cognition chapter 5
Attending to basic properties (Francolini and Egeth)
- Subjects had to repeat letters of one color and ignore numbers or vise versa ▪ Only distractors of same color affected performance ▪ Evidence we pay attention to properties and not just locations
Dichotic listening task-
Cherry (1953) tested the ability for attention to selectively filter information by playing different streams of information into the right and left headphones at the same time.
Cherry's experiment
Cherry likened this process to trying to listen to a conversation in a busy room and turning only one ear towards the speaker. The task of the participant was to repeat the words spoken in one ear—the attended ear—and to ignore the information in the other, unattended ear. He was interested in the participants' ability to remember the information in the unattended ear.
Deficits of attention
ADD: Balint's syndrome; simultanagnosia, visual neglect, autism
An important example of an early-selection model is
Broadbent's Filter Model (Broadbent, 1958), depicts attention as focusing and narrowing on one stream or input of information while preventing the rest from getting processed.
Treisman Attentuator model: reduced processing of unattended with detection of high-priority words
Filter doesn't completely eliminate the unattended signal, it reduces it ▪ So items with high importance (your own name) are detected ▪ unattended and attended message go through the dictionary unti but only item with high importance will go through memory.
Exogenous Example,
For example, a bright flashing light or loud sound can draw attention to something automatically, whether we want to pay attention to it or not.
Endogenous Example:
For example, if you are reading this and (hopefully) paying attention it, this may not be based on the fact that it is the brightest or most colorful item in your environment but instead reflects the fact that you choose to do so based on your current goals or expectations.
automatic processing (encoding) example
For example, when people first start driving, they often feel as if they have to pay careful attention to the different control in the car and how their body is interacting with them. After someone has been driving for a long time, they may report no longer needing to pay any attention to how hard their foot is pushing the pedal or how much to turn the steering wheel. They have developed automaticity
Levi (1995)
Found incompatible flankers only increased RTs in the Low-load task -No resources left over in high-load task
Balint's syndrome-
Occurs due to a stroke that simultaneously affects the occipital and parietal lobes of both hemispheres.
Flanker Compatibility Task- Eriksen and Eriksen (1974)
Search for letters surrounded distracters. -demonstrated that when trying to search for a target letter among distractors, the difficulty varies by what is flanking, or distracting, for the target item. The subjects' goal was to identify when the target was present and press a corresponding arrow key as quickly as possible.
Early Selection Model
Selective attention acts as a filter and unattended information only gets through if physically distinct (louder).
early selection model
Selective attention acts as a filter bases on simple physical properties, (pitch, volume.) meaning is NOT processed for unattended stimulus. Meaning is only processed after the filter has been applied.
Late Filter Theory
Selective attention acts as a filter that blocks most unattended information from further processing but personally relevant and meaningful information can also be processed.
Attenuator Model
Selective attention provides a benefit for attended information and weakens the processing of unattended information.
attentional load,
The more attention we need for one task, the less resources we have for another. a measure of how much processing resources are needed in order to perform a task The idea of attentional load suggests that sometimes unattended stimuli may be processed even if we are trying to filter them out.
Which area of the cortex is associated with exogenous attention and orienting you to unexpected stimuli? a) Right hemisphere b) The frontal eye fields c) Area MT d)Intraparietal sulcus
a)Right hemisphere
here is evidence that regions localized to the right hemisphere, such as the temporoparietal junction
are responsible for capturing our attention to unexpected stimuli
Another way to think of an early selection model is
as a single-stream model. Attention occupies one channel and, therefore, the stream of information can only be altered in the early stages.
Typing is probably something you've practiced for many years of your life. Now when you type a paper, you don't need to be thinking about, or looking at, the keys to be able to write your report. In this case, typing would be an example of a(n): a) Controlled process b) Automatic process c) Overt process d) Inattentional blindness
b) Automatic process
Then, selective attention determines which portion of the information makes its way through to the
detector, which is the mechanism that processes the meaning of the information.
