Attention: what is it?

why is attention important?

• negative outcomes when it fails

• applied contexts

• clinical contexts

why is it assumed that attention is associated with some kind of limitation?

we can’t look at, listen to, feel and think about everything at the same time

• limited capacity resource/processing ‘bottleneck’

what are the different types of attention?

• selective

• sustained

• divided

• attention to different sensory modalities

describe selective attention

focusing attention on certain info while ignoring other info

describe sustained attention

maintained focused attention or ‘vigilance’

describe divided attention

multi-tasking

how does attention relate to education?

attention at age 4 was able to predict academic success at age 17

how can attention be studied?

eye movements (visual attention)

why is studying visual attention through eye movements not always accurate?

people don’t always look at what attend (covert attention)

how can covert spatial attention be studied?

reaction time experiments (works under the assumption that attention takes time to move around)

what are some types of reaction time experiments?

• spatial cuing

• visual search

• stroop task

• flanker task

• singleton attentional capture task

describe spatial cuing tasks

• involves the participant being presented with either a valid or invalid cue that directs their attention somewhere (valid cues improves reaction time; invalid cue slows down reaction time)

• works the both endogenous cues and exogenous cues

what is an endogenous cue?

what is an exogenous cue?

describe a visual search task

• if the target ‘stands out’, increasing the no. of non-targets doesn’t affect reaction time

• but if the target is a conjunction, reaction time increases with the no. of non-targets

• suggests that a serial search is required

describe distractor effects

• we assume attention has been distracted by a stimulus if it slows us down when it is irrelevant

• responses are typically slower when distractors are incongruent (compared to congruent or neutral)

• suggest even spatially separated distractors cannot be ignored

what is attentional capture?

we assume that attention has been ‘captured’ by a stimulus if it slows us down when irrelevant or speeds up responses when it is the target

how are self-report measures used to measure attention?

tests effects of attention on awareness (e.g. change blindness, subjective phenomena such as mind-wandering)