Cognitive Psychology (Chapter 4: ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS)

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William James

Principles of Psychology

Attention

➢    - is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts.

➢    It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.

➢    the means by which we actively process a limited amount of information from the enormous amount of information available through our senses, our stored memories, and our other cognitive processes

➢    Includes both conscious and unconscious process

CONSCIOUSNESS

includes both the feeling of awareness and the content of awareness, some of which may be under the focus of attention.

3 Purposes of Conscious Attention

➢    It helps in monitoring our interactions with the environment.

➢  It assists us in linking our past (memories) and our present (sensations) to give us a sense of continuity of experience.

➢  It helps us in controlling and planning for our future actions.

4 Main Functions of Attention

1. SIGNAL DETECTION AND VIGILANCE
2. SEARCH

3. SELECTIVE ATTENTION

4. DIVIDED  ATTENTION

SIGNAL DETECTION AND VIGILANCE

We try to detect the appearance of a particular stimulus.

SEARCH

We often engage in an active search for particular stimuli.

SELECTIVE ATTENTION

We choose to attend to some stimuli and ignore other

DIVIDED  ATTENTION

We often manage to engage in more than one task at a time, and we shift our attentional resources to allocate them prudently, as needed.

Signal Detection Example

Luggage screeners learn techniques to enable them to maximize “hits” and “correct rejections” and

Vigilance Example

For air traffic controllers, vigilance is a matter of life and death.

Search Example

These trained police dogs are actively seeking out a target, such as bombs or drugs.

Signal detection theory (SDT)

is a framework to explain how people pick out the few important stimuli when they are embedded in a wealth of irrelevant, distracting stimuli.

 

4 Possible Outcomes to Detect a Target Stimulus (Signal)

1. HITS

2.FALSE ALARMS

3.MISSES

4.CORRECT REJECTIONS

HITS

ALSO CALLED “TRUE POSITIVES”) - the lifeguard correctly identifies the presence of a target.

- There is a signal and the signal was detected.

FALSE ALARMS

ALSO CALLED “FALSE POSITIVES”) - he or she incorrectly identifies the presence of a target that is actually absent.

- There is a wrong identification of a presence of a signal that is actually not there.

MISSES

(ALSO CALLED “FALSE NEGATIVES”) -the lifeguard fails to observe the presence of a target.

- The signal was not recognized.

CORRECT REJECTIONS

(ALSO CALLED “TRUE NEGATIVES”) - the lifeguard correctly identifies the absence of a target.

- The absence of signal was identified.

Signal detection theory in the context of attention, perception, or memory:

ATTENTION, PERCEPTION, and  MEMORY

ATTENTION

- paying enough attention to perceive objects that are there.

PERCEPTION

- perceiving faint signals that may or may not be beyond your perceptual range.

MEMORY

- indicating whether you have/have not been exposed to a stimulus before.

VIGILANCE

- refers to a person’s ability to attend to a field of stimulation over a prolonged period, during which the person seeks to detect the appearance of a particular target stimulus of interest.

amygdala

plays a pivotal role in the recognition of emotional stimuli.

Actively Looking

       - involves actively and often skillfully seeking out a target.

Distracters

– non-target stimuli that divert our attention away from the target stimulus.

Display Size

       - the number of items in a given visual array.

- does not refer to the size of the items or even the size of the field on which the array is displayed.

display-size effect

is the degree to which the number of items in a display hinders (slows down) the search process.

Display panels Size

a. Compare and

b. the relative display performing the task.

Feature search

       - we simply scan the environment for a feature.

3 theories that try to explain the search processes

1. Feature Integration Theory

2. Similarity Theory

3. Guided Search Theory

Feature Integration Theory

- For each possible feature of a stimulus, each of us has a mental map for representing the given feature across the visual field.

Similarity Theory

- targets that are highly similar to distracters are relatively hard to detect. Targets that are highly disparate from distracters are relatively easy to detect.

Guided Search Theory

- all searches, whether feature searches or conjunction searches, involve two consecutive stages.

➢    The activation process of the parallel initial stage helps to guide the evaluation and selection process of the serial second stage of the search.

2 Stages of GST

Parallel stage

Subsequent serial stage

Parallel stage

➢    the individual simultaneously activates a mental representation of all the potential targets.

Subsequent serial stage

the individual sequentially evaluates each of the activated elements, according to the degree of activation. Then, the person chooses the true targets from the activated elements.

COCKTAIL PARTY PROBLEM

       – the process of tracking one conversation in the face of the distraction of other conversations.

3 factors to selectively attend only to the message of the target speaker:

1.         Distinctive sensory characteristics of the target’s speech.

2.        Sound intensity (loudness)

3.        Location of the sound source

4 THEORIES OF SELECTIVE ATTENTION

1. BROADBENT’S MODEL

2. Selective Filter Model

3. Attenuation Model

4. Late Filter Model

BROADBENT’S MODEL

- sensory information sometimes may be noticed by an unattended ear if it does not have to be processed elaborately.

- information requiring higher perceptual processes is not noticed if not attended to.

Selective Filter Model

- blocks out most information at the sensory level .

- But some personally important messages are so powerful that they burst through the filtering mechanism.

