C3 Attention and performance

goal-directed attention

e.g. looking for a certain object, attending to a certain sound in a sequence, where’s waldo?, dichotic listening task

stimulus-driven attention

e.g. unexpected change in sound, a colour that stands out

modes of attention

active and passive

active mode of attention

goal-directed

top-down processed

endogenous (sisäsyntyinen)

intentional

passive mode of attention

bottom-up

stimulus-driven

exogenous (ulkosyntyinen)

incidental

attention

cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of one’s environment while ignoring other aspects

= process by which certain information is selected for further processing and other info is discarded or (more likely) attenuated

“withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others” - William James

attention might be needed to bind together the aspects of conscious perception, e.g. shape-colour, sound-vision

inattentional blindness

serial bottleneck

limit of attention; a point in the path from perception to action at which one cannot process all information in parallel

different types of information can be processed in parallel to some degree (different systems), but similar types of info cannot

attention studies

dichotic listening task

cocktail party effect

Treisman and Geffen’s experiment on attentional limitations (attenuation theory and Deutsch theory)

typical dichotic listening task

participants are presented with two streams of sound (story, message) in different ears and asked to shadow one

shadowing = repeating the words back from one message only

very little of the unattended message is processed (maybe just the sex of the voice or the language????tarkista)

goal-directed

auditory attention

cocktail party effect

situation of attending to one conversation and tuning out other noise and then hearing a meaningful sound (in this case one’s own name) and automatically shifting attention to that

Moray (1959)

auditory attention

filter theories

theories that try to answer the question: When do bottlenecks occur?

early selection theories (Broadbent, Treisman)

late-selection theories (Deutsch & Deutsch)

early selection theories

filter occurs before we perceive the entire stimulus (Broadbent)

attenuation theory (Treisman)

late-selection theories

filter occurs after we perceive the stimulus

Broadbent’s filter theory (1958)

Deutsch and Deutsch’s filter theory (1963)

Attenuation theory / Treisman’s filter theory 1964

modification of Broadbent’s model

auditory stimuli are never ______, but _____ and _____

auditory stimuli are never completely filtered out, but attenuated and enhanced

Treisman and Geffen’s experiment on attentional limitations

task:

two messages listened to simultaneously;

shadow message #1 while also trying to detect and respond with a tap to a target word, which can occur in either message

the photo shows predicted outcomes by the attenuation theory and Deutsch & Deutsch’s late-selection theory

support for the attenuation theory: 87% success rate in the shadowed ear and only 8% in the unshadowed ear

later experiments: there is not only attenuation of message #2, but also enhancement of msg #1

JATKA SLIDE 18