Chapter 4 - The Varieties of Attention

What have the results of Stroop test experiments often been used to illustrate?

The distinction between controlled and automatic processes.

The research of Yarbis (1967) indicates that when viewing a face, ______.

We initially fixate our eyes on the face and mouth.

The inattentional blindness paradigm used by Mack and Rock showed what?

-It showed people failed to perceive task-irrelevant events when attention is directed at another task. -That the unnoticed stimulus can still modulate behavior, despite a lack of conscious perception. -That faces capture attention in situations when other stimulus categories such as simple circles do not.

Research using the moving windows technique suggests that the minimum number of characters that need to be visible to not affect reading is ______.

17 to 20

What did Hazeltine, Teague, and Ivry find about central bottlenecks in highly practiced tasks?

A central bottleneck can be overcome with practice.

Sustained Attention To Response Task (SART)

A continuous response task in which digits (e.g., 0 to 9) are sequentially presented on a computer screen and participants are asked to press a button in response to all but one of them (e.g., the infrequent digit 3); response to this infrequent digit is supposed to be withheld.

Filter

A hypothetical mechanism that would admit certain messages and block others. The hypothesis that one of the stages of information processing might be a filter that admits some messages but blocks others.

Moving Window Technique

A method of determining how much visual information can be taken in during a fixation, in which the reader is prevented from seeing information beyond a certain distance from the current fixation.

Default Network

A set of brain areas that are active when an individual does not have a specific task to do and is absorbed in internal thought.

Mind Wandering

A shift of mental resources away from the task at hand and towards internal thoughts.

Shadowing Task

A task in which the subject is exposed to two messages simultaneously and must repeat one of them.

What does failing to stop quickly while driving because you were talking on your cell phone best represent?

A task switching cost.

Set

A temporary, top-down organization in the brain that facilitates some responses while inhibiting others in order to achieve a certain goal; also referred to as "mental set." Temporary, top-down organizations that facilitate some responses, while inhibiting others, in order to achieve the person's goals.

Peripheral Cueing Paradigm

A test in which a light (i.e., the cue) flashes in the periphery and is followed by a target either in the same (cued) location or a different (uncued) one.

Location-Suppression Hypothesis

A two-stage explanation for the quiet eye phenomenon: in the preparation stage, the quiet eye maximizes information about the target object; then, during the location stage, vision is suppressed to optimize the execution of an action or behavior.

Resource Depletion Account

A version of the overload view according to which performance declines over time as attentional resources become depleted.

Regressions

Right to left movements of the eyes during reading, directing them to previously read text.

Automatic Processes

Also called bottom-up, stimulus-driven, and involuntary processes. They are truely autonomous, running itself without requiring to pay attention to it.

Controlled Processes

Also called top-down, goal-directed, and voluntary. They are processes you must pay attention to if you want to execute them properly.

Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)

An area of the brain that may detect conflicting response tendencies of the sort that the Stroop task elicits. Located towards the front of the cortex and cingulate means "arch shaped."

Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC)

An area of the brain that may exert a top-down bias that favours the selection of task-relevant information. It is located towards the top, outside part of the front of the frontal lobes.

Flanker Task

An experiment in which participants may be influenced by an irrelevant stimulus beside the target.

Central Cueing Paradigm

An experimental method in which a central cue (e.g., arrow) points to a location in which a target might subsequently appear.

Task-Related Knowledge

An observer's knowledge of the goals and the task at hand as it guides the eyes during a visual task.

Selective attention

Attending to relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information.

Overt Attention

Attending to something with eye movement.

Covert Attention

Attending to something without eye movement.

The notion of ________ refers to the diversion of attention by a stimulus that is strong enough to attract attention even if it had been focused elsewhere.

Attention Capture

Why is attention capture ecologically useful?

Because it enables attention to be drawn to new objects in a field that may represent an important threat to be avoided or an important opportunity to be sought out (like prey).

Task Switching

Changing from working on one task to working on another; usually studied in situations in which the switch is involuntary. People change their set from working on one task to involuntarily working on another.

What type of errors do people make when performing the sustained attention to response task (SART)?

Commission Errors

Dual Task Situations

Conditions under which an individual is given two tasks that must be performed at the same time.

A(n) ________ process demands attention while a(n) ________ process operates without the necessary engagement of any attentional processes.

Controlled; Automatic

Which area of the brain has been associated with top-down bias that favours the selection of task-relevant information?

