Lecture 6 - Attention III - Structural and Capacity Theories and Attention IV - The Control of Visual Attention

Question 1

What was Moray’s 1970s experiment that threw a spanner in the works for both Early Selection Theory and Late Selection theory?

Answer 1

The experiment was name the Cost of Divided Attention and looked at our ability to respond to a target sound either on one channel or two, separately or together.

Question 2

In response to Moray’s (1970) experiment, what were two attention theories that were proposed?

Answer 2

Structural (Bottleneck) Theories and Capacity (Resource) Theories.

Question 3

What is the Structural (Bottlneck) Theory of Attention?

Question 4

What is the Capacity (Resource) Theory of Attention?

Question 5

Who was one of the proponents of Capacity Theory?

Answer 5

Kahneman (1973)

Question 6

In Li et al.’s (2002) study on

Question 7

Why did early research on Attention focus on auditory stimuli?

Question 8

When did researchers start to study visual attention and why?

Answer 8

In the late 80s

Question 9

What are some of the causes of Cuing effects seen Posner et al.’s 1978 experiment?

Question 10

What is Inhibition of Return?

Question 11

We have limited cognitive capacity (i.e. we can only attend to so much at the one time). There are structural and capacity limitation theories that have been proposed to describe this limited cognitive capacity. Who were some of the researchers who were proponents of either Structural or Capacity Limitation theories?

Answer 11

Structural - Broadbent, Welford
Capacity - Kahnenman

Question 12

Briefly, what was Kahnenman’s theory of Capacity and Attention?

Answer 12

Kahnenman suggested that we have a limited capacity to have neural structures activated in attendance to something. If we have activated our neural structures to attend to one thing, we will have decreased neural structure space/metabolic energy to attend to something else.

Question 13

What is the Sample-Size Theory (Bonnel and Hafter, 1998) and does it predict the pattern of how our performance is affected as we attend to multiple things (i.e. the Attentional Operating Characteristic (AOC))?

Answer 13

Sample-Size Theory posits that the precision with which we can represent stimulus depends on the number of neurons we can allocate to attend to, and therefore represent, that which we are focusing on. The more neurons we can allocate to the object or task or stimuli the high precision we can represent it in our minds, whereas if we are attending to multiple stimuli then the fewer neurons we have for that specific stimuli and the less precise our representation. The idea for sample size comes from thinking about the neuronal allocation as a variable for representation from a statistical point of view - the more neurons we have allocated to a stimuli (i.e. the bigger the sample size) the more accurate our representation. This model predicts the Attentional Operating Characteristic - that is, the tradeoff we see in performance as we attend to multiple things (which looks like a quater cricle).

Question 14

What are some of the important factors when it comes to distraction?

Answer 14

Luminance, abruptness of onset of a stimuli (Theeuwes in the 90s).

Question 15

In Moray’s 1970 “The Cost of Divided Attention”, what did he find in the condition where participant’s only attended to one chanel?
To both channels (where target was presented on one channel OR the other)?
When target was on both channels at the same time?

Answer 15

67% accuracy when participants only had to attend to one channel.
54% when attending to both EXCLUSIVE OR condition.
37% when participants were doing the INCLUSIVE OR condition.

Question 16

Are filter theories of attention bottleneck/structural theories of Capacity Theories?

Answer 16

Structural/bottleneck theories.

Question 17

Who was the first to propose a Capacity Theory of attention?

Answer 17

Kahneman (1973).
We have a limited capacity (based on neural metabolism capacity) that we can use to attend to things. The more we attend to the less capacity we have to allocate to the different things we are attending to.

Question 18

In the dual task performance study done by Lee et al (2002), where participants better at identifying whether an animal was in the image shown as the secondary task or the disk in different “phases”?

Answer 18

Animal.

Question 19

According to Lee et al’s and Bonnel and Hafter’s experiments looking at dual task performance, are people better able to detect or discriminate a secondary task?

Answer 19

Detect.

Question 20

Does Capacity Theory explain INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS?

Answer 20

Yes.

Question 21

What is INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS?

Answer 21

Inattentional blindness occurs when we attend to certain stimuli and as we do we become “blind” to other stimuli - see gorilla experiment.

