(CHAPTER 4) ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS

Cognitive Psychology

Consciousness

(Attention) needs taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or train of thoughts.

-William James

Attention

Process of selecting and processing (SP) a limited amount of information that is:
- stored memories
- sensory information
- other cognitive processes

1. Consciousness attention

2. Unconscious attention

Attention involves both what?

Conscious Attention

refers when you are aware of what you’re focusing on

Unconscious Information

information process without your awareness

Consciousness

The feeling of awareness and the content of what you are aware of

1. Monitor the environment

2. Connect Past and Present

3. Control and plan future actions
   
   (MCC)

What are the 3 purpose of awareness? (MCC)

Signal Detection Theory (SDT)

This theory explains how we detect Important stimuli (signals) among irrelevant or distracting stimuli.

1. HIT

2. FALSE ALARM

3. MISS

4. CORRECT REJECTION

What are the examples of Signal Detection Theory (SDT) ?

HIT

We correctly detect the signal (Present and Detected)

FALSE ALARM

Detects that signal that is not there (Absent but detected)

MISS

Fails to detect a signal that is present

Correct Rejection

Correctly identified that no signal is present (Absent and Not detected)

Hit

Present and detected (There is a smoke and alarm activated)

False Alarm

Absent and detected (No smoke and alarm activated)

Miss

Present and Not detected (There is a Smoke and No alarm)

Correct Rejection

Absent and Not Detected (No Smoke and No Alarm)

1. Attention

2. Perception

3. Memory

Signal Detection Theory can be discussed in terms of?

Vigilance: Waiting to Detect Signal (WDS)

The ability to Maintain attention for a prolonged period of time while waiting to detect a specific target stimulus that may appear at an unknown time.

Requires Immediate Attention

(Ex. you watch a volleyball game and you used this signal cause you will believed that ball will caught you)

Expected Location

In the Vigilance WDS is that when we are in this location our attention is faster and way more accurate

Unexpected Location

In the Vigilance WDS is that when we are in this location our attention is slower and less accurate detection

Amygdala

Part of the Vigilance: Waiting to Detect a Signal → part of the brain that is important for recognizing and detecting stimuli

Thalamus

This part of the brain involved primarily in Vigilance

Distracters

Non target stimuli that divert attention away from the target and make search more difficult.
(make search more difficult)

Feature Search

• Looking for one distinctive feature (eg., color, shape, or size)

• faster and easier

• number of distracters has a little effect
  
  

Conjunction Search

Looking for a target based on a combination of two or more features

• More difficult and time consuming

• More distracters → greater difficulty

Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

This theory explains why feature search is much easier than conjunction search

1. Stage 1: Feature Search → no conscious attention

2. Stage 2: Conjunction Search → requires conscious attention

What is the two stages of Object Perception (FIT)

Feature Search

Perceives individual features such as color, size, and shape.

• Automatic and requires little/no conscious attention.

Mental Glue

• Conjunction Search Combines two or more features using a ___ ____.

Similarity Theory

The more similar the target and the distracter is, the harder it is to find the target.

Similarity Theory

Ex. Lower text is easier to read than uppercase letters have more distinguishing features and are less similar to each other

Selective Attention

• Is the process of tracking one stream of information while filtering out competing, simultaneous input — like following one conversation.

Cocktail Party Problem

One of the examples of Selective Attention that when there is party full of people — it is where you tracks one conversation in the face of distraction of other conversations.

Shadowing

• it is a term where you repeat the sentence statement in your left ear out loud and the right ear there is a sentence statement also, but what you are reading, repeating, and saying out loud is what you focused and you ignored the one on your left ear.

• Left ear → statement out loud

• Right ear statement → ignored

Dichotic Presentation

• Headset put in your two ears and play a different message in each ear at once. Participants now used their own shadowing — repeat back — only one message, as soon as they hear it. (They only focused on one message).

1. Pitch

2. Intensity (loudness)

3. Location of the sound (is it near the ear?)

What are the factors of selectively attend to only one message of the target speaker? (3)

1. Filter

2. Bottleneck

(Filet & Bottleneck Model)

What are the two explanations of selective attention? (FB)

Filter

blocks some of the information going through and thereby selects only a part of the total of information to pass through to the next stage.