DLPFC (Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex)

William James claimed, "Everyone knows what attention is." What would most researchers today say about that?

Defining attention is very difficult, "attention" has a variety of meanings.

Embodied

Existing within a body; the term reflects the general view that cognition depends not only on the mind but also on the physical constraints of the body in which the mind exists.

What did Lavie, Ro, and Russell find about face processing in their version of the flanker task?

Face processing is involuntary.

Inattentional Blindness

Failure to attend to events that we might be expected to notice.

Attentional Blink (AB)

Failure to notice the second of two stimuli presented within 550 milliseconds of each other. When two stimuli are presented within 550 milliseconds of each other, the probability of the second letter being reported is much less than it would be for longer intervals.

Commission Error

Failure to withhold a response to the infrequent digit in the SART.

Cueing Effect

Faster responses on cued compared to uncured trials in the cueing task. Shorter response times on cued as compared to uncued trials.

What is a possible explanation for deja vu?

Inattentional blindness. Failing to perceive something right in front of you. You don't see a stimulus, but you still register it below the level of awareness. Then later this same stimulus is consciously perceived eliciting deja vu.

Fixation

Holding the eye relatively still in order to maintain an image on the fovea. The process of keeping an image on the fovea. The eye is relatively stationary in order to optimize the transmittal of visual information to the brain. Although not perfectly stationary - they are in a state of minute movement. Typical duration is 200 to 300 milliseconds but can vary widely depending on the word being fixated, the position where the eye falls within a word, and how well the word has been interpreted.

The reversed cueing effect at long intervals between a cue and target is known as ______.

Inhibition of Return

Exogenous Shifts

Involuntary movements of attention triggered by external stimuli. Determined by external stimulus that grab our attention regardless of our goals and intentions.

The Mackworth Clock

It is an experimental device used in the field of experimental psychology to study the effects of long-term vigilance on the detection of signals. It was originally created as an experimental simulation of long-term monitoring by radar operators in the British Air Force during World War II. The device has a large black pointer in a large circular background like a clock. The pointer moves in short jumps like the second hand of an analog clock, approximately every second. At infrequent and irregular intervals, the hand makes a double jump. The task is to detect when the double jumps occur by pressing a button. Typically, participants would do this task for two hours.

What does William James assert about attention?

It is the act of taking control of your mind. It involves removing information consciously in order to effectively (focus) on more relevant information. It is the conscious removal of distractions.

Smooth Pursuit Movements

Movements of the eye that, because they are not jerky, enable the viewer to maintain fixation on a moving object.

Stroop Task

Named after John R. Stroop, the psychologist who invented it. A naming task in which color names are printed in colors other than the colors they name. A typical experiment compares performance in an incongruent condition with control conditions. It is reliably found that the incongruent condition takes more time than the control condition does. An incongruent condition requires you to keep the goal of naming colors in mind even though you have an involuntary tendency to read the words.

What is the general finding from task-switching research?

Our attention is regulated by top-down processes.

Attending to something by moving your eyes is referred to as ________ attention, while attending to something without moving your eyes is referred to as ________ attention.

Overt; Covert

Dichotic Listening

Participants are exposed to two verbal messages presented simultaneously and are required to answer questions posed in only one of the messages. Participants are presented with two verbal messages simultaneously, typically one to each ear, and are asked to focus on (i.e., attend to) only one of them. They are then asked to respond to a series of questions about what they heard, most often about the message played to the unattended ear.

Controlled Versus Automatic Processes

Processes that demand attention if we are to carry them out properly versus processes that operate without requiring us to pay attention to them. (OR in other words) Processes to which we must pay attention in order to execute them properly versus processes that run themselves without the necessity of our paying attention to them.

________ are right to left movements of the eye during reading that direct the eyes to previously read text.

Regressions

What underpins the ability to choose which of many incoming messages to attend to and which messages to ignore?

Selective Attention Theory

Inhibition Of Return (IOR)

Slower responses to cued than to uncured trails in the cueing paradigm.

Nystagmus

Small but continuous eye movements during fixation.

________ is the hypothesis that attentional tasks interfere with one another to the extent that they involve similar activities.

Structural Limits

Quiet Eye

Sustained and steady eye gaze prior to an action or behavior.

Vigilance

Sustained attention as an externally imposed requirement.

The idea that overt and covert attention are tightly connected is captured in ______.