In addition, research by Grey and Weddeburn (1960)
found that if a meaningful narrative was played in such a manner that each successive word alternated between the ears, people would follow the narrative. If the meaning of a message switches ears, participants are more likely to follow that message. This indicates that the meaning of the message is incorporated with the physical allocation of attention. 'Dear Aunt Jane' was presented to alternating ears at the same time a sequence of numbers was presented to the opposite ears.
Pelphrey et al. (2002)
found that participants with autism were less successful at identifying emotions. May be due to deficit in attentional control
Michael Posner (1978)
had participants look at a central fixation cross on a computer screen. He presented a visual cue that pointed to a location on the screen where a target object was likely to appear.
Broadbents Filter Model steps
input = sensory memory: holds all incoming information - -filter= filters based on simple physical properties. - -detector= processes meaning. then long term memory.
Evidence for theory from Conjunction Search
it takes longer because you have to find a conjunction of two properties ▪ Why it's hard to find your car in a parking lot, you have to find conjunction of shape and color forcing you to search through all of the different cars ▪ Separately processing features and takes attention to combine them which increases reaction time ▪ POP-out search: add more items, more things to check Using attention to find an object with more than one defining characteristic
Eye movements driven by bottom-up and top-down cues
o Bottom up: things that are driven by stimulus itself, saliency map: based on low-level cues such as color, luminance, motion, etc. o Top down: people look at expected locations when searching for specific objects. ▪ People fixate longer on semantically unexpected objects. · If something is floating in the air or an item that does not belong in a specific location
Additionally, Balint's syndrome is hallmarked by or the inability to see more than one item in a cluster at a time
simultanagnosia
While early selection models accounted for the fact that participants could not generally report the meaning of the unattended stimulus in the dichotic listening task
some further experiments demonstrated that in some cases, the meaning of the unattended stimulus did seem to break through.
Attentional Load
some tasks require more processing resources -Depending on how much resources are needed for current task, some may be 'left over' to process other things
Cocktail party effect-
the ability to pay attention to one person you are talking to in a crowded environment while filtering out the rest of the conversations. When we are in a crowded room, our selective attention helps us narrow our focus to hear the person next to us. Often times, other conversations become blurred background noise.
Broadbent's Filter Model (Broadbent, 1term-26958),
there is a high amount of sensory information that enters the nervous system. This high informational load is held briefly in sensory memory
low-load tasks The ring on the left represents a low-load task
use up only a small amount of the person's processing capacity -because the other letters in the ring are uniform, it is easy to spot the target.
Because our brains are of limited size
we simply don't have sufficient processing power to use all of the incoming sensory information.
Treisman theorized that these conjunction errors
were caused due the lack of attention binding them together. Attention may be helping guide bottom-up processing by uniting each of the modules responsible for processing color or shape and binding those pieces together.
The Purpose of Attention
•Attention is pre-activating, or readying, the processing needed for specific stimuli that are present or are about to be present. •It can make us more sensitive to stimuli and quicker to respond to them.
Covert attention In general, fixation and attention are coupled but not always.
▪ Attention can change the input (overt) but also the processing of the input (covert) ▪ process information if you are not looking in a specific location ▪ without changing the stimulus you can change the process of the stimulus ▪ Change the process of the stimulus without the overt change
As William James (1980) famously reported:
"Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others."
Exogenous-
'bottom-up,' driven by stimuli from the environment Attentional control occurs when some property of the environment drives us to pay attention to it.
Endogenous-
'top-down,' driven by internal voluntary processes Attentional control occurs when a person chooses what to pay attention to, based on his or her goals or intentions.
Attentional load: the more processing one task requires, the less processing left for other tasks
- The more attention we need for one task, the less resources we have for another. - A very high attention load task, you may process unattended information very little and vice versa. -less attention heavy task, you may process other info that you are not paying attention to.
