Attention

change blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment

inattentional blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

processing capacity

The amount of information input that a person can handle. This sets a limit on the person's ability to process information.

Why can we say that we don't need to be aware of all of the details of what is happening around us?

1. Although inattentional blindness and change blindness indicate that we don't notice everything that is happening, our perceptual system is well adapted for survival. We can be warned about possible danger by movement, and the perceptual system makes optimal use of limited processing resources by focusing on what is being attended. 2. Perceptual system has a warning system that causes us to rapidly shift our attention to things that might signal danger (attentional capture) 3. Scene schemas enable us to fill in what's around us so that we can focus on what's important.

What is the difference between central vision and peripheral vision? How is this difference related to overt attention, fixations, and eye movements?

1. Central vision is the area you are looking at 2. Peripheral vision is everything off to the side 3. Fixation is the brief pause of eye movements 4. Saccadic eye movements are rapid, jerky movements from one fixation to the next.

What are illusory conjunctions, and what do they demonstrate about feature analysis? How have illusory conjunction experiments supported the role of attention in feature analysis? How do experiments with Balint's syndrome patients support feature integration theory?

1. Combinations of features from different stimuli. 2. Occur because features are free floating and can be incorrectly combined when there is more than one object 3. Those with Balint's syndrome have difficulty to focus attention on individual objects - makes it difficult to integrate features.

Describe the following physiological research that demonstrates how attention is "taking possession by the brain": Datta and DeYoe experiment; O'Craven and coworkers experiment.

1. Datta and DeYoe: Attention enhances activity at the locations on the brain's topographic map that are attended to. This is the brain's way of "taking possession" of the location where the subject is directing his attention. 2. O'Craven and coworkers; Subjects presented with face and house superimposed. Subjects were asked to direct their attention to one stimulus or the other. Told to either attend to the stationary or moving sitmulus. FFA activity peaked for stationary face and PPA peaked for moving/stationary house. 3. Thus, attention caused the brain to take possession of the object being attended to by increasing activity in the area specialized to perceive that object.

How was the dichotic listening procedure used to determine how well people can focus on the attended message and how much information can be taken in from the unattended message? What is the cocktail party effect, and what does it demonstrate?

1. Dichotic listening task - Simultaneous listening to 2 different sounds separately in each ear i) First part is to say what you ear in one ear (shadow) ii) Second part is to notice, without shifting attention from the attended ear, what you can take in from the other ear. iii) Result; could not report what was said in the unattended ear 2. Cocktail party effect; the ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli (conversations at parties). It demonstrates selective attention.

What conclusions can be reached from the results of experiments testing the ability to drive while talking on a cell phone? What are some of the differences between a driver talking to a passenger and a driver talking on a cell phone?

1. Driver inattention is one of the major causes of automobile accidents. There is evidence that using cell phones while driving is associated with increases in traffic accidents and decreases in performance of driving-related tasks. 2. Handsfree and voice-activated devices are just as distracting as handheld devices. 3. Someone on the phone doesn't know your conditions while a passenger does and is considerate of that.

Describe Treisman's feature integration theory. What does the theory seek to explain about perceiving objects? What are the stages of the theory, and at what point does attention become involved?

1. Feature integration theory addressed the binding problem by proposing two stages of processing, preattentive processing and focused attention. The basic idea is that objects are analyzed into their features and that attention is necessary to combine these features to create perception of an object. 2. Illusory conjunction, visual search, and neuropsychology experiments support feature integration theory.

What were the results of experiments by Moray (words in the unattended ear) and Gray and Wedderburn ("Dear Aunt Jane")? Why are the results of these experiments difficult to explain based on Broadbent's filter model of attention?

1. Had recognized names presented to unattended ear. This opposes the filter model because it states that we wouldnt be able to detect information from the unattended ear. 2. Participants were told to shadow the message presented to the left ear. But they reported hearing the message "Dear Aunt Jane," which starts in the left ear, jumps to the right ear, and then goes back to the left ear. 3. Attention was thus switching form one ear to the other ebcause they were taking the meaning of the words into account (top-down).

Describe the Egly precueing experiment. What is the same-object advantage, and how was it demonstrated by Egly's experiment?

