Cognitive Psyc

Exam 2

Attention

Cognitive Mechanisms that combine to help us select, Modulate, and sustain focus on information that might be most relevant for our behavior.

Capacity Limited

we can handle only small amounts of information at a time.

External Attention

Where we attend outwardly to select and modulate sensory information.

Internal Attention

where we select, modulate, and maintain internally generated information (thoughts, memory).

Overt Attention

Moving our eyes to object/ location of interest.

Covert Attention

Moving attention independent of where eyes are pointed.

Selective Attention

Ability to focus on one source of information while ignoring all others.

Voluntary Attention (Endogenous)

Controlled by goals of individual (Top-Down)

Reflexive Attention (Exogenous)

Attention controlled by environment (Bottom-UP)

Spatial Attention (Posner 1980)

Direct attention to a region of space.

Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA)

How much time you have to process the cue.

Peripheral Cues

Exogenous Shifts of attention, Stimulus Driven, and Automatic/ Faster.

Symbolic Cues

Endogenous shifts of attention, Goal Driven, and Volitional/Slower.

Inhibition return

Once attention visits a location and then shifts away. Once you check one location you don’t need to check again.

Feature Based Attention

Can tune attention to select a specific feature (Color, Motion, Orientation)

Object Based Attention

Attention directed to objects.

Neglect Syndrome

Damage to parietal lobe

Ignore 1/2 of visual field (space based)

Ignore 1/2 of objects (object based)

Contralesional Deficits

Right hemisphere damage and left neglect, behaves as if neglected objects not present.

Neglect

Tested with bisection task.

Ventral attention network (Corbetta & Shulman 02)

Bottom-up attentional control, Salient events in environment, Exogenenous attentional control.

Dorsal attention network

Top-down attentional control, Goals influence attention, Endogenous attentional control.

Theory of Neglect

Patients have damage to stimulus-driven (exogenous) attentional system.

* Normal: Objects competing with one another for attention (exogenously)
* Neglect: Objects in neglected field can’t compete for attention

Biased Competition Theory

Too much information at any one time \n • Information “competes” for neural control/awareness

Visual Search

Looking for a target in a display containing distractors.

Feature Integration Theory (FIT)= Preattentive Stage

Analyze into features.

FIT= Focused attention stage

Combines features into object representation.

FIT and Illusory Conjunctions

Participants often report combination of \n features from different stimuli \n – These “illusory conjunctions” occur \n because features are “free floating” prior \n to attention binding them together.

Research Method: Dichotic Listening

One message is presented to the left ear and another to the right ear.

Results: Participant cannot report the content of the message in the unattended ear.

Broadbent’s (1958) filter theory

**we could only attend to one input at a time**.

Treisman’s Attenuation Theory

A model of selective attention (Activated words enter memory = awareness)

• Messages enter Attenuator \n – Analyzes incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning

• Messages then enter Dictionary unit \n – Contains words we know, each with different thresholds for being activated

\n Deutsch & Deutsch’s Late Selection Model

Selection based on meaning. All messages processed to level of meaning before selection.

Load Theory (Lavie, 1995)

Locus of attentional selection depends on how demanding the attended task is.

* Low Load (Easy Search) – target pops-out
* High Load (Hard Search) – target requires search.

Load Theory – Working Memory Load

More irrelevant information processed.

Inattentional Blindness

When people fail to notice an unexpected item right in front of their eyes when their attention is preoccupied.

Change Blindness

Failure to notice large changes from one view to the next.

Outside the focus of attention

We have very detailed representations of the visual world. Much of what we know is being filled in from memory.

Temporal Attention

Attending to information in time.

Attentional Control

What controls where we are attending?

* Attention might be directed to emotional/dangerous stimuli Influenced by Anxiety & Phobias.

Dot Probe Task (Bradley 1999)

Tested patients with generalized anxiety disorder.

Emotional State

\n Mood may influence attentional scope.