Bottle neck

slow downs information passing through

Broadbent’s Model (BBM)

According to one of the earliest theories of attention, we filter information right after we notice it at the sensory level. Multiple channels of sensory input reach an attentional filter. Those channels can be distinguished by their characteristics like loudness, pitch, or accent.

Approach of selective attention

Selective Filter Model-Moray (SFMM)

Found that even when participants ignore most other high level aspects of an unattended message, they frequently still recognize their names in an unattended ear.

• Ignore right ear unattended → when they hear they name they still recognized it.

Attenuation Model (Anne Treisman)

• Instead of blocking the unattended stimuli outright, the filter merely attenuates (weakens them).

• Unattended input is still analyzed at a low level for target properties like loudness and pitch — and even for meaning, if it’s important enough to reach consciousness.

Anna Treisman

Who is the proponent for Attenuation Model?

1. Preattentive Processes

2. Attentive Controlled Processes (ACP)

Ulric Neisser proposed that there are processing governing attention. (PA)

Pre-attentive Processes

According to Ulric Neisser (Attention) → These automatic processes are rapid and occur in parallel. They can be used to notice only physical sensory

characteristics of the unattended message. But they do not discern meaning or relationships.

• They know that it is a male and female voice (physical sensory characteristics) → but does not know the meaning what they say.

Attentive Controlled Processes (ACP)

• According to Ulric Neisser

• These processes occur later.

• They are executed serially and consume time and attentional resources, such as working memory.

• They can also used to observe relationships among features.

• They serve to synthesize fragments into a mental representations of an object.

Event Related Potential

reveal how the brain processes attention.

Negative 1 Wave (90 ms)

the ERP's first negative wave was larger when the target occurred in the attended ear

• A negative wave

Earlier Positive Wave (20 - 50 ms)

found an even earlier auditory-cortex response. The wave originates in the Heschl’s gyri, which are located in the auditory cortex preceding the N1 effect.

• A positive Wave

Visual P1 Wave

A positive wave over occipital cortex is larger when a target appears in an attended region of the visual field — enlarged further, with faster reaction time, when a cue closely precedes the target.

• Positive Wave → Visual Field

1. Negative Wave 1 or N1 → 90 ms

2. Earlier Positive Wave → 20 - 50 ms

3. Visual P1 Wave

1. Negative Wave ear

2. Positive Wave ear

3. Positive wave eye

Divided Attention

This occurs when you engage in two or more tasks at once

PRP EFFECT / ATTENTIONAL BLINK

When a second speeded task follows the first too quickly, its response is delayed — cognitive operations like decision-making and memory retrieval mist be handles one at a time.

• It basically says that we process information ONE AT A TIME cause when it happened too fast it can cause DELAYED

Psychological refractory effect

PRP effect meaning (the PRP means)

Single Resource Model (SRM)

One shared pool of mental resources is divided freely among whatever tasks are underway.

• Writing → single resource for that

• Reading → single resource for that

and it is divided freely

Multiple Resource Model (MRM)

Separate resource pools exist for different modalities (e.g. verbal vs. visual) — that's why writing while listening to music is easier than writing while listening to talk radio.

Attention resource theory (ART)

• The human brain has a limited pool of mental energy or capacity used to process tasks and focus attention.

• We have limited resources to process tasks

• a theory

1. Anxiety

2. Arousal

3. Task Difficulty

4. Skills

What are the 4 factors that influence our ability to pay attention? (AATS)

Alerting

• defined as being prepared to attend to some incoming event, and maintaining this attention.

• also includes the process of getting to this state of preparedness.

Orientation

• is defined as the selection of stimuli to attend to.

• This kind of attention is needed when we perform a visual

search.

Executive Attention

• Attention includes processes for monitoring and resolving conflicts that arise among internal processes.

• These processes include thoughts, feelings, and responses.

Attention Resource Theory (ART)

What theory explains when our attention is limited resource?

Planning, Attention, and Simultaneous–Successive Process Model of Human Cognition (PASS)-

there are three distinct processing units and each is associated with specific areas of the brain: arousal and attention, simultaneous and successive processing, and planning.

1. Inspection Time

2. Reaction Time

3. Choice Reaction Time

Three types of PASS

Inspection time

is the amount of time it takes you to inspect items

and make a decision about them

Reaction Time

the smart person is someone whose neural circuits

conduct information rapidly.

choice reaction time

the time it takes to select one answer from

among several possibilities.