1. Keep eyes on +. Then, one end of the rectangle is briefly highlighted. 2. Task was to press a button when the target was presented anywhere on the display. 2. Faster reaction time when square was presented at prior cue presentation 3. Object-based attention occurs when attention is directed toward specific objects. The enhancing effects of attention spread throughout an object—an effect called the same-object advantage.

Describe the Forster and Lavie experiment on how processing capacity and perceptual load determine distraction. What is the load theory of attention?

1. Lavie proposes that our ability to ignore distracting stimuli can be explained by considering processing capacity and perceptual load. 2. People had to press keys for either X or N in two different conditions; easy and hard and for no dogs vs dogs. Increase in time found for with dogs. Higher for easy condition because more resources could be devoted to task-irrelevant stimulus. 3. Load theory of attention states that distraction is less likely for high-load tasks because no capacity remains to process potential distracting stimuli

Describe the peanut butter experiment. What does the result tell us about the relation between task demands and attention?

1. Looked at the sequence of actions involved in making a peanut butter sandwich and eye movements. 2. Result: The person's eye movements were determined primarily by the task.

Describe some examples of how attention is determined by cognitive factors. What is the role of scene schemas?

1. Meaning of certain visual aspects draws us to their location on the image (top-down) 2. Scene schemas are the observer's knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes. (top-down); we look longer at things that are 'out of scene'

Describe MacKay's "bank" experiment. Why does his result provide evidence for late selection?

1. Participants would shadow "They were thrwoing stones at the bank" while words like "river" and "money" were presented to the unattended ear. 2. They were then asked to pick a sentence that was then closest to meaning of the previous sentence 3. The meaning of the biasing word affected the subjects' choice. 4. MacKay said that because the meaning of the word river or money was affecting their judgments, the words must have been processed to the level of meaning though it was unattended. 4. Late selection proposes that most of the incoming information is processed to the level of meaning before the message to be further processed is selected.

Describe Schneider and Shiffrin's experiment that demonstrated automatic processing. What are some real-life examples of automatic processing? When is automatic processing not possible?

1. Require subjects to carry out two tasks simultaneously: (I) holding information about target stimuli in memory and (2) paying attention to a series of "distractor" stimuli and determining whether one of the target stimuli is present among these distractor stimuli. 2. Result: Practice made it possible for subjects to divide heir attetnion to deal wtih alll of the target and test items simultaneously. 3. Automatic processing occurs without intention, and at a cost of only some of a person's cognitive resources. 4. Real-life example; When you have driven somewhere and can't remember the trip once you get to your destination - driving is automatic 5. Not possible with difficult tasks,

What is covert attention? Location-based attention? Describe the precueing procedure used by Posner. What does the result of Posner's experiment indicate about the effect of attention on information processing?

1. Shifting attention without making eye movements. 2. The effect of covert attention has been demonstrated by precueing experiments, which have shown that covert attention to a location enhances processing at that location. This is called location-based attention. 3. precueing experiments determine whether presenting a cue indicating where a test stimulus will appear enhances the processing of the target stimulus. 4. Posner's precuing experiment; participants kept eyes on the + in the display. They then saw an arrow cue indicating on which side they should focus their attention. A square would either appear/not appear on this side and the participants would have to press a key whe nthe square appeared. 5. Result: Faster time when presented on the same side becasue attention was directed there.

Describe Li's experiment that considers what information we can take in about unattended stimuli.

1. Subjects looked at the + on the fixation screen and then saw the central stimulus - an array of 5 letters. 2. On some trials, all letters were the same. On other trials, one of the letters was different from the other 4 3. The letters were followed by a peripheral stimulus 4. Central task was to indicate if all of the letters in the central stimulus were the same and their peripheral task was to indicate whether the colored discs were red-green or green-red. 5. Result: 90% performance for picture peripheral vs 50% disk peripheral. 6. Result: Perceptual system is adapted to take in the info we need to survive.

Describe Broadbent's model of selective attention. Why is it called an early selection model?

1. The attended message is separated from the incoming signal early in the analysis of the signal. Seeks to explain cocktail party phenomenon. i)sensory memory hold information for a fraction of a second and then transfers it to the ii)filter identifies the message that is being attended to based not is physical characteristics (i.e. tone, pitch) and lets only this attended message pass through the ___, All other messages are filtered out iii) detector; processes info from the attended message to determine higher-level characteristics of the message (i.e. meaning). iv) Output of detector sent to STM and to LTM. 2. Called a bottleneck model; the filter restricts information flow as the neck of a bottle restricts the flow of a liquid, so the liquid escapes only slowly even though there is a large amount in the bottle. 3. Called an "early" selection model becaues the filter eliminates the unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information.

