Results of executive control as a limited resource study (divided attention)
In the look towards conditions people with low and high working memory are both doing well, In looking away people with low working memory are doing bad and cannot shut off automatic responses.
Telling us that working memory capacity interacts with executive control.
More complicated tasks demand more _________ _________
Cognitive resources
Practice can…
Change how much load a task takes for someone
high load → low load
Other Effects of practice (mental effort, response selector)
More practiced tasks require fewer resources
Mental effort: Practiced task establish habits, which don’t require executive control
Response selector: Practice leads to established sequences of events
Why does practice improve performance?
Most task require using multiple skills simultaneously, with practice, we can break down task and work on one element at a time
Controlled task
Tasks that require attention, usually because of their novelty or participant inexperience
Automatic task
Tasks that require little or no attention because they are well practiced (ex. typing)
Sometimes they are so well practiced they cannot be turned off (mental reflexes)
Stroop Effect
Question: Are there some processes that are so automatic that we can’t turn them off?
2 conditions:
A - Read word only (red, green, blue)
B - Reading colored words and asking to state the color of the word
Findings: Reading is automatic, highly practiced
It is very hard NOT to read the word
Reading the word causes incompatible response, leading to slower reaction time in condition B
The more cognitive load you have, the less you can _______
Process
Binding
How an object’s individual features become bound together
Location, depth, motion, color, shape all need to be bound together to make the object
Feature integration theory (binding)
Preattentive stage: All features are analyzed separately, free-floating features, things can be mixed, unconscious, automatic effortless
Focused attention stage: Features are integrated as belonging to an object (combining features)
Balint’s syndrome (feature integration) (Visual simultagnosia, Optic ataxia, Oculomotor apraxia)
Symptoms
Visual simultagnosia - Inability to focus on individual objects, or see the whole picture (not able to perceive more than one object at a time) (main symptom)
Optic ataxia - Inability to reach for something you are looking at
Oculomotor apraxia - Inability to intentionally move eyes towards an object
Patients are very rare to find
Feature search
Looking for one feature in a visual field (looking for the horizontal line in a field of vertical lines)
Conjunction search
Searching for a conjunction of 2 features in a visual field (looking for horizontal and green in a visual field)
What type of search is the type of search that Balint’s patients can do?
Feature search
Dorsal attention network
Controls attention based on top down processes
Ventral attention network
Controls attention based on bottom up processing
Executive attention network
Controls and directs attention and deals with conflicting responses
Attentional warping
More brain space is allocated to categories that are being searched for
