ch10 visual attention

attention

taking away attention from something in order to effectively focus attention on focus item, used to alert us, inhibit info, monitor a goal set, etc.

orienting reflex

turning or preparing to take in a lot of info in response to an unexpected S- reticular activation system and magnocellular pathway involved

reticular activation system

helps you pay attention to specific tasks or environmental cues and decides which sensory inputs need immediate attention

magnocellular pathway

where pathway projections from occipital to parietal lobe, where in space is S coming from and we orient body towards unexpected S

habituation

tendency for attention to a S to decrease over time due to repeated exposure to it

posner’s spotlight of visual attention (1978, 1980)

Ps look at screen with plus sign, told look at plus sign and keep eyes on plus sign, second screen had arrow pointing right or left but look only at plus sign, third screen had target box and click button indicating if box is on right or left side, half of trials are cued and half are neutral, 80% cued trials are valid and 20% invalid to ensure people trusted the arrow system, RT greatly differed for invalid vs. valid trials

where in the brain is the action in the spotlight of visual attention task? (eason et al. 1969)

occipital cortex, low level early processing/detecting allocation of attention (attention allocation is fast and malleable), Ps watched for light flashes appearing in either their right or left visual field and researchers recorded brain electrical activity and measured how quickly Ps responded with a button press, found that changes in brain wave amplitudes depend on the mix of general arousal level and where a person's visual attention is directed

featural search

looking for specific features that ID an object, ie. black clothes when looking for a black shirt

feature singleton

the object you are trying to ID is the only one of its kind, ie. only black shirt in closet

conjunctive search

looking for two or more features at once, ie. looking for both black clothing and tshirts

distracters

other items in search set

similar distracters

cause most people to serial search (ie. look for letters by analyzing one letter/row at a time), much slower RT

dissimilar distracters

cause most people to parallel search/look for dissimilarities, much faster RT