Chapter 11 - Attention (unfinished)

Brain and Cognition

Attention

The mental process of concentrating effort on a stimulus or a mental event.

Executive attention

Involves being able to block out distractions and focus on a specific task.

Input attention

Getting sensory information into the cognitive system.

Why we need arousal to get sensory information into the cognitive system (input attention)?

The nervous system must be aroused to be able to interact with the environment.

Why we need alertness to get sensory information into the cognitive system (input attention)?

We need to be able to monitor the environment for relevant events.

Vigilance / sustained attention

Maintenance of attention for infrequent events over long periods of time.

Explicit processing

Involve conscious awareness that a task is being performed, and usually conscious awareness of the outcome.

Implicit processing

Processing with no necessary involvement of conscious awareness.

Word-stem completion

Orienting reflex

The reflexive redirection of attention toward the unexpected stimulus.

Attention capture

Spontaneous redirection of attention to stimuli in the world based on physical characteristics.

Habituation

A gradual reduction of the orienting response back to the baseline. (For example, getting used to a bad smell, becoming less sensitive to it)

Spotlight attention

Mental attention-focusing mechanism that prepares you to encode stimulus information, without having to move the head or eyes

Benefit / facilitation

A faster-than-baseline response resulting from useful advance information.

Cost

A response slower than baseline because of having a misleading cue.

Visual research

Research relying on artistic media to produce and represent knowledge. (For example, where is Waldo)

Feature research

Type of visual research. Is a specific feature present or not?

Conjunction search

Type of visual research. Is a combination of features present or not?

Pop-out effect

Objects ‘popping out’ of the homogenous display

Inhibition of return

Recently checked locations are mentally marked by attention as places that the search would not return to.

Controlled attention

A deliberate, voluntary allocation of effort or concentration.

Hemineglect

Disruption or decreased ability to attend to something in the (often) left field of vision.

Extinction

Selective attention

The ability to attend to one source of information while ignoring other ongoing stimuli around us.

Focused attention

Divided attention

Sharing our attentional capacity across more than one source of information while ignoring other ongoing stimuli.

Inattentional blindness

Filtering / selecting

The mental process of eliminating distractions.

Dual task procedure

Two tasks are presented such that one task captures attention as completely as possible. Because attentional resources are consumed by the primary task, there are few if any resources left over for attention to the other tasks.

Shadowing task

To repeat the message out loud as soon as it was heard.

Donald Broadbent

Psychologist that proposed the early selection theory of attention.

Early selection theory

Attention affects an early processing level, based on physical features like color, form, pitch, etc. (Broadbent)

Late selection theory

Attention affects a late processing level, after a preattentive stage on the basis of meaning (a semantic level, Treisman)

Anne Treisman

British cognitive psychologist. Proposed that shadowing may switch on the basis of content.

Inhibition

Actively suppressing mental representations of salient but irrelevant information so that the information’s activation level is reduced, perhaps below the baseline level.

Negative priming

Responses to a target that was distractor on a previous trial are delayed as compared to control trials.

Psychological refractory period / attentional blink

A brief slow down in processing due to having processed another very recent event.

Automaticity

With little or no necessary conscious involvement.

Stroop effect

Priming conscious processing

Action slips

Unintended, often automatic actions that are inappropriate for the current situation. (For example, pressing a button to open a door that is already opened).

Mind wandering

Implies a loss of attentional control. (Thoughts wandering off during a lecture)