8 - Attention

we need to _______ define a problem to build cognitive models and design experiments with testable hypothesis

operationally

william james definition of attention

• everyone knows what attention is

  • It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form of one out of what seems several simultaneous possible objects or trains of thought

• implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others

• is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatter brained state

selection

• the act of attending to an object to select it apart from the unattended objects

attention

• conscious ability to attend to the info that is relevant to our goals

autonomic processes

• triggered involuntarily by external events

• involuntarily “capture” your attention

• fast, efficient

controlled processes

• triggered voluntarily

• voluntarily “capture” your attention

• slow, effortful

• limited (attention in this way can be split)

our resources for ________ _________ are limited

controlled processes

e.g. if you’re driving a car and start talking to a passenger, you typically slow down (your attention is split)

2 concepts of automatic processes related to learning

1. salience

2. effortful tasks becoming automatic through practice

salience

• (a salient piece of info) is one that appears to naturally pop out at you

  • e.g. a nearby driver honking their horn; you can’t ignore it

michael posner

• there is an analogous process for visual attention

attentional spotlight

• focusing on only part of the environment at a time

how are objects within the spotlight processed?

• faster reaction time

• higher accuracy

ways to examine attention in a lab setting

• queuing paradigms

queuing paradigms study

• participant stares at a plus sign in the middle of screen, w/ 2 boxes on either side

• will be asked to determine which box the star appeared in

• before the star appears, one of the boxes will flash

• when the star appears in the box that flashed (cued trial), participants tend to react more quickly (because their attention was already attracted to that box)

• when the star doesn’t appear in the box that flashed (uncued trial), participants tend to react more slowly (because their attention was attracted away from that box)

true or false: attention can shift faster than the eye

true

cocktail party effect

• despite competing background noises, a listener can focus on a single channel of info

experiments on cocktail party effect

• subjects listen to 2 diff messages played from a loudspeaker at same time

• subjects tried to separate the messages by repeating only 1 of the messages (shadowing)

shadowing

• person immediately repeats stimuli aloud (during a dichotic listening paradigm)

(cherry) the ability to separate target sounds from background noise is based on _______ characteristics, such as the gender of the speaker and the direction, _____, or _____ of the speech

physical, pitch, speed

attention processes are compared to a _____

filter (sifts away distractions and only allows important info through)

filter model

• attention sifts away distractions and only allows important info through

how do the spotlight and filter models approach examining a flower in a field of grass?

spotlight:

• attention would enhance the processing of visual info from the single flower relative to the grass

filter:

• attention helps us ignore/block visual info from grass, allowing the single flower info to continue on for further processing

filter models are readily applied to understanding _______ attention, whereas the spotlight model is readily applied to understand _____ attention

auditory

visual

true or false: filter and spotlight models cannot be applied across modalities

false: they can

donald broadbent

• proposed first filter model of attention

single filter model

• attentional filter selects important info on the basis of physical characteristics + allows info to continue on for further processing

• info that does not pass this early filter is assumed to be eliminated + unavailable for deeper analysis

dichotic listening paradigm

• participant puts on headphones w/ a different message in each ear

• repeat back the message only in 1 ear (attended ear)

• participants remember nothing about unattended info (even major changes like a change in language)

limitations of broadbent’s model (single filter model)

• assumes there is no additional processing of unattended signals (there is)

• breakthrough

Von Right experiment

• association of particular word w/ electric shock to produce fear conditioning

• dichotic listening: when participants heard a word similar in sound/meaning in attended ear, they reacted with fear

• even when the word was in the unattended ear, they reacted with fear

breakthrough effect

• participants remember unattended info

• more common when info is highly relevant

  • e.g. you’re having a convo with someone but hear your name from someone else in a crowd; your attention is grabbed

treisman’s dual filter model

• 1 physical filter and 1 semantic filter

• info first passes thru physical filter then whatever is left after filtering thru the physical filter goes thru the semantic filter

physical filter of treisman's dual filter model

• info evaluated based on physical cues (e.g. intensity/pitch) to find the most relevant signal

• e.g. a brighter or louder stimulus will be given a higher weight than a dim or quiet stimulus (aka will be able to filter through to the semantic filter)

semantic filter of treisman's dual filter model

• info evaluated based on meaning

• takes into account the weights assigned by the physical filter

• chooses which info will be attended to

  • rest of info is discarded

which filter model accounts for the breakthrough effect?

treisman’s dual filter model

if you’re at a loud party and talking with a friend, but hear your name at a lower volume in a nearby convo, do you pay attention to it?

