Cog Psych 3203 Exam 2

Selective attention

focus on one input or one task while irgnoring other stimuli or tasks

dichotic listening

different messages to each ear

dichotic listening: attentded channel, shadowing

listen to this one, you will repeat everything they say

dichotic listening: unattended channel

ignore this one

attentional bottleneck

point at which information gets filtered out,

broadbents filter model

everything goes to sensory buffer, then filtered based onf physical characteristics

early-selection hypothesis

information gets put into sensory input and very early on before there’s any type of analysis, block unattended channel from left ear don’t pay attention

• select important information early on before anything gets processed for meaning

late-selection hypothesis (late bottleneck)

all input receives analysis but only the attended input reaches consciousness or is remembered

evidence from dichotic listening task for early bottleneck

people don’t remember words from unshadowed ear

don’t notice if speech is played backwards or if language changes

monkey business illusion, what was different

the player on the black team left and the curtain changed color

inattentional blindness (early selection too early)

when a distracted person cannot find something in the refrigerator even if it is directly in front of the eyes

art of misdirection ted talk

gave participant a poker chip, takes poker chip and puts it on his shoulder without him noticing because he was distracted by shaking his hand

changed what he was wearing without anyone noticing

relies on expectation, used to minor movements in your pocket and don’t attend to them so you are blind when someone slides it out of your pocket

cocktail party effect (evidence for the late-selection hypothesis)

unattended channel can be noticed

• participants own name

• words of high personal significance

indirect measures of unattended channel: phase 1

trained people to associate shock with city names, whenever they heard a city name they would have a galvanic skin response meaning their skin would start to sweat and they were nervous they would be shocked

indirect measures of unattended channel: phase 2

dichotic listening: they shadow an irrevelant message from one ear. the other ear gets words and occasional city names…do they show GSR to the three city names, and even to new city names?

conclusion: most stimuli are evaluated for their semantic content (I.e., late) (think about the meaning of each word, like how a new city still had a GSR)

treisman’s attentuation model

turn down the volume of everything else in the room so you can focus on one source

can still detect salient stimuli from attenuated sources (name)

lower threshold for detection of very familiar stimuli-regular from feature net models

accounts for semantic analysis

does not account for capacity limitations but does for structural limitations

working memory

temporary memory storages in which information is held while it is currently being worked on

limited capacity/resource

bottleneck occurs whenever we run out of mental capacity

miller’s magic number

7 ± 2 units of information you can hold

working memory: central executive

the boss, the cordinator

attentional controller/schedule

coordinates the activities in other “assistant components” (I.e., articulatory rehearsal loop, visual-spatial sketchpad)

capacity is limited, will decrease fxn based on storage

working memory assistants

articulatory rehearsal loop

visual-spatial sketchpad

individual differences in WMC predict many cognitive abilities

• language comprehension

• multi-tasking ability

• efficiency of transfer into LTM

• correlated with IQ

working memory figures out what to transfer to?

long term memory and in part of that process you will grab stuff from LTM and put it into working memory so you can see how things relate to new information, and structure it in a meaningful way and put back into LTM

span test

used to determine the holding capacity of working memory, what’s the longest list of items that someone can remember

WMC is not observable but this is, going back to transcendental method where we are using something we can observe to correlate it to something unobservable

opeation span

measure of working memory capacity

• decide whether equation is true or false

• then remember word

• number of words remembered is the operation span

tends to be a better measure of WMC because it captures the “working part” basic span is better for the old idea of a short-term store (where we store info temporarily)

combine WMC with the cocktail party effect: prediction regarding percentage of high and low spanners that will notice their name on the unattended channel?

high spanners

• have more mental resources

• better control their attention

people with high WMC notice their name less

low spanners get overwhelmed very quickly and the central executive breaks down and doesn’t inhibit distractors well

selection depends on mental resources:

complex stimuli and easy stimuli

complex stimuli inolve more effort, resulting in early selection

easy stimuli involve less effort, resulting inlate selection

priming as a type of selective attention

attended channel has lower-evidence threshold, leading to easier recognition

• your name is experienced frequently/recently and is primed even when unattended (cocktail party phenomenon)

• treisman’s attenutation model: even if central executive says to dial back unattended channel, activation level is already so high for your name you still make it over the hump

Posner and snyder

• stimulus-based priming: does not involve attention/capacity/resources

  • expectation-based priming: does involve attention/capacity/resources

for a study on whether somehting is stimulus-based priming or expectation-based priming is…

reaction time

posner and snyder low validity condition

• primed condition was faster than the neutral (repetition priming, the receptors were warmed up but expectation was not used)

• misled same as neutral

all stimulus based, warming up the “wrong” detecetor does not take activation away from the correct one

posner and snyder high validity condition

• primed condition much faster than nuetral

• misled slower than neutral

• expectation is limited in capacity; the wrong expectation intereferes/slows with correct decision

stimulus based priming does not require

capacity/resourcese

expectation based priming involves

committing capacity

example of expectation based priming

spatial attention: driver, they came out of nowhere, refs looking at something else

attention I slike a….