Cherry's Experiment Conclusion
-Cherry found that his participants could identify if the unattended channel's message was spoken by a male or female but could remember little else. - Participants failed to remember words and information from the ignored ear and couldn't remember if the language spoken changed from English to German, or was reversed. -In general, Cherry concluded that unless something changed that made the new message physically distinct (e.g., switching from male to female or a voice switching to just a pure tone), the attention filter would block its contents.
Early and late filtering—how much is unattended information processed?
-Early: before much processing takes place ▪ Just listen to pitch of voice, not meaning of words - Late: after significant processing ▪ Determine the meaning of words before passing them on or selectively pick them out to further process that info
Attention and eye movements: usually joined but not always
-Eye movements happen all the time - Saccades: short, jerky motions, often endogenously driven ▪ Fixations tend to be task-relevant locations (figure out location) ▪ Usually precede motor actions by fraction of a second - Smooth pursuit: 'smoothly' following a moving object; endogenously driven (moving their finger across)
Durston et al. (2003)
-Go/No-Go task. Press button for some stimuli, refrain for others •Children with ADHD completed more errors by responding to a no-go stimulus more often. •Reduced activity in frontoparietal regions
Dichotic listening task; some support for earlier filtering
-If someone's own name was spoken to unattended ear, people actually did hear it and encoded it.o - Listen to one ear and ignore the other. -Unattended determine if the voice was male or female but not the actual message (what is the meaning of life? they will miss it)
Flanker-Compatibility Task: More distraction when central task is low load; Video Game experts are distracted even in high load task
-In low load task the flanker would interfere and add reaction time to the task. In a high load task, there is very little attention left for flanker. -Video game experts showed significant distraction in both cases suggesting that they have more processing left for other tasks while playing video games. - Ability to process information outside focus of attention.
Automatic Processing which requires almost no attention— Stroop Example
-Requires very little or no attention - When identifying colors its easy but when having to identify the color of a word spelling out a different color it become more difficult due to the fact that we are so used to reading words everyday all the time so to have to focus your attention on just the color requires more attention and reaction time.
Deficits of attention ADD:
-often unable to focus on a specific task ▪ May involve poor executive function/inability to suppress or filter irrelevant info ▪ Memory-degradation due to aging may also be partially due to inability to suppress irrelevant information during encoding.
automatic processing
A task is so familiar to us that we do not need to pay attention in order to do it. -It is often the result of practice and learning.
high-load tasks The ring on the right represents the high-load
A task that uses most or all of a person's resources and so leaves little capacity to handle other tasks. -The ring on the right represents the high-load
divided attention (multitasking)
Attending to multiple objects at the same time. •Such 'Multitasking' has been found to lead to overall worse performance in all tasks. •Likely due to 'task switching' rather than truly parallel performance - but research has found that when we divide our attention among two tasks, performance on the individual tasks tends to suffer.
Where does attention happen in the brain?
Attention 'primes' brain regions needed to perform the task •Attention also engages brain regions I parietal and frontal that control allocation of attention
According to Anne Treisman's Feature Integration Theory (FIT)
Attention is needed in order to combine distinct features into coherent perceptual objects. In addition to increasing speed and sensitivity, attention may play another critical role in perceptual processing.
bottleneck
Attention is often likened to a bottleneck to highlight how some information appears to be blocked from processing. It takes a great deal of processing to go from a flat 2D image to recognizable objects and we simply don't have sufficient processing resources to compute everything all at once. This problem is sometimes referred to as a there is simply too much information for the brain to process and therefore, the brain must choose which information to process.
The cognitive process of selecting information for further processing is called: A) Sentience B) Consciousness C) Attention D)Perception
C) Attention
Balint's: inability to fixate on individual items. Can lead to illusory conjunctions.
Can't look at the "red x: cannot do real selective attention
Posner (1980)
Compared detection speed for visual stimulus that was validly and invalidly cued -Fixation was held constant -Valid cue led to lower RTs due to attentional allocation
Early filtering: based on basic physical properties; Late Filtering: based on meaning
Early: very basic features of input is processed (male or female voice?), not able to process meaning or content of message
Shulman et al. (1999)
Evidence for an endogenous attentional network in the brain indicates that regions in the dorsolateral frontal lobes and posterior parietal lobes serve to control which of other brain areas are activated.
