Cog Psych Exam 2

William James

wrote 2 books, more philosophy than experiments; said "everyone knows what attention is"

Attention by William James

taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought

exogenous attention

automatic attraction of attention by a sudden visual or auditory stimulus

endogenous attention

attention that is directed voluntarily

overt

look at object you're attending to

covert

pay attention to one thing but look at something else

exogenous attention demonstration

clap when horizontal line, clap when vertical; valid trial (square is on the same side as the mark) showed faster RT than invalid trials (square is on the opposite side of the mark)

salient visual events

something that makes it stand out a lot, fast and automatic; hard to override

exogenous attention can be seen as more __ processing

bottom up

Motion onset experiment

Squares spin and turn into letters→ is there an H or S on the screen; participants were the best at the task when there was an onset of motion (square starts static THEN spins to reveal H/S)

Motion onset experiment- natural version

device made to rotate 2 pieces of wood naturally→ people paid attention to motion onset>motion off set

reward experiment

lines, all are slanted other than 1→ was that line slanted or horizontal, lines surrounded in colored circles, line you're looking for is always in red/green circle (If red on screen→ 50% you get 5 cents, if green→ 50% you get 1 cent also had a no reward situation); NEW EXP: correct line always in an oddball shape; RT was higher when there is a high-value container

in the reward attention experiment, why was RT higher for the high value containers

Look at red bc value but then realize they need to find oddball shape→ higher RT

why was william james wrong about attention?

attention is not always captured, you can choose to pay attention to something

endogenous attention can be seen as more __ processing and it uses __ to effect it

Top down, motivation

endogenous attention demonstration

same demonstration as exogenous but different valid/invalid trials, RT for valid trials (arrow correctly pointed to where the line will be) was faster than for invalid (arrow points incorrectly)

Evidence for enhancement

when monkey was looking at lights, if it was fixating AND attending to the peripheral light there was higher neural firing than if it was JUST fixating on it

how does endogenous attention work

enhance relevant representation AND/OR suppressing irrelevant representations

evidence for suppression

Use MVPA to see brain pattern when people switch between detecting cars/people in images, if trying to ignore cars (aka detecting people), brain looks like it's not looking at cars at all

MVPA

multivariate pattern analysis→ see brain pattern based on what baselines look like for different base objects and compare

retinotopic map and attention

since there is enhancement where people were told to pay attention to AND suppression of where they were told not to, we can use MRI to find out where they're paying attention to based on retinotopic map

binding problem

how features are linked together so that we see unified objects in our visual world rather than free-floating or miscombined features

illusory conjunction

a perceptual mistake where features from multiple objects are incorrectly combined

object file

bind features of object into 1 object file

illusory conjunction experiment

a slide with colored shapes and numbers were flashes, when participants were asked to report the numbers (focus on number) they often mixed up the combinations of shapes and colors

what combines feature maps

focused attention

what is a feature map

a visual map of one component of the visual world (instead of blue circle-> blue + circle)

blue/green line demonstration

when asked to decide if the blue or green line was longer, participants didn't see the white square in the corner as they were not attending to it

whodunnit video

we can only process few elements at a time, so many of the changes in the video went unnoticed

Balint syndrome (simultagnosia)

Bilateral lesion of Parietal lobe-impairment to focusing attention and feature integration

hemispatial neglect

lack of attention to one side of visual field

feature search

search for a target defined by a single attribute, such as a salient color or orientation

conjunction search

search for a target defined by the presence of two or more attributes

how does the amount of items affect RT if we are doing feature search?

doesn't matter how many items

how does the amount of items affect RT if we are doing conjunction search?

if target is present, as item increases RT increases; if target is present, as item increases RT increases AND slope is 2x the slope of "target present" condition

what sort of processing is feature search

parallel

what sort of processing is conjunction search

serial

feature integration theory

the idea that focused attention is not required to detect the individual features that comprise a stimulus, but is required to bind those individual features together

if there is a lack of bottom up salience/visual salience, items are inspected in a __ manner

serial

when there is top down guidance, RT (increases/decreases) for a search task

decreases

Broadbent early selection model

all inputs are sensed and put in a sensory store, then they go through a selective filter, where only 1 attended message goes through into higher order processing, all other inputs are thrown away

what evidence shows that broadbent's early selection model is wrong

cocktail party effect

dichotic listening

The procedure of presenting one message to the left ear and a different message to the right ear.

Treisman attenuation model

everything goes into an attenuator which decided what input is given what weight in the dictionary unit. Each item then has a threshold in the dictionary unit that once passed, will allow it to come to mind

river/money study

one ear you attend- "they threw stones at the bank", other ear either says river or money if they thought about financial bank, they heard money; if they thought about side of river bank, they heard river; no awareness of ignored word

Deutch & Deutch late selection model

everything gets processed all the time

Automaticity

doesn't require attention, occurs outside of consciousness, it's ballistic (if you start it keeps going)

Automaticity in the Stroop task

reading pathway is automatic whereas color naming pathway is effortful

how do you reduce the automatic pathway/boost the effortful pathway

attention

training leads to automaticity (T/F)