spotlight that enhances in one area and inhibits everything else (partly right but not completely)

instead of spotlit and space, we

we attend to objects rather than space

object selection face/house

view semitransparent face superimposed over a hosue, with both stimuli moving

subjects can attend to the house or face

unilateral neglect patients

draw this sunflower and they only draw the right hat

healthy participants also show a mix of spatial and object-based attention

focuse on new object: faster reaction time

object based!

low-WMC participants allocated attention as a spotlight, whereas those with high WMC showed a more flexible allocation

high WMC showed a “donut” of attention

divided attention SPECIALIZED COGNITIVE RESOURCES

allows us to process different information sources and successfully carry out multiple tasks at the same time

• verbal and spatial tasks can sometimes be performed simultaneously because each draws upon different resources

  • (working memory assistants)

  • visual-spatial sketchpad and articulatory rehersal loop

example of divided attention using working memory assistants

driving (spatial) and answering simple questions (when will you be home) can be shared more readily than driving and giving someone directions (which is a spatial task)

• can respond to auditory commands and imagine a cognitive map at the same time, but difficult to simultanesouly imagine a cognitive map and solve a spatial problem

task-general cognitive resources

response selector: required for selecting and initiating responses, both physical and mental

• central executive

• only one task can use them at a time

• ex: deciding what key to press, deciding how to avoid car that just pulled into your lane

special things about task-general cognitive resources

can’t be constantly active, need recharge time

RSVP task

rapid serial visual presentation

• attentional blink

• push the spacebar when you see a T after seeing an S

• how long do you wait until you detect the T was the purpose of the study

• you see the S and its like your eyes are closed, its like a blink and while ur eyes are closed youre unable to detect the T because of how fast the T appears

  • if T comes immediately after it seems like our eyes are still open

  • first stimulus releases NE, enhances focuse for 100ms then has inhibitory effect

repition blindness

if a stimulus repeats in too close proximity of first stimuli, you might not detect it the second time

• we try to impose episodic context on each item, because the stimuli are so close to each other they get clumped into the same episodic context

  • think of it like taking a bunch of pictures, if things happen too fast you get motion blur

psychological refractory period

• shaded stages cannot overlap

• ex: braken when you see a car I front of you and tell someone what direction to turn

• you’re not able to make a decision on the second task until you finish the first task

• shorter stim onset asynchony (SOA) the more slack is needed

• structural/processing bottleneck

• we can only allocate to one task at a time

task general cognitive resources

• response selector: can only work on one task at a time but can work on many different types

• central executive: required to set goals and priorities, choose strategies, and direct the fxn of other cognitive processes

  • limited by its capacity

basically all mental activities require

working memory

central executive

works to keep the desitred doal in mind

serves to inhibit automatic responses

• if overloaded, might forget to swtich tasks or inhibit something you whouldn’t say

multi-tasking: limited attentional resources

• bottlenecks (I.e., early/late selection)

• resource competition: doing two spatial tasks at once will compete with each other (from visual-spatial sketchpad)

multitasking is/is not possible

has big decrements to performance

lake wobgeon effect

the tendency for people to think they are better than average but if everybody thinks they are better than average, they are actually not

ex: I can drive while usingthe cell phone BUT other people are crazy on their cell phones

found that those who claim to multitask more are actually worse at it

maybe due to inattentional blindness

dual tasks: OSPAN and driving simulator

OSPAN (is equation true/false, remember word)

• OSPAN - verbal on a handsfree device

• driving - following pace car, maintain following distance and synchronize braking

• Dual task takes a lot longer for brake reaction time and following distance increases so they have more time, variability is much higher

supertaskers

have no decrease in performance when doing dual tasks vs single tasks

are supertaskers because of WMC?

no, single tasks have the same WMC as control, but dual tasks are more effective for supertaskers, there is a neural basis

PFC (frontal polar)

anterior cingulate cortex

PFC: goal maintenance

ACC: detects errors that conflict with task goals

mental juggling 2 goals

Supertaskers brain activity in an fMRI during dual n-back task

PFC: super taskers have relatively same amount of activityy, not working as hard compared to control which increases a lot