Describe the following evidence that attention is sometimes necessary for perception: inattentional blindness experiment; "basketball" experiment; change detection experiments.

1. The experiments provide evidence that without attention we may fail to perceive things that are clearly visible in the field of view. 2. inattentional blindness - basketball; 1 team of 3 was passing around a basket ball with 3 others of another team 'guarding'. You are asked to focus on the passing team. Then, a gorilla suited person walks through. Result: <50% people don't notice. 3. change blidness; presenting two images back and forth relatively quickly until change is detected.

What is stimulus salience? How is it related to attention?

1. The physical properties of the stimulus, sucha s color, contrast, or movement by which attention can be influenced. It is a bottom-up process 2. attentional capture=stimulus salience causing involuntary shift of attention

What is binding, and why is it necessary? What is the binding problem?

1. The process by which object features (i.e. color, form, motion) are combined to create perception of a coherent object. 2. Necessary because it reveals how different areas of the brain are involved in processing these differnet features. 3. Binding problem: The question of how an object's individual features become bound together

What is a feature search? A conjunction search? Which type of search did the Balint's patient find difficult? What does that tell us about the role of attention in feature integration?

1. The search for a target defined by a single attribute, such as a salient color or orientation 2. The search for a combination of two or more features 3. Balint's patients found it difficult to do conjunction searches becasue they are useful for studying binding 4. Thus, FIT considers attnetion to be an essential component of the mechanism that creataes our perception of objects from a number of different features.

dichotic listening task

A task in which a person hears two or more different, specially recorded messages over earphones and is asked to attend to one of them.

visual search

A task in which participants are asked to determine whether a specified target is present within a field of stimuli (i.e. Where's Waldo?)

Describe Treisman's attenuation model. First indicate why she proposed the theory, then how she modified Broadbent's model to explain some results that Broadbent's model couldn't explain.

Attention occurs in two stages. 1. Attenuator analyzes the incoming message in terms of i) physical characteristics (i.e. high versus low pitched), ii) language (how the message groups into syllables/words) and iii) meaning 2. Later separation (attended messages are at full strength and unattended mesages are attenuated/weaker strength) and a dictionary unit which explains how the unattended message can sometimes get through

What is the Stroop effect? What does it illustrate about task-irrelevant stimuli?

Demonstrates how a powerful task-irrelevant stimulus, such as meaningful words that result in a response that competes with the observer's task, can capture attention.

bottleneck model

Model of attention that proposes that incoming information is restricted at some point in processing, so only a portion of the information gets through to consciousness. Broadbent's model of attention is an example of a bottleneck model.

overt attention

Overt attention is determined by bottom-up processes such as stimulus salience and by top-down processes such as scene schemas and task demands, which influence how eye movements are directed to parts of a scene. Its where we shift attention by moving the eyes.

divided attention

Paying attention to more than one thing at a time. It's possible for easy tasks or for highly practiced difficult tasks. Automatic processing is possible in these situations but is not possible for very difficult tasks.

perceptual load

Related to the difficulty of a task. Low-load tasks (well-practiced) use only a small amount of a person's processing capacity. High-load tasks (novel/hard) use more of the processing capacity.

Give examples of situations that illustrate the following: selective attention, distraction, divided attention, attentional capture, and scanning.

Selective attention; dichotic listening task. Doing math problems, and blocking others' conversations distraction; playing a game but interrupted by others' conversations divided attention; playing a game and simultaneously listening to others' conversations attentional capture and visual scanning; commotion/fight across the room makes you suddenly turn towards it and scan to figure out what is happening

attentional capture

a rapid shifting of attention usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement

dictionary unit

contains words, stored in memory, each of which has a threshold for being activated (i.e. our names have a low threshold and demonstrates the cocktail party phenomenon)

visual scanning

movements of the eyes from one location or object to another

distraction

one stimulus interfering with the processing of another stimulus

selective attention (attention)

the ability to focus on one message/stimuli/location while ignoring all others