W12.2: Failures of Attention

Question 1

Changes in blindness

Answer 1

• Failure to retain and/or compare informatin across time or views
  
  • Abrupt changes/visual transients typically attract attention
  • Global disruptions disrupts visual transients –> making it difficult to spot the change
    
    • Obsever then required to search for change –> have to continously compare image features in memory –> since short term memory span is limited –> the task is difficult

Question 2

Inattentional blindess

Answer 2

• Failure to notice a fully-visible, but unexpected event/object when attention is engaged on another task
• Can be due to:
  • Demanding tasks requires attention –> unexpected events may be passed on
  • Spatial attention: unexpected event is too far away from the targer relevent information –> thus isn’t noticed
  • Feature based attention: more likley to spot the unexpected object if they are more similar to the target

Question 3

Overt vs covert attetion

Answer 3

Overt attention: Selectively processing something by directing your eyes to it

Covert attention: Selectively processing something wihout moving your eyes to it

Question 4

Can eyes movement studies by able to track covert attention?

Answer 4

No.

Eye movement study can only track overt attention, as it is tracking eye movemnt.

Eye tracking studies have found that people who didn’t see unexpected item looked at it as often as those who did see it.

Question 5

Abnormalities of attention - Spatial neglect

Answer 5

Damage to one hemisphere of the brain creates a deficit in attention to the opposite side of space

Damage to the right parital lobe –> cause neglect of the left space , vice versa

Question 6

Abnormalities in attention - Simultagnosia

Answer 6

Inability to perceive more than a single object at a time

A result of lesion to parieto-occipital junction