Two types of attentional control:
Exogenous Endogenous
inattentional blindness
Failing to perceive an object or event that occurs in plain sight. The failure is not due to visual impairments. inability to perceive information outside of the attentional spotlight is called we may control our attention in an attempt to track hectic changes in our environment. It also demonstrated that your focused attention helped shape what you were consciously aware of in the scene.
Green and Bavelier (2003)
Green and Bavelier recruited non-gamers and trained them on the video game Medal of Honor. Afterward, these participants showed the same effect as the lifelong gamers'. The conclusion: gaming changes the brain!
Examples of the importance of attention: Change 'blindness'
If a picture is flashing with a brief mask in between you more than likely won't notice a change in the picture until you look directly at the item on the screen. If you don't have a motion cue, it's harder to notice change because we don't process the entire image.
(Leaver et al., 2009)
If they are anticipating a visual stimulus, then a portion of the visual cortex is likely to be activated. Therefore, certain forms of attention have been shown to be responsible for preparing relevant regions for activity.
Filter theory
In which the desired information makes it through, while other information is discarded. Because of the selective nature of our attention, many researchers liken it to a filter
Examples of the importance of attention: inattentional 'blindness'
Inattentional 'blindness': You're taking in sensory info and until that info is processed with attention, you don't encode the information.
Early filtering model of Broadbent: Sensory Memory, Filter, Detector
Messages come into sensory memory, filter processes information based on simple physical properties such as pitch or location, then reduced and processed by detector for meaning, then stored into memory -Later experiments show that some info does get through...
Moray (1959) dichotic listening task
Moray (1959) supported this with the finding that a word could be repeated upwards of 30 times and still not be recognized by participants on a later test. his research on selective attention helped inform theories of when our attentional filter starts to block information and prevent it from further processing.
Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD).
Most commonly diagnosed in children and is associated with an inability to stay focused on a central task. •Evidence supports that distractibility is due to failures of the frontoparietal networks to control attention and suppress impulses.
Importance of Attention
Most of the information available to us is not consciously processed. We miss a lot of things happening in our environment.
Shulman et al 1999
Participants cued to look for motion in upcoming stimulus -Measured BOLD (fMRi) activity before onset of stimulus -With Directional Cue greater activity in...MT: Motion Processing Parietal: endogenous attentional control
Experimental Challenges to early filtering model—Own name, Dear Aunt Jane
People end up following meaningful message, clearly we are processing unattended input as well in terms of it's meaning.
Auditory cortex (temporal lobe)
Primary sensory processing center for auditory information. It is located in the temporal lobe.
Attending to Regions of space—Posner's cueing experiments
Subjects fixated in center throughout trial, valid or invalid cue to location, response faster in valid location. ▪ People are processing the target even before the cue was showing up ▪ covert-type of way ▪ speed up process of ability to process info
Feature-integration theory
Suggested purpose of attention is to bind different characteristics of items together into a seamless perception
Optic ataxia-
The inability to execute visually guided movements.
Retinotopic Map
The location of pattern stimulation on the retina is preserved at the cortical level. which means that the spatial layout on the retina is preserved in the cortex.
Attended message
The message that the subject is listening to
Shadowing
The repetition of the selected message
Unattended message
The stimulus that is supposed to be ignored by the subjects
Divided attention reduces performance: Cell phones and driving
There is some evidence that people can pay attention to multiple objects at the same time. •Research using multi-object tracking suggests that people can keep track of around 4-5 objects concurrently. -We may need more attention than we think, risk of collision while using a cell phone is much higher. Reaction times are slower.
