Memory and Attention Lecture Notes

Attention and Memory

Introduction to the Lecture

• Dr. Michael Barham discusses memory and attention, a topic related to his PhD thesis.
• Questions will be addressed in a Q&A session after the lecture.
• Past sessions led by Leah have received positive feedback and are considered valuable for revision.
• Past sessions this week will cover attention, memory processes, and APA 7 tips for assessment preparation.

Topics to Be Covered

1. Attention
2. Theories on the value and function of memories
3. Memory systems and disorders
4. Techniques for improving memory

Attention

• Attention is linked to memory.
• Attention is the ability to focus on and process a limited amount of information from the available stimuli.
• Modern society presents an overwhelming amount of information through social media, news, and entertainment.
• Attention helps focus on a smaller subset of information, allowing the brain to process and remember it.
• Attention is the initial step in forming a memory; we can't remember something if we don't pay attention to it.
• It is not easy to recall event details if attention was insufficient.
• Attention has limits.

Inattentional Blindness

• Failure to notice or recognize something because attention wasn't directed to it.

Change Blindness

• Failure to recognize when something changes due to insufficient attention.

Visual Search Tasks

• Measure how people sift through large amounts of visual information.
• Examples: finding a friend in a crowd, screening titles on Netflix, searching for food in a cupboard.

Visual Search Task Example

• The lecturer guides the audience through a visual search task to highlight attention principles.
• In one example, the odd stimulus (a purple M among green Ms) is easily found because it differs on a single characteristic (color).
• In a more challenging version, participants take longer to find the odd stimulus (a purple F) because they need to attend to two characteristics (letter and color).

Attention as a Spotlight

• Attention works like a spotlight, scanning around and processing only the information it focuses on.
• In difficult visual search tasks, attention scans around, processing each stimulus in turn until the odd one is found.
• Attention limits large amounts of information into smaller amounts we can compute through an attentional spotlight.

Attention as a Bottleneck

• Attention helps prevent us from being overwhelmed by large amounts of information.
• It's difficult for our brain to process multiple things simultaneously.
• Example: hearing someone say your name in a crowded environment quickly grabs your attention.
• At any one time, we process multiple things, but attention shifts to the most important signal.
• The attended channel (what we're paying attention to) is processed and formed into memories, while the unattended channel (background noise) is not.

Divided Attention

• Dividing attention is a myth; it is not possible to equally attend to multiple things at once.
• We rapidly shift attention between multiple things, but this comes at a cost.
• Dividing attention is resource-dependent; it depletes cognitive resources.
• If tasks are similar (e.g., reading a book and watching TV), it is harder to share attention because they compete for the same parts of the brain.
• If tasks are different (e.g., walking outside while on a phone call), the brain can automate one process, making it easier to share attention.
• Dividing attention is not a good strategy for learning; full attention on a single thing is best.
• Attention is the precursor to memories; what we attend to is what we may recall later.

Why We Have Memories

• Memories allow us to recall events from the past.
• Memories give us a historical record of experiences.
• Memories aid in survival and safety.
• What occurs is not always the same as what we remember.
• Memory gives us the gist of what has occurred, but specific details are often unreliable.
• Memory is imperfect, but this imperfection may have advantages.

Advantages of Imperfect Memory

• Example: A caveman attacked by a saber-tooth tiger needs to remember the event to react similarly in the future.
• However, the memory should not be too specific; it should generalize to similar situations.
• A good memory says,