* Broaden-and-Build Theory \n – When safe and/or happy – can expand and take in new experiences \n – When threatened and/or anxious – need to keep focus on most relevant things

Cognitive Control (AKA: Executive Control)

ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals” (Miller & Cohen, 2001) \n – Planning, selecting information, decision making, sequencing actions

Cognitive control requires attention.

%%Attention as a Mental Resource (limited resource)%% \n - Limitations in how much information the mind can process at any given time. \n

%%Internal Attention%%

\- Focus on some mental processing at the expense of others.

Cognitive Load

\- Low: Singing along to familiar song \n - Medium: Giving directions to a location \n - High: Geometry proof

Cognitive Overlap

\- Walking and talking (visual/motor & verbal) \n - Giving directions and doing geometry proof (mental imagery & mental imagery)

Multitasking

Trying to do two tasks at once.

Dual-task experiments

assess how well you can do two tasks simultaneously vs. one at a time.

%%High cognitive loads%%

\- Will interfere more with one another.

^^High degrees of cognitive overlap^^

\- Will interfere more with one another

Automatic Processes: Norman & Shallice (1980)

Don’t need to control any aspect of the process. \n Ex: Stoplight turns red – step on brake pedal

Inhibition

Ability to suppress information, thoughts, or actions that may interfere with ongoing behavior.

Inhibition and Interference

Many times, we need to inhibit information because it will interfere with selecting the correct action.

Example: Selecting the correct stoplight to control driving \n • Should I stay, or should I go?

Interference Task

Many ways to measure ability to inhibit irrelevant. \n information \n – Stroop Task \n – Flanker Task \n – Simon Task

Conflict Monitoring

Cognitive control processes detect interference, operates like an alarm system.

Conflict Resolution

Cognitive Control processes act to reduce interference.

Damage to DLPFC

Patients will show perseveration error.

Error Detection: Error –Related Negativity (ERN)

ACC initiates an error response when an error is detected. \n AKA: Oh Shit!

Task Switching and Multitasking

Residual Switch Cost \n - Always less efficient when you switch back and forth between tasks than just doing a single task.

\n More effort is required to switch, if performance matters better to do tasks one at a time if possible.

Working Memory (Baddeley and Hitch 1974)

limited capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as language comprehension, learning, and reasoning

Baddeley’s working memory model.

The components of the system are thought to be limited in capacity & relatively independent.

%%Storage:%% Maintain information that is no longer available in perception (Visuospatial Sketchpad \n & Phonological Loop) \n

^^Manipulate:^^ Performs operations on and transforms information (Central Executive)

Central Executive

Responsible for Cognitive Control, uses storage buffers to accomplish tasks.

The Phonological Loop: Phonological Store

Holds information temporarily in a phonological code.

Will decay away if not rehearsed.

The Phonological Loop: Articulatory Control Process

Rehearses information to keep it active in phonological store.

The Phonological Loop: Similarity effect

List of similar-sounding items are more difficult to keep track of than different-sounding items.

The Phonological Loop: Articulatory Suppression

Information quickly lost from phonological loop without rehearsal, memory span is worse with articulatory suppression.

The Phonological Loop: Irrelevant Speech Effect

Hearing irrelevant speech can impair memory performance.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

Helps create a representation of environment as you make eye movements.

Episodic Buffer

Store that communicates with both Long-Term \n Memory and WM components.

Interactions between LTM and WM

LTM can “increase” capacity of WM through chunking

Stress and Working Memory

Yerkes–Dodson curve describes how performance suffers as a result of anxiety, especially for difficult tasks that require a high degree of cognitive control.

Working Memory Capacity

Working Memory capacity is positively correlated to performance on a number of cognitive tasks.

Improving Cognitive Control and WM

Sleep, Exercise \n According to attention restoration theory, being out in nature can restore resources depleted by cognitive fatigue.

Memory

Memory is active any time some past experience has an effect on the way you think or behave now or in the future (Joordens, 2011).

Encoding

Process by which information enters memory.

Storage

Process by which information is kept over time.

Retrieval

Process by which information from the past is accessed.

