PSYC Exam 2

change blindness

we are bad at detecting changes if we don’t know where to look or where to direct our attention

Selective attention

selecting which stimuli to attend to and to ignore

• Ex: talking to one person at a party - ignoring everyone else and paying attention/focuses on the conversation with that person

Door study

• One person would ask a stranger for directions

• A door/painting interrupts the conversation and as it goes past, that person switches out with another

• the stranger still answers as if its the same person

• they didn’t notice the change

Attention

involves multiple mechanisms (mainly frontal lobe)

• will direct additional blood flow to relevant areas —> leading to higher activity in these areas to accommodate additional processing

RCBF and aging

• in aging individuals (as early as 30) PET scans show rCBF significantly decreases to frontal cortices —> this leads to decrease in memory capability, attention, bodily function control

• blood flow to frontal cortex decreases as we age

• first few years of age experience a spike of blood flow to these areas —> to compensate for demand for attention, learning, metabolism (“as children, we are a sponge”)

“if we can’t pay attention properly, we cannot comprehend properly”

ADHD and blood flow

• less blood flow to frontal lobe

• reduced frontal lobe and temporal cortices size

• medications like Guanfacine (treats high BP by lowering HR) can be used to allow better blood flow

• other medications increase NE and DA transmission

cocktail party effect

while in a noisy environment, we can still attend to one conversation

t/f we are very good at selectively attending to only the information that is currently relevant

true

• we can miss extremely salient events that happen right in front of our eyes

t/f the same processing is used to information that is attended and unattended

false

• different processing happens for attended information than unattended

inattentional blindness

if we attend to one thing we often miss others especially if unexpected

• people’s intuition is very wrong - we believe we see everything especially unexpected (opposite of what’s true)

inattentional blindness - radiologists

• 24/25 radiologists did not find the hidden gorilla embedded in xray scans

• expertise does not overcome inattentional blindness in most cases

• you may miss things that are actually there (type II error)

dividing attention

1. blood flow direction is a fixed amount, when doing multiple tasks/divide attention = less blood flow directed to each task

   • the more we try to multi-task, the less effective we are at doing that task

2. not all tasks are equal/as complex

   • tasks differ in amount of attention needed

   • as we practice and get more efficient, the less attention and blood flow we will need

t/f the more you divide you attention the longer it takes to process any of your attention modalities

true

• as you drive and talk on the phone you have a shorter reaction time

why would have a physical passenger make you a better drive

• the passenger is also exposed to the same stimuli and can help reaction

• social pressure may make you feel more responsible or pay more attention

limits of attention

• tracking speed: how fast are the attended objects moving or how fast your eyes can keep up (faster = more difficult to process)

• capacity: number of objects you can process at the same time

• crowding: the closer objects are to one another, the harder it is to identify them (how dense is the information)

relationship between blood flow and measuring attention

positive correlation

• as blood flow increases, attention increases

reaction time

time it takes to react

• SHORT reaction time = GOOD

relation between reaction time and task complexity

positive correlation

• the more complex the task, the longer the reaction time