Attention

Attention

Allocation of limited mental resources to information and cognitive processes at a given moment.

Alertness and arousal

Basic aspects of attention enabling information extraction or response selection.

Vigilance (sustained attention)

Ability to sustain alertness continuously.

Selective attention

Ability to pick out relevant events/stimuli from a pool.

Divided attention

Paying attention to multiple tasks simultaneously.

Filter theories of attention

Propose filters allowing only specific information to pass through.

Broadbent's early filter model

Filter at sensory level based on physical characteristics.

Gray & Wedderburn's study

People can shadow based on meaning, not just physical characteristics.

Deutsch & Deutsch's late selection model

All information undergoes meaning analysis before selection.

Neglect syndrome

Lack of attention to one side of space, often the left, due to parietal damage.

Bisiach and Luzzatti's findings

Left neglect patients exhibit a right side bias in memory descriptions.

Sensation

Detection of physical energy.

Perception

Organizing and interpreting sensory information.

Visual perception

Involves light, retina focus, and photoreceptor stimulation for neural impulses.

Bottom-up processing

Analysis from stimulus to cortex.

Top-down processing

Uses contextual information for analysis.

Perceptual organization

Follows Gestalt principles like similarity, proximity, continuity, and closure.

Auditory Perception

Involves longitudinal pressure waves from material vibration.

Cochlea

Key structure for transducing sound waves into neural impulses.

Tonotopic coding

Translation of frequency information into position along the basilar membrane.