8- attention

William James

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought

Selection

The act of focusing to an object to select it apart from unattended objects
Allows us to focus on what matters

Some stimuli in environment can trigger attention in an automatic fashion (light flashes in eyes)
Eg. when you wear clothes, you slowly don't feel it anymore because it doesn't matter (habituation)

Flashbulb memories

Refers to vivid memories caused by emotional events, presumably because they captured our attention. fallible because they rely on an interplay between both attention and memory

Bottom-up processing

Captures attention automatically
A form of processing whereby we perceive events or stimuli by piecing together smaller pieces of sensory information.(e.g., police sirens)

actually unprocessed sensory data

content of world outside

sign with ‘spot’ → read as spot

Top-down processing

Uses strategic and controlled directing of attention
memory-driven mechanism whereby we perceive events or stimuli more holistically

hv expectation based on biases heuristics prior knowledge

sign with ‘spot’ → read as STOP bc same letters and red octagonal sign)

Automatic attention

Triggered involuntarily in external events that often trigger capture of attention
Fast, and efficient
Eg. attention directed to ambulance sound
(involuntary, easy, quick)

Controlled attention

Conscious attention to objects of interest/ to info that’s relevant to our goals

• Slowly

• Require more cognitive effort(voluntary, effortful, slow)

Salient information

One that appears to naturally pop out, capture attention whether or not intended to
Eg. driver honking nearby, automatically attracts your attention, whether you intended to or not

over time effortful tasks become….

tasks can become automatic through practice, task that previously required controlled attention now becomes a part of automatic attention

spotlight model

Conscious visual attention focuses like a spotlight (enhance stimulus)
Can be hijacked by unconscious processes, that can quickly attract your attention, eg. avoid speeding car from hitting you on the sidewalk

orientation

act of shifting one's attention to something in the environment

Overt attending

the obvious process of looking where you are attending

Covert orienting

attending to something without looking at it

Inhibition of return

tends to prevent your gaze (and attention) from revisiting a previously attended location. In turn, this promotes orienting towards new and previously unsearched locations, which should result in a more efficient search.

object within spotlight

Faster reaction time
Higher accuracy
Visual attention
Eg. spatial cueing paradigms to test the automatic processes of attention

Filter models

We use auditory cues to filter target sounds from background noise (shift away distractions)
(suppress the noise)

Donald broadbent

single filter model

Single filter model

Filtering based on physical characteristics. and allows that information to continue on for further processing
Infor that X pass this early physical filter = eliminated+Xavail for deeper analysis 4 meaning and semantic importance

Does not adequately account for breakthrough effect

bottleneck

Only a limited amount of attentional information can be passed on for further processing.

early selection theory

our attentional filter is located early in the process. Information is filtered out early before any semantic processing has occurred

Extended dichotic listening paradigm

Put on headphones, listened two messages in different ears
Participants remember nothing about unattended information from the unattended ear
Filter only allows information from the attended ear to continue processing

Von right and colleagues - dichotic listening paradigm

1. Some info is process in unattended ear
   

2. Classical conditioning paradigm was used to associate a particular word with an electric shock to produce fear conditioning.

3. dichotic listening: heard a word similar to the conditioned sound in the unattended ear = produced the conditioned fear response

Breakthrough phenomenon

Participants remember information in an unattended stream, , esp when unintended info is highly relevant
Eg. hearing you name through a proud, break through and capture your attention

Selective attention

Leads to attended items being better remembered when compared to unattended items. eg. despite the many other conversations taking place at the same time and in close proximity, you can effortlessly follow your friend's voice while 'turning down' all the noise in the background

Cocktail party effect

describes how we can focus on a single source of auditory information despite background noise based on physical characteristics ((gender of speaker, direction, pitch, speech speed)
Eg. talking to your friend , despite the loud background. But turning you head when hearing your name because it is highly relevant to you

Inattentional blindness

shows how our limited attentional resources can result in missing out (not noticing) some very important or salient things

Change blindness

A perceptual phenomenon where a change has occurred in a visual scene, but the observer does not notice or cannot identify it due to attention limits
Even when you are looking for a change, you might not see it.

context of scene remains same

Treisman model - 2 filter model

early (physical) filter and late (semantic) filter. explains the cocktail party effect AND breakthrough effect

tressman’s model

1. pass through physical filter = info evaluated + weighed importance based on physical cues to find most relevant signal

   1. brighter/louder stimulus weight> dim/quiet stimulus weight (but if hearing something that's semantically relevant, attention can shift)

2. Pass info through semantic filter= info evaluated 4 meaning + relevance

   1. can override the early filtering decision based on the meaning of the particular information

Attenuation theory

• Unattended information isn’t fully filtered out—it's just reduced (attenuated).