probably; the early/physical filter will weigh it lower because of the low volume, but the late/semantic filter will weigh it high and may let it become attended to because of the importance of your name

the cocktail party effect can be explained by a _____ filter model

single

stroop task

• participants presented w/ a word on a screen + asked to state aloud the colour the font is displayed in

• the word is a colour (e.g. “red”)

• measure how long it takes to identify the colour while trying to ignore the word

stroop effect

• words that are congruent in colour and meaning are read faster than when incongruent

2 test items in stroop task

1. word and colour are congruent (e.g. word is “red” and colour of word is red)

2. word and colour are incongruent (e.g. word is “red” but colour of word is blue)

the stroop effect demonstrates that attention is facilitated by ________ relevance

stimulus

proportion congruent manipulation

• change the ratio of congruent to incongruent trials

  • high proportion congruent = 75% congruent to 25% incongruent trials

    • leads to increased stroop effect

  • low proportion congruent = 25% congruent to 75% incongruent trials

    • leads to decreased stroop effect

the stroop task allows us to measure the influence of both _______ and ________ processes of attention.

automatic, controlled

word reading is a _____ process

automatic

the _________ ________ ________ demonstrates that people can gain conscious control over an automatic process

proportion congruent manipulation

visual search experiments

• test how we use every day attention

• look for a target in an array of distractors (e.g. trying to find your keys, or look for your friend in a crowd)

set size

• the # of items needed to search through in a visual search array

size size effect

• increase in difficulty as set size increases

single feature search task

• only have to look for 1 particular feature to identify the target in a visual search array

pop-out effect

• when the object of a single feature visual search is easily found, regardless of set size

• ONLY REFERS TO COLOUR

conjunction search task

• identifying a target by considering 2 or more features in a visual search array

• more difficult to find the target than a single feature search task

contextual queuing

• context of conjunctive search task serves as a cue to help search more effectively

• e.g. if you know you usually put your keys on the right side of your desk, you’ll prob start by looking there, allowing you to find them more quickly

chronic attentional errors

• play a role in psychological problems (e.g. attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, insomnia, depression and OCD)

flashbulb memories

• highly detailed/vivid ‘snapshot’ of a moment

• typically occurs during important news

• not always accurate

change blindness

• even w/ directed focus, attention limits lead us to miss info

alertness arousal

• everything you are attentive to

selected focus

• what you’re focused on within your alertness arousal

vigilance

• ability to focus attention for long periods of time

top down processing

• relying on prior experiences/heuristics/expectations to recognize objects/events

• aka what we “expect” something to be

• your brain “fills in the blanks”

• associated with cases where you direct your attention to match current goals/expectations

  • e.g. you typically put your keys in the same place, so when you go to look for them, you already have a general idea of where to look

bottom up processing

• data gathered through the senses

• occurs when attention is automatically captured by changes in environment (e.g. you fall on the floor with a huge crash, or a police siren)

we have both ______ and _______ environments for attention. what is the difference?

external: things in our environment that we are paying attention to and/or trying to incorporate into our internal environment

internal: things in our head that we think about (that may distract us from external stimuli)

true or false: people tend to do better at the stroop effect when it has taboo words

true

focused attention

• participants are told to attend to one stimulus and ignore another

• informs us about process of selection + what happens to unattended stimuli

divided attention

• participants attend to all stimuli

• informs us about processing limitations + attentional capacity

orienting

• shifting one’s attention to something in the environment

Posner’s spatial cueing paradigm

• allows us to measure shifts in attention in the absence of eye mvmts

overt attending

• looking to where you are attending

covert attending

• attending to something w/o looking at it (e.g. having a convo w/ someone while waiting for someone else to enter through the door)

inhibition of return

• prevents your gaze + attention from revisiting a previously attended location

• promotes orienting towards new + previously unsearched locations, resulting in a more efficient search

schema

• range of plausible objects + likely configurations of those objects within particular scenes

  • e.g. you can expect to find the toaster in the kitchen and not in the bathroom, and in the kitchen you can focus your search for the toaster on the counter and not on the floor

• helps guide your search for a target

inattentional blindness

limited attentional resources result in missing out/not noticing very important things

change blindness paradigm

• 2 nearly identical scenes are alternately presented in quick succession with an intervening blank screen

• participant asked to identify what is different b/w the 2 scenes ASAP

how to prevent mind-wandering during studying

• make the material more exciting

• drawing pictures

• writing bizarre stories that incorporate the material

attenuation theory

Treismans double-filter

both the single filter and dual filter model are in charge of ______ attention

auditory