C5- Attention

Selective Attention
Selection via Priming
- Priming based on Stimulus (no cost) or Expectation (cost if mis-cuing happened)
Spatial Attention
Divided Attention
Practice, Automaticity, and Attentional Resources Required

The term "attention" encompasses various mental processes, indicating different cognitive functions.
Different forms of attention likely have distinct neural control centers and are not interchangeable.
The word "attention" originates from Latin: 注意 (Chinese), 주의 (Korean), attendere from tendere meaning "to stretch".
While attention can be deliberately controlled, distractions are common.
Attention-deficit disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are notable conditions affecting attention.
Unilateral neglect syndrome is an extreme disorder where patients cannot attend to stimuli on one side of their body.

Individuals with unilateral neglect syndrome are unable to focus on inputs arising from one side of their body.
A common test involves patients drawing a typical clock face, revealing inability to engage with one side.
Often resulting from damage to the right parietal cortex, leading to a phenomenon known as contralateral neglect.

Selective Attention: The ability to focus on one input or task while disregarding other stimuli.
Dichotic Listening Tasks: A method where different audio inputs are presented to each ear via headphones.
- Attended Channel: The designated audio input one is supposed to focus on.
- Unattended Channel: The audio input that is ignored.
- Shadowing: A technique where participants repeat aloud the information from the attended channel to confirm focus.
Some effects of selective attention lead to failure in perceiving stimuli directly in front of the observer.
Cocktail Party Effect: The phenomenon where individuals notice pertinent information from the unattended channel, such as their name, despite focusing on another conversation.
Participants often remain unaware of the semantic details of the unattended channel but can detect physical attributes and personally significant semantic content.

Explanation for insensitivity to unattended channels involves a filtering mechanism:
- Filters shield against known distractors while allowing focused processing of desired stimuli.

Inattentional Blindness: The failure to notice a prominent stimulus when focused elsewhere.
- Statistical figure: 89% fail to see a change without warning, while only 9% fail with warning.
Researchers suggest that people may not remember what they experienced rather than failing to perceive it.
Variants include:
- Inattentional Deafness: Neglecting auditory stimuli.
- Inattentional Numbness: Neglecting haptic stimuli.

Change Blindness: The inability to detect changes in an environment despite direct observation of that environment.
- Investigated through experiments revealing failure to notice changes when attention is segmented.

Inattentional and change blindness arise from either not perceiving the stimulus or failing to remember it.
Early Selection Theory (Donald Broadbent):
- Suggests only attended inputs are analyzed and perceived with unattended information experiencing minimal processing.
Late Selection Theory (Treisman):
- Proposes all inputs are analyzed with selection occurring post-analysis; unattended inputs may be perceived but quickly forgotten.
Evidence supporting both theories exists based on differing brain activity and reaction times to stimuli.

Spatial Attention: The focus on specific locations within space, supported by cuing studies.
Repetition Priming: Priming based on prior stimulus encounters without cognitive resource investment.
Expectation-Driven Priming: Deliberate priming of expected stimuli requiring mental effort.
Example: In Posner et al.'s (1980) study, participants press a button upon stimulus appearance, highlighting attention shifts based on cued expectations.

Selection behavior results from priming based on expectations where detectors are more sensitive to anticipated stimuli.
Biased Competition Theory: Suggests attention creates temporary neuron sensitivity biases, enhancing processing of desired stimuli while inhibiting distractors.

Repetition priming incurs no costs, while expectation-based priming does.
When misled, participants perform worse, indicating attentional resources are limited in capacity.
Attention as a Spotlight: Conceptualizes spatial attention as a moveable beam across the visual field.
- Eye movements require about 180 ms, while shifts in attention can occur as quickly as 150 ms.
The attention control system includes:
1. Orienting System: Engages attention on a new target.
2. Alerting System: Maintains an alert state.
3. Executive System: Manages voluntary actions.

Proposal links ADHD symptoms with neural networks corresponding to alerting, orienting, and executive functions based on different brain areas.
Symptomatic behavior is categorized into problems in sustaining attention, susceptibility to distractions, and executive function impairments.

Attention is critical in resolving the binding problem, where multiple features of objects are integrated.
Feature Integration Theory:
1. Preattentive Stage: Parallel processing of features.
2. Focused Attention Stage: Processing advantages through expectation-based priming.

Divided Attention: Performing multiple tasks simultaneously is constrained by mental resources.
Task interference occurs when demands exceed available resources.
Performance improves with tasks differing in type, while similar tasks compete heavily for the same cognitive resources.
Empirical evidence reveals task interference correlates with task similarity.
Example statistics indicate that talking on a phone while driving increases missed signals significantly.

Executive control manages cognitive resources across tasks with multi-tasking demands varying in perceptual load.
Mechanisms for executive control include:
- Regulating thoughts, maintaining goals, organizing mental processes, shifting strategies, and inhibiting automatic responses.
Damage to the prefrontal cortex may lead to challenges in executive functioning, such as perseveration errors.

Automaticity: Refers to skills that have been practiced to the extent of requiring minimal executive control.
- Example: Stroop interference test where individuals struggle to name ink colors while ignoring printed words.
Factors influencing automaticity include the nature of the task, task novelty, and the extent of practice.

Tasks demand finite resources; thus, over-demand leads to interference.
Attention encompasses a range of processes including selective and divided attention, highlighting its flexibility and complexity.