ACC: supertaskers have less activation

attentional tunneling w/immersive displays

similar to inattentional blindness

so focused with one thing you block out other information

issue of attending to objects not space

people with heads up displays have more runway incursions than heads down (typical speedometer), immersed in display and fail to sample outside world

overconfidence effect

practiced skills

require less executive control/attention

• as the ability becomes more automatic, executive control and the response selector are needed less and less

complex tasks

broken into parts, with practice some parts can go from being controlled (requiring capacity) to being automatic (requiring no capacity)

controlled tasks

novel and require flexibility in one’s approach

require attention and cannot be carried out if the person is busy with another task

automatic tasks

well practiced and do not require flexibility

require little or no attention and can be carried out even if the person is also busy with another task

downside of automaticity

seen in tasks that require the participant to override an automatic response

stroop task

illustrates the high automaticity of reading

someone with high WMC is easily able to ignore everything else, you could just look at middle letter (similar to cocktail party effect, good at ignoring things you don’t need)

relearning can be very hard, if you learn somethig incorrectly (I.e., form is bad or timing is off in piano) it can be very hard to stop and try to relearn

new information makes heavy use of

working memory

• development of automaticity involves a reduction in brain activity

summary of divided attention and practice

• tasks require resources/capacity, and you cannot use more than you have

• some resources are task specific and others are task general

  • task specific: if two tasks require the same there will be intereference

  • tasks general: usually require things like central executive that can do multiple things at once but things like response selector can only do one thing at a time unless you have automatic background

• if two tasks make demands upon the same resources, the result will be interference

• practice can increase the automaticity of some tasks, which results in a need for fewer cognitive resources

change blindness supplemental video

inattentional blindness: failure to notice something thats fully obvious in front of you when your attention is on something else

change blindness: failure to notice changes because the brain is trying to make sense of the scene

what was different in the change blindness video

the man going to telephone, two different guys

encoding

create memory traces or pathways corresponding to an event so it can be retreived at a later time after some type of cue

storage

maintenance of memory traces stored during encoding

retrieval

accessing the memory traces

if we see things fail, we usually focus on the

encoding and retrieval stages

can we encode everything?

no, we have limited cognitive capacity

• cell phone and driving

• eyewitness IDs

Just didn’t catch your attention

weapon focus

encode the wrong information because people think they are taking in the scene but all of their attention is on the weapon

almost blind to everything else going on so you aren’t encoding it in memory

what happens when we don’t encode everything?

we use top-down processing to fill in stuff

ex: stereotypes, expectations, prior knowledge, etc.

typically filled in with correct info but not always

what happens to memory over time

it weakens and distorts

• we don’t truly forget something completely once its in LTM, but it can weaken/distort

retrieval is “what”- dependent

cue-dependent

• all memory is related to cues!!!

• ex: dog as the cue for hot

• say the word hot, think of dog

• see someone out of context, hard to retrieve their name

cognitive interview

witness asked to mentally revisit the to-be-remembered event to increase the feature overlap between initial witnessing and subsequent retrieval contexts

structures of memory: modal model

sensory memory (iconic or echoic), STM, LTM

control processes

move info around between diff parts of the modal model (affect encoding - storage and retrieval) in LTM

sensory memory

iconic or echoic

• input held in raw sensory

Iconic: images, symbols

echoic: hearing

STM

holds the info currently in use, dynamic version of it

LTM

all of the info one can remember

working memory

dynamic form of short-term memory

• involving storage (I.e., the structure) and processing of information

• working memory is a more recent term for STM, emphasizing its function. it is dynamic because it is adaptive and does more than simply store info…will modify information

• eg: heres a list of letters and tell me which one are vowels..go through list and say yes or no, you are working on it and onl

• store info and work on it

pic of modal model

serial position

the position of an item in the presentation list, whats the probability of it being recalled

focus is when we said it

free-recall procedure

repeat back as many words as you can in any order

primacy effect

better memory for first few items in list, better encoding in LTM

have the most rehearsal and are most likely to be transferred from working to LTM

recency effect

better memory of the last few items

list few items are not displaced by future items

retrieved from working memory

primacy comes from where

recency comes from where

primacy: LTM because you rehearsed it enough

recency: working

what eliminates recency effect

30 seconds of FILLED delay,

unfilled delay does not change it

what aids primacy effect

slow presentation, able to rehearse more on the first few items and encode in LTM better

recency unchanged, you can still dump from wm

primacy is associated with what part of the brain

hippocampus

recency is associated with what part of the brain

perirhinal cortex

modal model basic info

most common and basic setup for how memory actually works and how we process information

setup of modal model

• info comes in from the environment

• goes into sensory memory which takes a quick snapshot of the scene, fades quickly and is either attended or unattended channel

• after sensory memory, goes to STM which has helpers (I.e., central executive, visual-spatial sketchpad and articulatory rehearsal loop) the more you rehearse stuff the more likely you are to pass information to LTM

sperling effect

• wanted to see if there was a difference between STM/working memory and sensory memory

• used accuracy for briefly flashed stimuli

• either attend or not attend to a set of characters

what happens when you increase set size in sperling effect

you remember more, implies sensory memory is bigger than we thought

what happens when we add delay b/w seeing chart and prompting which letter to identify

brings down performance

duration is less than a ??? but it has a high????

duration is less than a second but it has a high capacity