The Sequential Attention Hypothesis

Cocktail Party Phenomenon

The ability to attend to one conversation when many other conversations are going around you. The capacity for attending to one conversation in a crowded room in which many other conversations are going on.

Sustained Attention

The act of maintaining attention focused on a single task for a prolonged period of time.

Vigilance Decrement

The decline in performance over time in vigilance tasks.

Eye Tracking System

The device is placed on the head and two cameras are positioned below the eyes to track the location of the gaze. A small infrared is aimed at the eye; locating a reflection of this light off the cornea and the location of the pupil - the point where the most light is absorbed. By tracking the bright corneal reflection and dark pupil from moment to moment, the system is able to determine precisely how gaze moves over time.

Attention Capture

The diversion of attention by a stimulus so powerful that it compels us to notice it even when our attention is focused on something else. The power of some stimuli on some occasions to grab our attention in spite of the fact that we did not intend to pay attention to them.

Simons and Chabris (1999) conducted an experiment on selective looking in which a person dressed in a gorilla suit walked into the room in which the experiment was taking place and was completely unnoticed by 50 per cent of the participants. Why did such an obvious stimulus go unnoticed by so many, and what mechanism of attention was at play?

The experimenters had asked the subjects to pay attention to only one of two basketball teams. By giving these instructions, subjects were so focused on paying attention to the basketball team that they failed to notice the very obvious "gorilla" entering the scene. This failure to notice the appearance of the gorilla is known as inattentional blindness.

Switch Cost

The finding that performance declines immediately on switching tasks. The cost is a reflection of the fact that performance on a task immediately after a switch is worse than typical performance on the same task.

Sequential Attention Hypothesis

The hypothesis about the relationship between overt and covert attention that posits a tight relationship between the two, whereby covert attention is shifted first and overt eye movement follows.

Capacity Model

The hypothesis that attention is a power supply that can support only a limited amount of attentional activity.

Early Selection

The hypothesis that attention prevents early perceptual processing of distractors.

Structural Limits

The hypothesis that attentional tasks interfere with one another to the extent that they involve similar activities.

Domain-Specific Modules

The hypothesis that parts of the brain may be specialized for particular tasks, such as recognizing faces.

Central Bottleneck

The hypothesis that there is only one path along which information can travel, and it is so narrow that the most it can handle at any one time is the information relevant to one task. The hypothesis that there is only one path through which information relevant to only one task at a time can pass.

Late Selection

The hypothesis that we perceive both relevant and irrelevant stimuli, and therefore must actively ignore the irrelevant stimuli in order to focus on the relevant ones.

Spotlight Metaphor

The idea that spatial attention is like a spotlight that we shine on an object when we select it for more complex and conscious processing.

Déjà Vu

The impression that you have already experienced the situation in which you find yourself, accompanied by the sense that this is not actually the case. French for "already seen."

Action Slips

The kind of behavioral errors that often occur in everyday life. Often attention and memory related. Tend to occur more at certain times of the day than others.

Entry Points

The locations to which we direct our eyes before starting to read a section in a piece of complex material such as a newspaper.

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP)

The presentation of a series of stimuli in quick succession.

Spatial Attention

The process of selecting visual information for the conscious awareness in specific regions of space. Using attention to select a subset of objects in space for conscious perception.

Saccades

The rapid, jerky movements made as the eye scans an image. They eyes move very rapidly and visual information is essentially cut off.

Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA)

The time difference between the onset of one stimulus and the onset of a subsequent stimulus.

Which account of sustained attention is best supported by findings from SART?

The underload account.

Underload View

The view that performance on vigilance tasks declines over time because such tasks are not stimulating enough to hold people's attention.

Overload View

The view that performance on vigilance tasks declines over time because such tasks are so demanding.

Parallel Mental Activity

Thinking about something other than the task at hand.

Who experiences déjà vu more?

Those who are higher on the socioeconomic scale, better educated, and more widely traveled because perhaps they are more likely to have experienced novel situations.

Catch Trials

Trials of a detection task in which a target is not presented. The target doesn't appear, because if participants are responding without paying attention to the target, they'll respond on these trials, allowing the experimenter to "catch" them not performing the task properly.

Endogenous Shifts

Voluntary movements of attention. Volitional and determined by our goals and intentions.

To account for vigilance decrements, the underload view proposes that ______.

We become bored with the task.