CH 14 PSYC

Attention

Also called selective attention. A state or condition of selective awareness or perceptual receptivity, by which specific stimuli are selected for enhanced processing.

Overt Attention

Attention in which the focus coincides with sensory orientation (e.g., you’re attending to the same thing you’re looking at).

Covert Attention

Attention in which the focus can be directed independently of sensory orientation (e.g., you’re attending to one sensory stimulus while looking at another).

Inattentional Blindness

The failure to perceive nonattended stimuli that seem so obvious as to be impossible to miss.

Dichotic Listening

An experimental technique where different audio streams are presented to each ear simultaneously.

Cocktail Party Effect

The ability to focus on one conversation in a noisy environment, filtering out other sounds.

The selective enhancement of attention in order to filter out distracters, as you might do while listening to one person talking in the midst of a noisy party.

Early-Selection Model

A model of attention suggesting that unattended information is filtered out immediately at the sensory input level.

Late-Selection Model

A model of attention suggesting that unattended stimuli may undergo significant processing before being filtered out.

Binding Problem

The challenge of determining how different features processed in separate brain areas are combined into a single perceptual experience.

Voluntary Attention

Also called endogenous attention. The voluntary direction of attention toward specific aspects of the environment, in accordance with our interests and goals.

Reflexive Attention

Also called exogenous attention. The involuntary reorienting of attention toward a specific stimulus source, cued by an unexpected object or event

Symbolic Cuing

Also called spatial cuing. A technique for testing voluntary attention in which a visual stimulus is presented and participants are asked to respond as soon as the stimulus appears on a screen. Each trial is preceded by a meaningful symbol used as a cue to hint at where the stimulus will appear.

Peripheral Spatial Cuing

A technique for testing reflexive attention in which a visual stimulus is preceded by a simple taskirrelevant sensory stimulus either in the location where the stimulus will appear or in an incorrect location.

N1 Effect

A specific ERP characterized by a negative wave that reflects increased neural activity in response to attended auditory stimuli.

P1 Effect

An ERP associated with enhanced processing of visual stimuli when attention is directed at those stimuli.

Event-Related Potential (ERP)

Also called evoked potential. Averaged EEG recordings measuring brain responses to repeated presentations of a stimulus. Components of the ERP tend to be reliable because the background noise of the cortex has been averaged out.

Simultagnosia

A profound restriction of attention, often limited to a single item or feature.

Hemispatial Neglect

Failure to pay any attention to objects presented to one side of the body

Bálint’s Syndrome

A disorder, caused by damage to both parietal lobes, that is characterized by difficulty in steering visual gaze (oculomotor apraxia), in accurately reaching for objects using visual guidance (optic ataxia), and in directing attention to more than one object or feature at a time (simultagnosia).

Executive Function

A neural and cognitive system that helps develop plans of action and organizes the activities of other highlevel processing systems.

Default Mode Network

A circuit of brain regions that is active during quiet introspective thought.

Prefrontal Cortex

The most anterior region of the frontal lobe. It is involved in complex behaviors such as decision-making, problem-solving, and moderating social behavior.

Orbitofrontal Cortex

A region in the frontal lobes that is important for decision-making, particularly in assessing rewards and behavioral guidance.

Qualia (singular quale)

A purely subjective experience of perception.

Neuroeconomics

The study of brain mechanisms at work during decision-making.

Temporal Resolution

The ability to track changes in the brain that occur very quickly

Spatial Resolution

The ability to observe the detailed structure of the brain.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

A syndrome characterized by distractibility, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity that, in children, interferes with school performance.

Pulvinar nuclei (or just pulvinar)

In humans, the posterior portion of the thalamus. It is heavily involved in visual processing and direction of attention.

Superior Colliculus

A paired gray matter structure of the dorsal midbrain that processes visual information and is involved in direction of visual gaze and visual attention to intended stimuli.

Attentional Spotlight

The steerable focus of our selective attention, used to select stimuli for enhanced processing.

Sustained Attention Tasks

A task in which a single stimulus source or location must be held in the attentional spotlight for a protracted period.

Visual Search

The act of scanning the environment to locate a specific object among many distracters.

Conjunction Search

A search task that requires identifying a target based on a combination of two or more defining features.

Feature Search

A simple search task where a target is defined by a single distinctive feature among distracted.

A search for an item in which the target pops out right away, no matter how many distracters are present, because it possesses a unique attribute.

Inhibition of Return

The phenomenon, observed in peripheral spatial cuing tasks when the interval between cue and target stimulus is 200 milliseconds or more, in which the detection of stimuli at the former location of the cue is increasingly impaired.

Frontal Eye Field (FEF)

A region of the frontal cortex involved in the control of eye movements and visual attention.

vigilance

The global, nonselective level of alertness of an individual

shadowing

A task in which the participant is asked to focus attention on one ear or the other while different stimuli are being presented to the two ears, and to repeat aloud the material presented to the attended ear.

divided-attention task

A task in which the participant is asked to focus attention on two or more stimuli simultaneously.

attentional bottleneck

A filter created by the limits intrinsic to our attentional processes, whose effect is that only the most important stimuli are selected for special processing.

reaction time

The delay between the presentation of a stimulus and a participant’s response to that stimulus, measured in milliseconds.

binding problem

The question of how the brain understands which individual attributes blend together into a single object, when these different features are processed by different regions in the brain.

auditory N1 effect

A negative deflection of the event-related potential, occurring about 100 milliseconds after stimulus presentation, that is enhanced for selectively attended auditory input compared with ignored input.

P3 effect

A positive deflection in the event-related potential that occurs approximately 300 milliseconds after a stimulus, often associated with attention and memory processing.

visual P1 effect

A positive deflection of the event-related potential, occurring 70–100 milliseconds after stimulus presentation, that is enhanced for selectively attended visual input compared with ignored input.

lateral intraparietal area (LIP)

A region in the monkey parietal lobe, homologous to the human intraparietal sulcus, that is especially involved in voluntary, top-down control of attention.

intraparietal sulcus (IPS)

A region in the human parietal lobe, homologous to the monkey lateral intraparietal area, that is especially involved in voluntary, top-down control of attention.

frontal eye field (FEF)

An area in the frontal lobe of the brain that contains neurons important for establishing gaze in accordance with cognitive goals (top-down processes) rather than with any characteristics of stimuli (bottom-up processes).

temporoparietal junction (TPJ)

The point in the brain where the temporal and parietal lobes meet. It plays a role in shifting attention to a new location after target onset.

consciousness

The state of awareness of one’s own existence, thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

cognitively impenetrable

Referring to basic neural processing operations that cannot be experienced through introspection—in other words, that are unconscious.

easy problem of consciousness

Understanding how particular patterns of neural activity create specific conscious experiences by reading brain activity directly from people’s brains as they’re having particular experiences.

hard problem of consciousness

Understanding the brain processes that produce people’s subjective experiences of their conscious perceptions—that is, their qualia.

perseverate

Continue any activity beyond a reasonable degree.