Question 22

What is the main criticism of Capacity Theories of Attention?

Answer 22

The main criticism of Capacity Theories has been that a Capacity Thoery explanation can always be come up with to explain data. It is very vague and does not really provide any mechanistic explanation of attention.

Question 23

Why did early studies focus so much on auditory stimuli?

Answer 23

Availability of technology at the time.

Question 24

Who proposed that attention was like a spotlight: “Spotlight of Attention”?

Answer 24

Posner.

Question 25

Who first used a Spatial Cuing Paradigm to study attention and eye-movement?

Answer 25

Posner.
The Spatial Cuing Paradigm used this idea that when our eyes fixate on something we are better able to attend to it.
Visual cues, such as an arrow, would be shown prior to the target and then the RT to the target is measured and whether the cue indicated that presence of the target or not was shown to alter the participants RT.

Question 26

What is a STIMULUS ONSET ASYNCHRONY?

Answer 26

SOA is the time it between when a cue and target are shown.

Question 27

How quickly can we make a sacchadic eye movement?

Answer 27

Around 200ms.

Question 28

In tasks using the Spatial Cuing Paradigm, does the cue always predict where the target will be presented, and if not what is the normal percentage split between when the cue will indicate the position of the target and when it will not?

Answer 28

80:20
This is done to train the participants to think that the cue will predict the position of the target.

Question 29

What is the cost/benefit seen in Spatial Cuing Tasks?

Answer 29

Correctly cued targets have faster response times than neutral cues, but incorrectly cued targets have longer RTs than neutral cues.

Question 30

What are some of the reasons we see the cost/benefit effects in spatial cuing tasks of attention?

Answer 30

Switching Effects as well as Capacity effects can both be used to explain the cost/benefit effects of Spatial Cuing Tasks.

Question 31

Do we have two types of attentional orientating systems?

Answer 31

Yes.
1) Top-down - we decide to shift attention: Voluntary Orientating System
2) Bottom-up- something gets our attention: Reflexive Orientating System

Question 32

How can the Voluntary and Reflexive Orientating Systems of attention be studied in a Spatial Cuing task?

Answer 32

Some symbols, such as an arrow, can direct us to direct our attention somewhere, but understanding where relies on semantic interpretation.
A flash on light on the other hand just catches our attention and we direct our attention there.
These two types of cues engage the voluntary and reflexive attention orientating systems resepecively.
They can also be referred to as CENTRAL and PERIPHERAL cues.

Question 33

What does the time course and effect of cuing looking for PERIPHERAL cues?

Answer 33

Fast and transient.

Question 34

What does the time course of the effect of cuing look like for CENTRAL CUES?

Answer 34

Slow and sustained.

Question 35

Are the capacity demands of the two attentional systems different?
What evidence is there for this?

Answer 35

Yes.
Jonides (1981) did an experiment that looked at this and found that when participants were required to do a cognitive task as well as engaging in the spatial cuing task the the CENTRAL cues did not have as much of an effect on attention. Whereas PERIPHERAL cues still had the same level of effect on attention.

Question 36

What is INHIBITION OF RETURN?

Answer 36

Inhibition of Return refers to the phenomenon seen where if the SOA between peripheral cue and target is over 200ms (although Styles says 300ms), then the effect of the cue actually impairs accuracy of responding to the target.
This has been proposed to occur as a way to lessen our need to cognitively assess and consciously remember our environement. After we assess a location in our environment and get no useful information from it then we are resistant to return to it than the explore a new part of the environment.

Question 37

When SOA’s extend beyond around 200ms with PERIPHERAL CUES, how does the effect on attention change?

Answer 37

When the SOA extends beyond 400ms, what we see is the effect of the PERIPHERAL cue on attention is that it actually increases RT, or has a negative impact on attention.
This effect is known as the INHIBITION OF RETURN effect.

Question 38

What does AOC stand for and what is the shape of the curve?

Answer 38

AOC stands for Attention Operating Characteristic and it looks like the upper right hand quadrant of a sphere.
There is a “graceful degradation” of performance on a task as more attention allocated away from that task and onto another task.