0010 Attention Gaps (2/2)

What is divided attention, and when does it usually fail?

Attending to more than one task at once; it usually fails unless both tasks are highly practiced or one is automatic

What is automatic processing?

Fast, effortless, parallel processing that requires little attention — e.g., reading familiar words

What is controlled processing?

Slow, effortful, serial processing that demands attention — e.g., learning a new skill

How did Schneider & Shiffrin (1977) distinguish automatic from controlled search?

In consistent-mapping conditions (targets always targets), search became automatic and unaffected by load; in varied-mapping conditions, search stayed slow and effortful

What happens to attention with extensive practice on a task?

Controlled processing becomes increasingly automatic — it gets faster, less effortful, and less vulnerable to interference

What is the flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974)?

A task measuring selective attention: respond to a central target while ignoring flanking distractors; incongruent flankers slow responses

What does the flanker compatibility effect show?

That unattended stimuli are processed to the level of response activation — incompatible flankers prime the wrong response

What is negative priming?

Slower responding to a stimulus that was previously ignored — the ignored item's representation was inhibited

What is inhibition of return (Posner & Cohen, 1984)?

A bias against returning attention to a recently attended location — encouraging efficient visual search of new locations

What is visual search, and what is the typical set-size effect?

Looking for a target among distractors; response time usually increases with more distractors — unless the target pops out

What is feature search vs. conjunction search (Treisman & Gelade, 1980)?

Feature search (target differs by one salient feature) is fast and parallel; conjunction search (target defined by a combination of features) is slow and serial

What is guided search (Wolfe, 1994)?

A model in which bottom-up salience and top-down goals jointly guide attention to likely target locations

What brain network supports endogenous attention?

The dorsal frontoparietal network — including the frontal eye fields and intraparietal sulcus

What brain network supports exogenous attention?

The ventral frontoparietal network — including the temporoparietal junction, which acts as a circuit breaker for unexpected stimuli

What is hemispatial neglect, and which hemisphere lesion usually causes it?

Ignoring one side of space (usually the left), most often after right parietal lobe damage

How do patients with neglect perform on line bisection and copying tasks?

They bisect lines off-center toward the right and copy only the right side of drawings

What is Balint's syndrome, and what are its three symptoms?

A disorder of spatial attention from bilateral parietal damage: simultanagnosia (seeing only one object at a time), optic ataxia (misreaching), and oculomotor apraxia (inability to voluntarily move the eyes)