An experiment by Shulman et al. (1999)
They showed participants a screen with an arrow pointing in a certain direction. This was followed by an animation of moving dots. A static example is shown below. In one condition, participants had to report whether the dots were moving in the direction the arrow had pointed. In the passive condition, participants did not have any task except to watch the moving dots. The experimenters recorded brain activity, using fMRI, when participants were still looking at the arrow and anticipating the motion.
Primary Visual Cortex
This portion of the occipital lobe is the primary processing center for vision and organizes visual information for further processing throughout the occipital lobe.
Ventral Visual Stream
This processing sequence of vision provides categorical and identifying information to visual perceptions.
Contralateral
This refers to the opposite. Each hemisphere of your brain controls or processes information from the opposite side.
attention
Thus, the brain must 'choose' which information to further process and which to 'ignore.' This selection process is called
Rapid Scene Categorization: perception of 'gist but not details.
You can usual extract general category of image or scene. We are able to rapidly process the GIST of a whole scene but miss many details, which require attention.
attenuator theory of attention, proposed by Treisman (1964; 1969)
Unattended information is processed, but less so if it matches important or expected meaning, it may be processed This theory states that there is some filtering of the incoming stimulus based on its physical properties. However, some of the information makes its way through the filter
Single-feature Search
Using attention to find an object with one defining characteristic
In the study described above from Posner (1980), the majority of the trials were and provided information about the location of the upcoming target.
Valid
Green and Bevelier (2003)
Video game players show flanker compatibility effect even in high-load condition -Suggests they have more spillover attentional resources
Bevelier et al (2012)
Video-game players show less activation in brain regions involved in attentional control
,an area referred to as MT,
When participants were completing the directional detection task, their medial temporal lobes. -were more active than when they had no task. This is not surprising because the medial temporal lobe has previously been established as a region that processed visual motion and near the occipital lobes, within the ventral stream of visual processing.
Nilli Levie (1995)
assessed whether the presence of an incompatible flanker on the outside of the ring led to distraction from the task of finding the target, in the form of higher reaction times. Lavie found that the incompatible flanker only caused an increased reaction time in the low-load condition but not in the high-load conditions. She concluded that in the low-load condition, the fact that the task is not difficult means that there are processing resources left over and that these resources end up procesassessed whether the presence of an incompatible flanker on the outside of the ring led to distraction from the task of finding the target, in the form of higher reaction times. Lavie found that the incompatible flanker only caused an increased reaction time in the low-load condition but not in the high-load conditions. She concluded that in the low-load condition, the fact that the task is not difficult means that there are processing resources left over and that these resources end up procesassessed whether the presence of an incompatible flanker on the outside of the ring led to distraction from the task of finding the target, in the form of higher reaction times. Lavie found that the incompatible flanker only caused an increased reaction time in the low-load condition but not in the high-load conditions. She concluded that in the low-load condition, the fact that the task is not difficult means that there are processing resources left over and that these resources end up processing resources left over and that these resources end up processing the flanker, even when it is not wanted, leading to distraction (just like processing of the crinkly bag in the theater). In the high-load condition, however, the central task of finding the target is difficult and there are few processing resources left over. Therefore, the flanker is not processed and does not cause a distraction.
Covert attention-
attending to something without eye movement. you are able to move your attention around even though your gaze is fixed in a particular location.
Visual neglect-
attention is allocated to only one visual field, often neglect of left visual field. ▪ Half drawn cat and clock example Patients have damage to their right parietal lobe. -Because the brain contralaterally processes visual field information, this causes them to not notice or 'neglect' their entire left visual field. -Commonly referred to as left neglect syndrome.
Children with autism spectrum disorder have been found to display visual tracking deficits at which age? a) 12 years b) 6 months c) 12 months d) 3 years
b) 6 months
Bavelier et al. (2012) compared the neural activity of video and non-video game players while completing a search task. Which of the following is true? a Video game players did worse at each task. b Both video game players and non-video game players were less likely to see the moving distractors when a high amount of attention and focus were needed. c Non-video game players were faster at and recruited less front parietal resources than video-game players, showing a broad detriment of playing video games. d Video game players were able to do the tasks faster because they recruited their front parietal attention network at higher levels than the non-video game players.
b) Both video game players and non-video game players were less likely to see the moving distractors when a high amount of attention and focus were needed.
