COGS2040 - Attention Quiz questions

Why do you think the 'attetional demand' of the task influences inattentional blindness rates?

when a task is hard you have to 'use up' more of your attention doing it, and that leaves less for processing irrelevant information

What is the binding problem?

The ambiguity about which features 'go together' in an object when there are multiple objects present

What does Treisman propose is required for binding to occur successfully?

Spatial selective attention

In Treisman's Feature Integration Theory, which information is contained in the master map?

Location

What are illusory conjunctions?

errors that occur when people cannot attend fully to a display and report features from the display that are miscombined

In a visual search, binding is required when:

A target is specified only by a conjunction of features

Why is attention required to find something in a cluttered display?

because object recognition is capacity limited

Why is it trivial to find one tilted 'T' in Figure 1 of the Wolfe et al. (2011) paper?

because orientation is a basic attribute that efficiently guides attention, and it has a unique orientation relative to the distractors

What additional type of guidance is available in a natural scene that is not available in random displays of stimuli?

semantic guidanceIn

In the two-pathway architecture for visual processing, what is the main difference between the selective and nonselective pathways?

The selective pathway is capacity limited and therefore can only process a limited amount of information at a time, whereas the nonselective pathway can draw information from the entire scene, allowing some semantic processing but not object recognitionw

What is the 'gist' of a scene?

statistical information drawn rapidly from the whole image that allow categorisation of scenes into basic categoriesGit

FIT predicts that patients with parietal damage should:

have difficult with conjunction but not feature search, because a conjunction search requires attention whereas a feature search doesn'tWhia

Which of these is NOT a source of guidance for attention in the Guided Search model?

Illusory conjuctions

Your task is to navigate by the yellow arrows. What do you predict will happen if a BLUE motorbike appears relative to a YELLOW motorbike?

I'll be slower to hit the brakes

In cognitive science research, "RSVP" stands for:

Rapid serial visual presentation

In the basic atentional-blink paradigm, what is the key manipulation?

the separation between the first target (T1) and the second target (T2)

The classic attentional blink (AB) finding is that:

performance in reporting a second target (T2) is impaired when it is presented within ~200-500ms after an initial (T1)

When T2 stimulation cannot be reported, there is evidence that they are:

still processed to a late state, including access to semantic information

Classic thoeries of attentional blink (AB) suggest it is caused by:

Central capacity lmitations

What is one of the new findings that suggest classic attnetional blink (AB) theroies might need revision?

the magnitude of the AB is reduced when people attend less

What defines a dual task paradigm?

when stimuli associated with two tasks are presented more or less concurrently

What is the Psychological Refractory Perior (PRP) effect?

performance in a second tasks deterioates as the time it overlaps with task 1 increases

What defines a task switching paradigm?

when stimuli associated with two tasks are presented strictly sequentially

What is the typical finding in tasks switching paradigms?

performance is worse when there is a task witch cmpared to when there is a repetition of the same task again

What do these findings imply about multitasking?

if we try to mulitask, one task gets delayed

What does MOT stand for?

Multiple object tracking

What process does MOT help us study?

dynamic visual attention

What is tracking load?

the number of targets

Which of these is part of evidence that MOT draws heavily on atentional resources?

performing MOT at the same time as other attnetional demanding tasks impairs performance on the latter tasks, other attentional demanding tasks interfere with MOT performance, MOT performance correlates with performance on other attentional tasks

What are the two main types of attention involved in MOT?

selective visual attention and sustained visual attention

The Contralateral Delay Activity (CDA)?

an event-related potential (ERP) that increases in amplitude as the tracking load increases

What is the central difference between the main theories that seek to explain the capacity limitations of MOT?

whether they proposed fixed constraints (e.g. a set number of slots) or a limited attentional resource

What definition do Langner and Eickhoff (2013) use for vigilant attention?

Sustaining efficient conscious stimulus processing over periods longer than 10s

Sustaining attention to simple monotonous tasks is:

efforful and highly demanding

The major of the difficulty in sustaining high performance under vigilance conditions are:

resource depletion and mindwandering

What does the increase in the CDA with the increase in tracking load tell us?

This ERP provides an index of MOT capacity

What can we conclude about MOT?

It requires both selective and sustained attention

Why is it important to be able to rule out general time-on-taks effectss when studying vigilance?

So that you can interpret any drop in performance during monitoring as due to the vigilance component

What activates vehicle information systems?

Voice

What phase/s guideleins, entered into the Federal Register on March 12, 2012, address visual-manual interfaces for devices installed by vehicle manufactures?

Phase 1

Strayer et al.'s (2015) validated cognitive distraction scale is based on...

convergin operations form the laboratory, driving simulator, an instrumented vehicle driven in a residental section of Salt Lake City

Strater et al.'s 2014 research evaluated Apple's intelligent personal ssistant, Siri, and found:

cognitive workload increased and crashed increased

Voice-based interactions using an intelligent personal assistant such as Siri are:

more mentally demanding than conversing on a cell phone

A limitation of Strayer et al (2015B) was that:

the prior workload scale underestimated the cognitive load experienced by older adults, the sample was not representative of the population

What task was used to induce a high workload baseline during testing?

An auditory version of the OSPAN task

With regards to the DRT, an increase in the workload expeirenced by the driver is reflected in the data as:

increases in RT and decreases in hit rate

IVISs that were higher in cognitive workload were rated as...

being less intuitive, more complex, and their system interactions requried greater time to complete

A limitation/s of Strater et al. (2016)...

different vehicles had different IVISs

Driving while using a mobile phone is equivalent to

A blood alcohol level of 0.08%

Top-down proceesing is?