T

Schneider's and Shiffrin's training and automaticity study

target # given, shown 20 frames w/ letters that were fast, asked to say if target # was present or absent; initial phase: over time got better, if u do 1 task a lot it becomes automatic; reverse phase (target is now letter, distractors are numbers): was worse than initial phase but got better over time

automaticity processing

top-down problem solving→ bottom up recognition

SART task

number 1-9 appear on screen, press SPACE except when the number is 3, asks later what were your thoughts on the task; more mind wandering= worse working memory-> shows a failure to attend

mind wandering activity looks like

Default mode network

Strategic mind wandering

people can mind wander when tasks are too easy

memory

process involved in retaining, retrieving and using information about the stimuli, images, events, and skills after the original information is no longer present

short term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly, maintenance of neural activation

long term memory

Permanent synaptic changes to neurons

working memory

a newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory

modal model of memory

sensory memory-> short-term memory-> and

persistance of vision

the ability of the human eye to keep an image in view for a split second after the image has been removed from sight.

capacity of sensory memory

very large but drops off quickly

magic number 7 plus or minus 2

STM is limited to holding seven (plus or minus two) information bits at once- original thought

Luck & Vogel: STM capacity

colored squares for a short period of time, rely on memory to decide if new display is same as the old one, Short term memory retains 3-4 item

slots STM

memory is a bunch of boxes and memory is stored into the boxes; if set size increases, run out of slots so we forget everything not in a slot

resources STM

short term memory is divided up from a large main mass to smaller masses; if set size increases memory gets divided up but they're all equally weak

Is there evidence for slots or resources model? what was the experiment

Slots, Participants were shown n amount of squares of different colors, then were prompted to show the color of one of the squares, as N increases the storage probability decreased but not the precision

variable resources model

resource model but the split is not even

Duration of STM and how was it found

15-30 sec, give 3 letters then a number, you count down from the number then when researcher says stop you say what the letters were

chunking

selection of elements that are strongly associated with each other and weakly associated with other chunks

items in chunking are defined as

psychological units

how something is chunked does not affect performance (T/F)

F

Chunking is the reason why capacity estimates vary (T/F)

T

Baddeley's Working Memory Model

a more complex model than just passive STM; includes a phonological loop, visuospatial working memory, and the central executive

phonological loop

the part of working memory that holds and processes verbal and auditory information

phonological similarity experiment

remember sequence of letters and they split into 2 groups w distinct sounds, more confusions with letters from the same auditory group

Does phonological similarity expand to any sort of similarity?

not any similarity causes interference, something special abt ACOUSTIC, tested by providing a list of words of similar semantic meaning and the same result was not accomplished

Digit span across language

asked native speakers of diff languages to remember numbers, found that english speakers remembered more numbers as the numbers are smaller to say

reading speed correlates with...

Short Term Memory, english speakers read faster as english words were shorter

Everyone has (same/diff) amount of STM phonological capacity

same

Articulatory suppression

Interference with operation of the phonological loop that occurs when a person repeats an irrelevant word such as "the" while carrying out a task that requires the phonological loop.

Visuospatial sketchpad

independent from phonological loop, represents visual and spatial information

Visuospatial MVPA study

Given 2 circle with stripes, stimulus cue to only remember 1st or 2nd circle, and given new circle and participants tell if the probe was rotated CW or CCW based on cued circle; while waiting for the comparison image, brain's images looked more similar to the cued than the uncued stimulus

Interfering with visuospatial sketchpad

delay time, or adding in a new visual stimulus during the delay

how were participants able to recall if 2 patterns were similar w/ 100% accuracy when the delay time was very little

iconic memory (aka sensory memory) and rely on aftereffects

iconic memory

sensory memory

verbal/spatial task with a verbal/spatial answer

verbal: given sentence as ask if each word is noun or not→ either say yes/no, or point left/right to show yes/no; spatial: asked if the corner is extreme top or bottom→ either say yes/no, or point left/right to show yes/no-> Pointing task is faster at verbal task and saying is faster at spatial task

why were people fastest when they had the spatial task and spoke their answer and when they had the verbal task and pointed to their answer

modalities overlap so it's hard to do verbal w verbal and spatial w spatial

Central executive

needed for control, regulates the refreshing/rehearsal processes, focus/divide/switch attention, connects w long term memory

Where is the phonological loop located?

Broca's area, parietal lobe

Where is the visuospatial sketchpad located?

parieto-occipital region

where is the central executive located

frontal lobe

N-back task

see a string of letters and press a button when the same letter was seen "n" slides ago. increase in activity in DlPFC and Broca's area with increasing n

How do we know central executive is related to maintenance

activity in prefrontal cortex increased during a delay where a monkey needed to remember something

Episodic buffer

integrated visual, spatial and verbal info; retrieval occurs through awareness, links to long term memory and semantic meaning

Fluid intelligence (gf)

ability to solve novel problems

Crystallized intelligence (gc)

facts, info, skills

what was wrong with the study that showed if you increased performance in n back task-> better fluid intelligence

no active control group, also people were told they were training their brain→ training group differently motivated

Kent Cochrane (KC)

most of his bilateral hippocampus and temporal lobes have been injured, but could still have some sort of memory that bypasses hippocampus

serial position curve

People were asked to recall words in a list, record probability of recall based on serial position, increased memory for words seen early and late in the list