Attenuation Model

- Instead of blocking stimuli out, the filter merely weakens (attenuates) the strength of stimuli other than the target stimulus.

- When the stimuli reach us, we analyze them at a low level for target properties like loudness and pitch.

- We perceptually analyze the meaning of the stimuli and their relevance to us, so that even a message from the unattended ear that is supposedly irrelevant can come into consciousness and influence our subsequent actions if it has some meaning for us.

Late Filter Model

- Stimuli are filtered out only after they have been analyzed for both their physical properties and their meaning.

- This later filtering would allow people to recognize information entering the unattended ear.

Divided Attention

- Anytime you are engaged in two or more tasks at the same time, your attention is divided between those tasks.

3 Factors That Influence Our Ability to Pay Attention

1. ANXIETY

2. AROUSAL

3. SKILLS

ANXIETY

Being anxious, either by nature (trait-based anxiety) or by situation (state- based anxiety), places constraints on attention.

AROUSAL

- Your overall state of arousal affects attention as well.

- You may be tired, drowsy, or drugged, which may limit attention.

- Being excited sometimes enhances attention.

TASK DIFFICULTY

➢  If you are working on a task that is very difficult or novel for you, you’ll need more attentional resources than when you work on an easy or highly familiar task.

SKILLS

- The more practiced and skilled you are in performing a task, the more your attention is enhanced.

THE 3 SUBFUNCTIONS OF ATTENTION

alerting, orienting, and executive attention.

ALERTING

- being prepared to attend to some incoming event and maintaining this attention.

ORIENTING

-  selection of stimuli to attend to.

EXECUTIVE ATTENTION

  – includes processes for monitoring and resolving conflicts that arise among internal processes.

-      These processes include thoughts, feelings, and responses.

(PASS)

Planning, Attention, and Simultaneous Successive Process Model of Human Cognition

3 DISTINCT PROCESSING UNITS

1. AROUSAL AND ATTENTION

2. INSPECTION TIME

3. REACTION TIME

AROUSAL AND ATTENTION

- is primarily attributed to the brainstem, diencephalon, and medial cortical regions of the brain.

- arousal is an essential antecedent to selective and divided attention.

-simultaneous and successive processing

- planning

INSPECTION TIME

- the amount of time it takes you to inspect items and make a decision about them.

REACTION TIME

- a measure of the quickness with which an organism responds to some sort of stimulus.

       Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

-   have difficulties in focusing their attention in ways that enable them to adapt in optimal ways to their environment

-    first described by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman in 1845

-   children with ADHD exhibit slower and more variable reaction times than their siblings who are not affected by the disorder.

3 PRIMARY SYMPTOMS

1.         inattention

2.       hyperactivity

3.       impulsiveness

3 MAIN TYPES OF ADHD

1.         hyperactive-impulsive

2.       Inattentive

3.       a combination of hyperactive- impulsive and inattentive behavior

CHANGE BLINDNESS

– an inability to detect changes in objects or scenes that are being viewed.

INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS

- a phenomenon in which people are not able to see things that are actually there.

Spatial Neglect/Hemi neglect (One Half of the World Goes Amiss)

-      It is an attentional dysfunction in which participants ignore the half of their visual field that is contralateral to (on the opposite side of) the hemisphere of the brain that has a lesion.

-         It is a result mainly of unilateral lesions in the parietal and frontal lobes, most often in the right

hemisphere

HABITUATION

- involves our becoming accustomed to a stimulus so that we gradually pay less and less attention to it.

dishabituation

• (a change in a familiar stimulus prompts us to start noticing the stimulus again. Both processes occur automatically).

SENSORY ADAPTATION

·   - lessening of attention to a stimulus that is not subject to conscious control.

-     It occurs directly in the sense organ, not in the brain.

AUTOMATIC PROCESSES

- involve no conscious control.

- For the most part, they are performed without conscious awareness.

CONTROLLED PROCESSES

- are accessible to conscious control and even require it.

-      Such processes are performed serially, for example, when you want to compute the total cost of a trip you are about to book online.

3 ATTRIBUTES CHARACTERIZE AUTOMATIC PROCESSES:

1.         FIRST - THEY ARE CONCEALED FROM CONSCIOUSNESS.

2.        SECOND - THEY ARE UNINTENTIONAL.

3.        THIRD - THEY CONSUME FEW ATTENTIONAL RESOURCES

INSTANCE THEORY

Automatization occurs because we gradually accumulate knowledge about specific responses to specific stimuli.

How conscious are we of our complex mental processes?

➢    people have quite good access to their complex mental processes

➢    people may think they know how they solve complex problems, but their thoughts are frequently erroneous.

PRECONSCIOUS PROCESSING

• information that currently is outside our conscious awareness still may be available to consciousness or at least to cognitive processes.

PRIMING

- Participants are presented with a first stimulus (the prime), followed by a break that can range from milliseconds to weeks or months. Then, the participants are presented with a second stimulus and make a judgment (e.g., are both the first and the second stimulus the same?) to see whether the presentation of the first stimulus affected the perception of the second.

The Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon

- you try to remember something that is stored in memory but that cannot readily be retrieved.