Trying to multi-task, or focus your attention on more than one thing is referred to as: a) Selective attention b) Divided attention c) Automaticity d) Controlled processing
b) Divided attention
Recall Natalie's conversation with her friend mentioned in Question 5.05. Imagine that while she is having a conversation with her friend at the restaurant, the neighboring table is talking about Natalie Portman's latest movie. If the early selection models always accurately predict what attention will block, which of the following would be true? a) When the table mentions Natalie Portman, that conversation will briefly distract Natalie from her friend's voice. b) When the table mentions Natalie Portman, Natalie will not be distracted from her friend's voice unless they start shouting about the movie. c) Natalie will hear the neighboring conversation only if she is personally interested in movies. d) Natalie will pay attention to all streams of information equally.
b) When the table mentions Natalie Portman, Natalie will not be distracted from her friend's voice unless they start shouting about the movie.
Since she has been on vacation for a week, Natalie can hardly wait to talk to her best friend. Natalie is temporarily worried because they decided to meet at a restaurant that is notoriously crowded. After meeting, she realizes that it is actually easy to focus only on her friend's voice and block out of all of the other conversions. Natalie is experiencing the: a) change blindness b) cocktail party effect c) cherry effect b) bottlenecking
b) cocktail party effect
The process of narrowing your attention onto chosen stimuli is called: a) divided attention b) selective attention c) dichotic listening d) all of the above
b) selective attention
Overt attention-
based on eye movements Attending where you are looking directly (foveated) -When you move your eyes to where you are attending,
When trying to identify emotions, how do controls tend to differ from subjects with autism spectrum disorder? a) Individuals with autism are unable to name and identify any emotions. b) Control subjects scan the entire face of stimuli and outperform subjects with ASD on all categories. c) Control subjects tend to focus on the stimuli's eyes and central regions of the face compared to subjects with ASD. d) Subjects with ASD tend to focus more on the stimuli's eyes and central regions of the face but still struggle to actually name the emotion expressed.
c) Control subjects tend to focus on the stimuli's eyes and central regions of the face compared to subjects with ASD.
The inability to notice an unexpected stimulus due to focused attention is termed: A) Change Blindness B)Lapse of attention C) Inattentional Blindness D) Visual Agnosia
c) Inattentional Blindness.
In regards to the Stroop task, _______ has been argued to be more automatic while _______ is more controlled. a) Reading the color of the ink; Reading the color of the word b) Reading the color of the ink; reading the color of the ink c) Reading the word; Reading the color of the ink d) Reading the color of the ink; Reading the word
c) Reading the word; Reading the color of the ink
A subject is completing a Flanker task. Like the one mentioned above, they need to press the right arrow when the target is an H or K and the left arrow when it is an S or C. Based on what you know of attentional load, which of the following should have the slowest response time? a) H H H H H H H b) H H H K H H H c) S S S H S S S d) K K K H K K K
c) S S S H S S S
Based on Posner (1980), what is one possible purpose of attention? a) To help us remember what task we are doing b) To help us see where to look and focus our eyes c) To prepare the mind for processing in a pre-attentive phase
c) To prepare the mind for processing in a pre-attentive phase
Which area of the brain has been shown to process motion? a)Area VT b)Area V1 c)Area MT d) Intraparietal sulcus
c)Area MT
f you casually scan the flower image above, your attention is automatically captured by the red flower. This would be an example attention.
covert
When allocating our attention to moving objects, about how many items can we simultaneously track? a) 1 b) 10 c) 7 +/- 2 d) 4
d) 4
Which area of the brain has been associated with an endogenous attention network to prepare neural activation for pre-processing? a) Right hemisphere b) The frontal eye fields c) Area MT d) Intraparietal sulcus
d) Intraparietal sulcus
Evidence for theory from Visual search-
if you have a few distractors or many distractors it doesn't Participants must look for a certain target object among a group of distractors based on a single property, such as color or shape, the search was easy.
