Attention

Question 1

Why is attention important?

Answer 1

• Negative outcomes when it fails – e.g. education, workplace, driving
  • Applied contexts – E.g. advertising, user experience
  • Clinical contexts – E.g. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Anxiety,
  Schizophrenia, Neglect

Question 2

Suggests that attention is associated with some kind

of limitation

Answer 2

Processing as a bottleneck: we only have so much attention (limited capacity resource)
bottleneck: like in a traffic all of traffic has to slow down because it limits the amount of processing that can go through

Question 3

Negative Outcomes

Answer 3

Negative outcomes when it fails: education, workplace, driving
Applied contexts: advertising, user experiences
Clinical contexts: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia. Understanding attention can help us understand the characteristics of these deficit disorders

Question 4

Different Types of Attention

Answer 4

Selective attention: – Focusing attention on certain information, while ignoring other
information
• Sustained attention
– Maintaining focused attention or ‘vigilance’ – E.g. Security guard monitoring surveillance camera
• Divided attention
– E.g. multi-tasking – Another way of looking at capacity limits • Attention to different sensory modalities – E.g. sight, touch, sound, smell – Visual attention has received most examination

Question 5

How can we study attention?

Answer 5

Reaction time experiments: Spatial cuing
Reaction time: getting them to do a task and measure how slow their responses are at different points of the task
Responses are typically slower following invalid versus valid cues
• Suggests spatial attention moved to cued location

Reaction time: Visual searches
But if target is a conjuction, RT increases with number of non-targets
• Suggests serial search is required

Disctractor Effects e.g. stroop test

Question 6

Effects of attention on neural processing

Answer 6

• Neural response is boosted for covertly attended stimuli
(e.g., Wojciulik et al., 1998), Vuilleumier et al., 2001) • Two regions known to respond
selectively to specific stimulus
categories: – Fusiform Face Area (FFA) – Parahippocampal place area (PPA) • Central fixation
• Covert attention to faces
increased FFA response. • Covert attention to houses
increased PPA response.

Question 7

Attentional Capture

Answer 7

• We assume attention has been “captured” by a stimulus if it slows us down when it is irrelevant
Singleton Attentional Capture Task
No distractor Distractor
Task:
Find circle
• Color “singleton” non-target increases search RTs
But colour target reduces search RT’s.
• Taken as evidence of “attentional capture” by salient stimuli