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) - Three different memory stores

1. sensory Memory – Initial stage that holds all incoming information for seconds or fractions of a second.
2. Short-term Memory – Holds five to seven items for about 15 to 20 seconds.
3. Long-term Memory – Can hold a large amount of information for years or even decades.

Sensory Memory

The retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of \n sensory stimulation.

Persistence of Vision

retention of the perception of light.

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) - Original idea on encoding

Longer in STM – more likely to be transferred into LTM. Rehearsal keeps information active.

Nickerson and Adams (1979)

Recall: 50% head facing wrong way \n Recognition: > 50% couldn’t identify

Chunking

Helps you to package smaller bits of information into meaningful combinations.

Maintenance rehearsal

Repetition of stimuli that maintains information in working memory.

Elaboration

Using meanings and connections to help transfer information to LTM.

Processing Theory- by Craik & Lockhart (1972)

Memory performance depends on “depth” of encoding (deeper is better)

Rogers et al. (1977)- Self-Reference Effect

Elaboration by relating to yourself.

Encoding: Survival Value

Nairne (2010) – Memory evolved to keep us alive.

Bower et al. (1969)

Memory was tested with multitrial free recall.

%%Organized%% \n - Saw words organized into taxonomic categories

^^Unorganized^^

\- Saw words into a random arrangement

Massed Repetition

repeated presentations that occur closely together in time.

Distributed

repeated presentations spread out over time.

Spacing effect

Memory is better with spaced than massed repetition.

\- Plan to study for 7 hours in sessions of 1 our each.

Tulving and Pearlstone (1966)

Showed that all memory failures are not necessarily failures to encode.

%%Encoding Phase:%%

\- Categorized lists that contained two target words from each of 24 categories.

^^Retrieval Phase:^^

\- Free recall followed by cued recall.

Free Recall

Only 40% of the words were remembered.

Cued Recall

test with category names (i.e., type of spice) as retrieval cues. \n - Now recalled 75% of the words

* Previously inaccessible items now accessible when provided with a retrieval cue.

Retrieval: Context-Dependent Memory

Context encoded along with information to be remembered. \n • Context can therefor serve as a retrieval cue.

@@Godden & Baddeley (1975)@@ \n - Scuba divers learned lists of words on land or under water

Grant et al. (1998)

Subjects studied an article under quiet or noisy conditions \n • (noise: recording from college cafeteria) \n – Given short-answer test in quiet or noisy conditions \n – (test will be quiet – where should you study?)

Retrieval: State Dependent Learning

Internal states can serve as contexts – Mood & State of sobriety.

Eich & Metcalf (1989)

^^Results:^^ Better recall when encoding and retrieval moods matched.

Retrieval: Testing Effect (Roediger & Karpicke 2006)

^^Subjects read two passages.^^

\- Re-read one of the passages (Read)

– Recalled information from other passage (recall)

^^Tested on memory for passages at different points in time.^^ \\n - Short-term: re-reading led to better memory

\- Long-term: being tested on the material led to better memory.

* Practice at retrieving information – improve with practice.

Retrieval: Generation Effect

Generating materials, yourself leads to better memory than passively receiving it.

^^Graf (1978) \n ^^– Paired associate task – subjects received pairs of related words

Flashbulb Memories - Talarico and Rubin (2003)

Tested students’ memories of 9/11 and another recent daily event 1 day after (9/12).

\- People believe Flashbulb Memories (More vivid & more accurate)

\- But data shows no more accurate or detailed

* Rehearsal plays an important role in establishing flashbulb memories; Information can become distorted in process.

Retrograde Memory Enhancement

Arousal after an event increases memory for that event.

Bartlett’s (1932) “war of the ghosts” experiment

Had participants (British college students) attempt to remember a story from a different \n culture (First Nations -- Canada) \n – Repeated reproduction (re-tell story several times)

^^Result^^: Over time, reproduction became shorter, contained omissions and inaccuracies.

Transience

\- Normal forgetting over time. \n – Don’t need a complete record of everything that \n you have ever done.