Information flow from higher to lower brain areas

Which neural network of areas do Corbetta and Shulman (2002) propose is involved in top-down control of attention?

dorsal posterior parietal and frontal cortex

Which neural network of areas do Corbetta and Shulman (2002) propose is invoved in bottom-up control of attention?

temporoparietal junction and ventral frontal cortex

What is an attentional set?

the representations involved in selecting task-relevant stimuli and responses

What attending to motion direction, fMRI data shows that:

areas in the frontal eye fields and intraparietal sulcus have a sustained response that is greater when participants attend to motion direction then view the display passively

What is working memory?

The ability to maintain and manipulate informaiton online

What is a saccade?

a rapid eye movment that brings the fovea to the point of interest

A sensory cue is an example of:

a stimulus that captures attention exogenously

The ventral frontoparietal network, particularly in the right hemisphere is activated when:

sensory stimuli of potentially high behavioural significance occur

What is uilateral spatial neglect?

a disorder where patients ignore stimuli on the contralesional side after unilateral brain damage

What do Corbetta and Shulman (2002) propose controls orienting in humans?

Two interactions:
bilateral parieto-frontal regions (including FEF) - control goal-directed attention
right-hemisphere lateralised system (including TPJ and ventral frontal areas) - alerting system

What would we see if an LIP neuron is "modulated by attention"?

Increase in firing when monkey is paying attention to a stimulus in the neuron's receptive field

An exogenous attention cue is:

non-predictive and captures attention involuntary

Working memory:

allows us to hold and manipulate information mentally

According to Diamond (2013), what are the three core executive functions?

inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility

Which of the following situations does NOT require executive functioning to complete?

nightly bedtime routine

Which of the following are tasks that primarily assess inhibitory control?

go.no-go tasks, stop-signal tasks, delay-of-gratification tasks, flanker task

You are tasked with rearragning a list of words verbally said to you in alphabetical order. The conitive domain relevent in this situation is:

working memory to hold information no longer perceptually present

Which of the following brain regions are MOST invovled with holding and manipulating information over a period of time:

dorsolateral PFC

Which of the following options contain cognitive abilities that are least relevat to cognitive flexibility?

interference control, salience detection

Which cognitive domain will children

inhibition

Patients with ADHD often show difficulty in shifting their responses to changing rules in the Wisconsin Card Sorting task. Which cognitive domain does this implicate?

cognitive flexibility

Studies on patients with ADHD have shown conflicting results regarding:

Selective Attention in visual search tasks

The most commonly prescribed medication given to ADHD patients are:

stimulants to target the dopaminergic system

Endogenous attention is:

voluntary

Saccade latency refers to:

time it takes to initiate an eye movement

True or false: the discrimination of a target is improved at the goal of an upcoming eye movement before the eyes move

True

In the saccadic dual task

Eye movements are manipulated to one location, while covert attention is directed to another

One of the issues with saccadic dual-task studies is:

They typically make comparisons across blocked conditions

True or false: there is no evidence to suggest that spatial attention and saccade preparation are dissociable

False

In social situations, eye movements

Signal to others information about where we are attending

Which of the following is an example of how eye movements may be used to regulate social interactions?

looking at someone to get their attention, avoiding looking at someone for a long time to avoid interacting with them, looking down when you pass someone you know to avoid saying hello

True or false: people do not use covert attention in social situations

False

In the social world, eye movements:

collect information about others and signal information about others

According to Scott et al. (2021), activity in which of the following cranial nerves plays a role in cognitive restoration and stress recovery?

Vagus nerve X (10)

According to Attention Restoration Theory, urban environments cause mental fatigue because they:

require top-down attention because they are attentinoally demanding

According to Stress Recovery Theory, urban environments cause stress because they:

evoke physiological states of arousal over a long period of time

The key difference between Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and Stress Recovery Theory (SRT) is that:

ART focuses on cognitive attentional processing on urban and natural environments, while SRT focuses more on peripheral stress responses caused by urban and natural environments

Scott et al. (2021) suggest the relationship between nature's restorative effect on cognitive attention and stress is:

bidirectional and co-occurring

Scott et al. (2021) suggests the relationship between nature's restorative effect and cognitive attention/stress is mediated by what?

vagal nerve tone because of its connection between the cognitive control network and the autonomic nerbous system

EEG studies of participants viewing images of natural scenery have shown:

increased spectral power of alpha frequency when compared to urban images

fMRI have shown that activity in visual processing brain areas:

decreases in response to nature images compared to urban images, is possible connected to the cognitive restorative effects of nature

How have the fMri results from visual processing areas been interpreted?

as support for attention restoration theory

A Challenge in evaluating the literature around studies of the cognitive restoration effects of nature is:

inconsistency around type and consistency of nature exposure between studies, inconsistencies around method of reporting of restorative effects of nature (self-reports vs psychological recordings) between studies, the lack of standardized approach between studies

Mountcastle provided early evidence that the parietal cortex was:

motor planning area

Which row depicts anti-saccades?

bottom

LIP stands for:

Lateral Intraparietal cortex

Parietal Reach Region includes:

MIP and dorsal PO

If activity in the PPC only reflects attention, then

There should be no (or insignificant) difference in PPC when we make different types of movements to the same location

Lateral intraparietal area activity appears to be involved in:

the intention to saccade to an area in space

Parietal reach region activity appears to be involved in:

the intention to reach an area in space