Chapter 4- Attention

attention

the ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment

selective attention

attending to one thing while ignoring others

divided attention

paying attention to more than one thing at a time

distraction

one stimulus interfering with the process of another stimulus

attentional capture

a rapid shift of attention usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement

selective attention

the ability to focus on one message and ignore all the others; we don’t attend a large fraction of the information in the environment; filter out some information and promote other for further processing

William James on attention

classic description but doesn’t capture attention’s diversity

dichotic listening

Colin Cherry (1953) conducted an experiment on ________ _________.

cocktail party effect

usually could only notice gender of unattended ear but could pick p on gender; hearing name while in a crowd (Neville Murray)

early selection model

filters message before incoming information is analyzed for meaning

sensory memory

holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second and transfers all of it into the next stage

filter

identifies attended message based on physical characteristics; only attended message is passed onto next stage

detector

processes all information to determine higher-level characteristics of the message

short-term memory

receives output of the detector; holds info for 10-15sec and may transfer to long-term memory

Treisman’s Attenuation Model

messages → attenuator → dictionary unit → memory

intermediate selection model

attended message can be separated from unattended message early in the info-processing system; but selection can also occur later

attenuator

analyzes incoming messages in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning; attended message allowed through at full strength while unattended message let through at much weaker strength

dictionary unit

contains words, each of which have a threshold for being activated; common or important ones have lower thresholds (ex: names)

late selection models

selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after information has been analyzed for meaning

MacKay (1973)

meaning of biasing word affected participant’s choice even though participants were unaware of the presentation of the biasing words

load theory of attention

involves processing capacity and perceptual load impacting attention

Sophie Foster and Lavie

task showing reaction times were longer in more difficult tasks, but that the dog picture was less of a distractor for easier tasks than hard ones

processing capacity

how much information a person can handle in any given moment

perceptual load

the difficulty of a given task

high-load (difficult) tasks

use a higher amount of processing capacity

low-load (easy) tasks

use lower amount of processing capacity

Stroop Test

name of the word interferes with the ability to name the ink color; cannot avoid paying attention to the meanings of words

overt attention

physical movements such as eye movements affecting attention and perception

saccades

rapid movements of the eyes from one place to another

fixations

short pauses on points of interest

stimulus salience

areas that stand out and capture attention (bottom-up process that depends on characteristics; color/motion/first few fixations are highly salient

scene schema

knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes; helps guide fixations from one area of a scene to another

task

eye movements determined by

Vo and Henderson

subjects looked longer at printer in kitchen than pot; attention affected by knowledge of what was usually found in scene

outcomes of attention

1. Improves our ability to respond to a location

2. Improves our ability to respond to objects

3. affects perception

4. affects psychological responding

covert attention

attention without eye movements

precueing

directing attention without moving the eyes; participants respond faster to a light at an expected location than an unexpected location even when eyes are fixed

influence

Studying covert attention allows researchers to study the mind without the _________ of eye movements.

enhance

Attention can _______ our response to objects.

divided; effect

When attention is _______ to one place or object, the enhancing _______ of that attention spreads to other places on that object.

faster; perceive

Attention not only allows us to respond ______ to objects but affects how we _______ the object.

bigger and faster

Attended objects are perceived to be ______ ___ ______ and be more richly colored with better contrast than non-attended objects.

Dalta and DeYoe

2009 experiment where attention was directed to different areas of a circular display while keeping eyes fixed on the center; authors able to predict with 100% accuracy where subjects were looking

Tolga Cukur et al

considered the question of physiological responding by determining how attention affects the way different objects are represented across the brain as a whole

divided attention

practice allows people to simultaneously do things that were difficult at first

Schneider and Shiffrin

experiment where divided attention between remembering the target and monitoring rapidly presenting stimuli; practice made it possible for participants to divide their attention to divide their attention to deal with target and test items simultaneously w/o intention and at cost of only some pf a person’s cognitive resources (better after about 600 trials)

memory set

one to four characters called target stimuli

test frames

can contain random dot patterns, a target, distractors

100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study

video recorders placed in cars; accident risk 4x higher when using a cell phone; driver was inattentive in some way in 80% of crashes and 67% of near crashes

Strayer and Johnston (2001)

simulated driving; participants on phone missed 2x as many red lights and took longer to apply brakes; same result with “hands-free”

melted wandering

thoughts that come from within a person, often unintentionally; also called daydreaming in early research

Killingsworth and Gilberths (2010)

estimated that people are mind-wandering about half the time when they are awake

inattentional blindness

not noticing something even shown in clear view, usually caused by a failure to pay attention to the object or place object is located; stimulus not attended is not perceived, even though a person might be directly looking at it

inattentional deafness

when inattention causes a person to miss an auditory stimulus

Raven and Lavie (2015)

had participants carry out a visual search task of a scene; easier to detect tone during easier visual search

visual search

had participants carry out a visual search task

change blindness

if shown two versions of a picture, differences between them aren’t immediately apparent; task to identify differences requires concentrated attention and search

Grimes

experiment showing a lot of change blindness in things such as differing size of a building, size in birds, swimsuit color, swapped heads, and rotation in a castle

binding

the process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a certain object

Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

Anne Treisman; involves object, pre-attentive stage, focused attention stage, and perception

pre-attentive stage

automatic with no effort or attention; unaware of the process and object is analyzed into features

focused attention stage

attention plays key role; features are combined

Treisman and Schmidt (1982)

participants report combination of features from different stimuli; illusory conjunctions occur b/c objects are “free-floating”; participants can correctly pair shapes and colors when they ignore black numbers and focus on colors

R.M. (patient with Balint’s syndrome)

inability to focus attention on individual objects after damage to parietal lobe; high number of illusory conjunctions reported

bottom-up

FIT involves mostly _________ processing.

top-down

There is some _________ processing in FIT when participants are given meaning to the shapes; better able to remember shape and color together

ventral attention network

a network that controls attention based on stimulus salience

dorsal attention network

a network that controls attention based on top-down processing

synchronization

occurs when neural responses become synchronized in time, so positive and negative responses occur at the same time with similar amplitudes

Bosman et al

LFP responses from a monkey’s cortex; recorded by small disk electrodes placed on the surface of the brain and recording signals from thousands of the neurons near electrode; LFP responses recorded from electrode A, where signals from visual stimulus arrive; signals recorded from electrode B on brain, connected and receives signals from A; A and B not connected when monkey not paying attention

shadowing

having to repeat message from one ear (dichotic listening)

Dear Aunt Jane Experiment

showed shadowing, Dear 7 Jane and 9 Aunt 6 turned into this; occurred b/c they were taking the meaning into account

central vision

area that you are looking at

peripheral vision

everything off to the side

stimulus salience

the physical properties of the stimulus, such as color, contrast, and movement

saliency map

combining characteristics such color, orientation, and intensity in the scene and combining values

Posner

precueing

same object advantage

faster responding that occurs when enhancement spreads within an object

attentional warping

the map of categories on the brain changes so more space is allotted to categories that are being searched for

experience sampling

asking people questions about experience over text at random times in the day

intermittent reinforcement

strong type of reinforcement

continuous partial attention

constant switching from one activity to another

Simons and Chabris

missing gorilla when counting passes

change detection

determining the difference between two pictures presented following each other

continuity errors

changes in films showing inconsistency

executive functions

include a range of processes that involve controlling attention and dealing with conflicting responses

cognitive control, inhibitory control, and willpower

dealing with conflict in everyday life