WEEE-WOOO-WEEE-

1. Posterior Parietal Cortex

2. Thalamus

3. Midbrain

Visual Attentional Deficits have been linker to the?

Posterior Parietal Cortex

• Part of the brain helps direct attention toward locations in space.

• Damage here can acquire difficulty in attention appropriately.

Thalamus

Relay station for vigilance?

Midbrain

• Part of the brain that is for (RAS) help to coordinate where the eyes move and where attention is directed.

• eye movement

1. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

2. Change Blindness

3. Inattentional blindness

What are the 3 examples of Failing Attention?

1. Change Blindness

2. Inattentional Blindness

What are the two types of Blindness?

Change Blindness

is when a person fails to notice a change in something they are looking at, even though the change is clearly there.

Inattentional Blindness

You don't notice something because your attention is somewhere else.

Spatial Neglect or Hemi Neglect

• It is an attentional dysfunction in which participants ignore the half of their visual field that is contralateral to the hemisphere of the brain that has a lesion.

Right Hemisphere

• What hemisphere of the brain that involves attention?

Habituation

• is becoming accustomed to a stimulus so that we gradually pay less attention to it.

• happens without conscious effort

• familiarity of the stimuli

Dishabituation

• a change in a familiar stimulus prompts us to start noticing the stimulus again.

• Familiar sounds becomes unfamiliar and enters awareness

(ain’t in LA by adela)

Sensory Adaptation

• a lessening of attention to a stimulus that is not subject to conscious control.

• It occurs directly in the sense organ, not in the brain.

• We can exert some conscious control over whether we notice something to which we have become habituated, but we have no conscious control over sensory adaptation.

1. Accesible to conscious control

2. Not tied to stimulus intensity

3. Tied to prior exposure

Habituation are?

1. Not accessible to conscious control

2. Tied to simulus intensity

3. Not tied to prior exposure

Sensory Adaptation are?

1. Arousal

2. EEG

• is a degree of physiological excitation, responsivity, and readiness for action, relative to a baseline.

• it is measure in terms of what machine?

Automatic Processes

• Fast, effortless thinking that

  happens without conscious

  trying.

Controlled Processes

• Slow, conscious thinking that

  requires full concentration and

  effort.

Automatization (Proceduralization)

The cognitive process by which a deliberate, attention-demanding activity transitions into an automatic skill through continuous practice and repetition.

ex. riding a bike needs attention demanding activity --> but now it is just an automatic process.

Stroop Effect → John Ridley Stroop

• difficulty naming the ink color when the word itself names a different color.

• Named after ?

The Classic View

• At first, each step takes work.

• With practice, individual steps group together into bigger parts.

• Eventually, the entire process becomes one single, smooth operation.

• It frees up attention and mental effort for other things.

Start → slow & effortful → practice → group steps → eventually automatic & easy → attention is FREED UP! ✅

Instance Theory

• Automatization happens because we collect specific memories of reacting to specific situations.

• Instead of working through a problem step-by-step, you instantly pull the answer from memory.

• You can still go back to doing it step-by-step if you encounter something new.

Stored in memory → pulling than → react to situation.

Mindlessness

Automatization can cause ____ as we already follow our routines without noticing important changes and thoughts that we had planned ahead.

• Studying cause exam tomorrow → but your body routine says sleep time and no worry.

Mistakes

• Wrong goal or plan

• Intentional and controlled processes

You do not have knowledge about it that is why you made a mistake.

ex. You intentionally give it to your dog to relieved your dogs pain, but your dog got worse, because you do not have knowledge about what is that medicine all about.

Slips

• Correct goal, but wrong execution

• Often occur during automatic process

ex. You type “Teh” instead of the

ex. You give medicine to your dog even that medicine is for human because of how scared you are what will happened to your dog.

1. Capture

2. Omission

3. Preservation

4. Description

5. Data-driven

6. Associative activation

7. Loss of activation

What are the types of slips? (COP D DAL) 7

Capture (routine automatization)

• Routine takes over

• ex. Going to bed when you intended to go out

Omission (skip)

• Skip a step

• ex. forgetting to wear your underwear, do toothbrush, wear ID

Preservation (repeat will not work)

• Repeat the step

• ex. turning the ignition again

Repeating the actions NONSTOP even though it still won’t work even we do it again and again.

you preserve that idea in your brain, doing it again and again; but it will not work.

Description (right action wrong object)

• Right action wrong object

• ex. Charger as a key