To differentiate between exogenous and endogenous,
imagine while you are reading this chapter you hear your text message alert on your cell phone. Despite needing to finish reading for class, this would probably exogenously pull your attention away from reading and towards your screen. However, thinking about your phone may remind you that you are expecting a call from a friend. After this reminder, you may consciously and endogenously decide to check your phone. The following video explores different ways that social media has influenced our attention.
Frontal eye fields (FEF)
in the frontal lobe contain a retinotopic map. The spatial layout on the retina is preserved in the cortex •Stimulaton causes eye movements in monkeys •Likely involved in exogenous attention
Simultanagnosia-
inability to focus on multiple things at once. May be due to "sticky" object-based attention. The inability to identify or use more than one object or property in a scene at a time.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-
inappropriate or unusual attention fixation. ▪ While watching a movie, instead of paying attention to the eyes or mouth of the person speaking, paying attention to something minor outside of the appropriate visual field. Generally thought of as being due to atypical brain development (although the cause is unknown). •Autism can lead to deficits in language, impaired social behaviors, repetitive actions and general delays in cognitive development. •A hallmark of autism is a reduced tendency to fixate on other people's eyes.
What does attention do? Feature Integration Theory; attention needed to combine properties into a single object
o Can enhance contrast sensitivity, things can have higher contrast when you're paying attention to them because you're processing it more enhancing its features o Feature Integration Theory: attention is needed to combine information from different parts of the brain
Physiology of attention; widespread in the brain
o Result: Attention is activated in many brain areas o Record brain activity before coherent motion - Parietal, frontal, temporal brain regions that have strong relationships to attention - Single cell recording: neurons respond to more stimuli when it is attended. These differences become more pronounced higher up in the visual stream ▪ individual neurons if are fixated on a task then you will se a stronger response: a neuron is being modulated by covert attention ▪ early on you are doing very little filtering
Attending to Objects (Egly et al)
o Subjects received cue and then target ▪ Faster responses when target was on the same object even in different location ▪ Attention spreads throughout entire object
Selective attention
occurs when someone pays attention to one thing at the expense of all others.
Balint's syndrome is hallmarked by or the inability to visually guide motor movements.
optic ataxia
For example, in the cocktail party example above,
our inner ears transduce the sound from all of the conversations within earshot. the voice of the person you are speaking to could be selected based on physical properties such as the pitch or direction of the voice. The conversations you are not paying attention to can be processed only in so far as you can identify that they do not have the appropriate physical properties. After that, they are filtered out. However, according to this theory, the other, unattended, conversation would not be filtered based on the fact that the meaning of the words match the conversation you are paying attention to. This is because the meaning is not processed once they have been filtered.
For example, in Moray's (1959) study
participants were often able to process unattended information if their name was spoken in the ignored channel showed that some information does get through! Participants were often able to process unattended information if their name was spoken in the unattended ear!
single feature search task
search for a red letter embedded in black and blue distractors This is because the targets in these demonstrations exhibit a property called pop-out: it is so different from the others that it actually attracts attention.
Attention can be willfully directed and it is
selective. Like a spotlight, attention decides our awareness of information and directs what is sent for conscious processing.
change-blindness
the inability to detect changes to a scene. When something distracts us from a change taking place in a scene, we may not notice it even when it happens right before our eyes.
late selection models of attention
the meaning of an unattended stimulus is processed as well. additional processing is limited for unattended stimulus. the meaning of an unattended stimulus is processed as well. It is then prevented from further processing based on whether it fits semantically with the other attended stimuli.
the parietal lobe controls
the parietal lobe controls
James' description of attention captures
the subjective experience and highlights some important aspects of this process.
demonstrated that 80% of the trials were termed valid trials because
the target appeared in the location indicated by the cue and was compared to the other 20% of invalid trials, where the target appeared in a different location from the cue.
