Chapter 7: Attention

Attention

The ability to selectively focus on the most relevant aspects of our environment

with selective processing

Selective Processing

Act of focusing or honing on a subset of available information deemed most important 

• We selectively choose what we want to further process

Flashbulb Memories

Vivid memories caused by especially salient or emotional events

• Captured our attention the most 

• Falliable: as it relies on both the interplay of memory and attention

Processing Types

Incoming data interacts with information we already have resulting int two flows

1. Bottom-Up Processing:

2. Top-Down Processing

Bottom-Up Processing:

1.  stimulus-driven mechanism whereby we perceive events or stimuli by piecing together smaller pieces of sensory information

• Raw data gathered by our sense

• Attention is captured by salient changes in the environment 

• Salient

• : most important/noticable 

Top-Down Processing:

Memory-driven mechanism whereby we perceive events or stimuli more holistically based on prior experiences or context

• Uses a combination of memories, biases and heuristics to interpret info

• “Filling in the blank” after making initial judgement 

• Helps direct attention to match current goals → understanding context 

  • Study where people were told to tell information about people → eyes go to the place that helps provide context

• Reading

Mendela effect:

• a phenomenon where a large group of people collectively misremember a specific detail or even

  • False memory/ misattribution 

  • topdown processing

Conspiracy theory:

• When top-down processing meets confirmation bias

Automatic Processing

1. he cognitive ability to perform tasks without conscious thought or effort, developing from frequent, consistent practice

• Eg reading

Controlled Processing

the deliberate, conscious, and effortful type of thinking that requires focused attention

Orienting

The act by which attention moves across a scene

Spatial Cueing Paradigm

• Measures shifts of attentions across a scene which lead to faster and more accurate target detection

• When given a cue that attract the person attention they will do better on congruent trials than incongruent trials 

Inhibition of Return:

• Tends to prevent your gaze/attention from revisiting a previously attended location → promoting orienting to other locations 

  • Normally improves search 

  • Occurs when the time between a cue and the actual target is more than 300 milliseconds

Overt Attending

instances where the direction of attention is made clear through eye movements - Looking towards what we are paying attention to

Covert Orienting

instances where the direction of attention is not necessarily guided by eye movements, and can be measured using spatial cueing

Visual Search

Measures how long it takes to detect a target amid distracters as a function of set size

Set Size

total number of items in the visual display/search

Pop-Out Effect:

• visually salient stimuli automatically capture attention regardless of set size

  • Like a different colour 

  • Bottom up capture of attention 

  • Search time is not affected by set size

Conjunctive Search:

• Searching for a combination of features during a visual search taking away from the pop-out effect

  •  takes a longer time as set size increases

Contextual Cueing

Guides our attention in a more efficient manner via prior knowledge

using our schemas

Schema

Representation of depicting the range plausible objects and likely configurations of those objects within a particular scenario during visual searches

Inattention Task:

• Selective Attention

• Cocktail Part Effect:

• Breakthrough Effect

• Inattentional Blindness

• Change Blindness

Selective Attention

• How we focus in on a subset of stimuli in our environment to process them more efficiently

  • Attended items are better remembered than unattended items

Cocktail Part Effect

• How we can focus on a single source of auditory information despite background noise

  • Single Filter Model:  

Breakthrough Effect:

•  Highly relevant information from the unattended channel can draw our attention 

  • Dual Filter Model

Dichotic Listening Paradigm

•  a study where people can ignore information coming into one ear when told to focus on the other ear, however some information can get through from the ignored ear based on important

  • Most of the time only physical characteristics (tone, pitch and volume) of sounds in the unattended channel can be remembered

Dichotic Listening paradigm extension mackay study

• attended ear had an ambiguous message with two interpretations, unattended channel had words being said that were related to one of the interpretations but not the other

  • When asked to recall the ambiguous message they would say it was like the interpretation that the unattended ear was hearing 

  • Bank → financial institution or river 

Inattentional Blindness:

Limited attentional resources can result in not noticing very important or noticeable things

Selective Looking Paradigm

• measures how people focus their attention by asking them to selectively watch one of two or more superimposed visual stimuli

  • Eg, not noticing the gorilla

Change Blindness Paradigm:

• Perceptual phenomenon where a change has occurred in a visual scene but the observer does not notice nor can identify it

  • In the experiment an intervening black screen is added causing a flicker that prevent automatic capture of attention 

    • When flicker does not occur: much easier to spot the difference

Stroop Task:

1. A taks where participants are required to identify the colour of ink a coloured word is written in while ignoring the word itself 

• Stroop Paradigm: Difficult task due to the automatic processing of word reading 

  • Congruent trails: word matches the colour 

    • When there are mostly congruent trials: 75% congruent 

      • strategy : read the word however this makes reading incongruent trials even harder → Larger stroop effect

  • Incongruent trials: Word does not match the colour

    • Takes longer to determine the colour 

    • Automatic Reading Interferes with the ability to name colour 

    • When there are mostly incongruent trials: 75% incongruent 

      • strategy : ignore the word only look at the colour

        • Decreases stroop effect as you are not reading and getting confused

Stroop effect:

How long it takes to read incongruent trials

Spotlight Model (Posner)

Attention highlights and enhancing the processing of things that fall within the focus of a spotlight 

• Easier to see things in the spotlight draws spatial attention 

• Has limits

Filter Model

Only certain information is allowed to pass through into our conscious awareness 

1. Single Filter Model: Early selection theory (Broadbent)

   1. Bottleneck

2. Double Filter Model 

   1. Attenuation Theory 

   2. Later Selection Model (Deutch): 

Single Filter Model: Early selection theory (Broadbent):

• Information is categorized by physical characteristics where they are briefly stored to analyze 

  • Information is filtered very quickly through the bottleneck before semantics is understood

bottleneck

• Only a limited amount of information based on physical characteristic pass on to further processing

  • Does not explain how semantics of unattended channels can still be understood in certain scenarios

Attenuation Theory (Triesman

Another early filter model dual filter

• Unattended information is not completely filtered out, but rather ‘turned down’ or attenuated

  • A new filter is in place of the bottleneck → everything goes by but its categorized based on physical features 

• A second filter is added to filter semantic meaning 

Later Selection Model (Deutch):

• First filter: physical and semantic analysis 

  • All information is stored in short-term memory 

• Second Filter/ Late filter: organized information is then selected by personal relevance to go further for deeper level processing due to limited capacity 

• Unselected information just fades - but is still registered