• The attenuator replaces Broadbent’s strict filter.

• All information passes through, but with different strengths.

• Info physically similar to the target = stronger signal; unrelated info = weaker.

Late filter model

Suggests filtering occurs after physical and semantic analysis and only selected information goes on for further processing due to limitations in processing capacity.

The stroop task

requires you to focus your attention on ink-colour, which is relevant to the task, while ignoring the word itself, which is irrelevant to the task.

congruent

faster, colour and word are matched, eg. word red in colour red

incongruent

slower, colour and word are not matches, eg. word blue in colour green

Proportion congruent manipulation

Change the ratio of congruent to incongruent trials

?? high proportion congruent condition

may see 75 congruent, 25 incongruent leads to increased stroop effect. Start to notice that words products font colour, you tend to only pay attention to the word (strategy = semi reliably predict)

?? high proportion difficult incongruent trials

may see 25 congruent, 75 incongruent, decreased stroop effect.
Receive stimulus that you are not expecting, and you stop paying attention to the word but only the COLOUR (adopt trategy)

Stroop paradigm

shows how the automatic processing of words in text interferes with colour naming of the text, providing an example of how automatic processes can interfere with task performance.

automatic processes - stroop

Word reading influences performance even when the word is to be ignored

controlled processes

People can adopt conscious controlled word reading strategies that modulate the stroop effect

Visual search paradigms

used to study how we search for items in our environment, look for target in array of distractions

set size

number of items required to search through

set size effect

Increase in difficulty as set size increases

Conjunction searches

uses 2 or more features to create a more difficult search. Cannot only use one feature to find a subject

Pop out effect

When the object of a visual search is easily found, regardless of set size. Easily found by colour. Often in single feature task, but not all the times (T has a hor line on top compared to I)

Contextual cues

Context of the search task was a cue, leads to more efficient searching
Eg. knowing you always put your keys on the right, looking at the right to find your keys

Attenuation Theory

The attenuator replaces the filter in Broadbent's model, allowing all information to pass but with differently assigned weightings depending on whether the information is physically similar to the target or not.

Early selection theory

our attentional filter is located early in the process. Information is filtered out early before any semantic processing has occurred.

Inattentional Blindness

Our limited attentional resources can result in missing out (not noticing) some very important or salient things.

when do we get distracted

when irrelevant info overwhelm u

effect of the fact that controlled processes are limited

• difficult to consciously attend to many aspects of task environment at same time

demand for attention increases=

= adjustments made to compensate so performance in all tasks are x disrupted

spatial cueing paradigms

• 50-50 chance of target in either boxes

• have a ‘cue’ to direct attention to a specific box

• Present in cued and uncued trials even though the target appears for so little time that the eye has not had time to look in its direction

  • Attention can shift faster than the eye, but sill possible to miss important info

spatial cueing paradigms: target appear in cued location

attention amplify perceptual processing of that target and will quickly be detected

spatial cueing paradigms: target appear in uncued location

 target is detected more slowly since attentional spotlight was directed away from the action target location

word reading effect

Word reading proceeds automatically -> automatic word reading interferes w colour naming performance → xi hv full ctrl of what we pay attention to

high proportion condition 75 congruent, why stroop effect

• improvement in rxn time for congruent trials

• Incongruent trials -> focus on word reading still even though it's irrelevant -> performance suffer

all uniform distractors in visual search

easier to identify target

attentional errors

= minor everyday inconveniences

chronic attention errors

=psychological probs (attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, insomnia, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder)

attention ←> memory

x pay attention to something = less likely to have memory about it

happen in automatic things we do

take a pic of something to remember

= rarely look at it bc we have given it attention so we less likely to forget it

vigilance

ability to maintain sustained focused attention over long period of time

Dif for everyone, some good @ it and others mind’s wander

selected focus shift into altertness arousal

alertness arousal vs selected focus

alertness arousal > selected focus

internal mind

attention captures a portion of the external world to the internal mind

internal mind has info that are not in our external info

speech + top down processing

TD processing help us process speech esp since ppl all have different speech

may lead you to hear what is not said

schemas + prototypes w TD processing

we have prototype/rep of something/scenario → think objects are present in that situation bc they are present in our rep, but in reality they aren’t

neutral vs taboo words - stroop task

slower @ identifying colour w taboo word bc swear word trigger emotional rxn to it

focused attention

participant told to attend to one stimuli and ignore another → informs us about the process of selection + what happens to unattended stimulf

divided attention

participant attend to all stimuli → tell us about processing limitations and attentional capacity

ex. multi tasking

how to identify change paradigm faster w top down processing

prior knowledge of approx area where image is changing

how to identify change paradigm faster w bottom up processing

intervening blank screen removed (blank screen prevent automatic capture of attention)