Attention Flashcards
1
Q
Attention
A
- Our ability to attend to stimuli is limited
- How we direct attention will determine how well we perceive, remember, and act on information
- we are not aware of information that does not receive our attention and it has little (if any) influence on our performance
- When a single highly practiced response has been given to a stimulus, attention is not needed for accurate or fast execution to the response
2
Q
Selective and Divided Attention
A
- Selective attention: determines our ability to focus on certain sources of information and ignore others
- Divided attention: determines our ability to do more than one thing at once (i.e. driving while talking)
- Selective and divided attention vary by the amount of mental effort they require
- if the task requires considerable mental effort, we call it “attention demanding”
- mental effort is the cognitive demands of a user’s duties
- Performance also depends on the type of executive control that is being used
- strategies a person adopts to control the flow of information and task performance
- Questions about selective attention usually concern characteristics of an environment where attention is focused and what characteristics of unattended stimuli disrupt the focus of attention
3
Q
Bottleneck Models of Attention
A
- Bottleneck models of attention specify a particular stage in the information processing sequence where the amount of information we can attend to is limited
- performance decreases as the amount of information stuck at the bottleneck increases
- Early selection and late selection refer to where the bottleneck is placed in the information processing sequence
- Early selection is closer to perception
- Late selection is closer to response
- Filter Theory
- Filter-attenuation model
- Late-selection model
- Load theory
4
Q
Resource Models of Attention
A
- View attention as a limited-capacity resource that can be allocated to one or more tasks, rather than as a fixed bottleneck
- Performance decreases as the amount of resources decrease
- Characterized by the number of resource pools used to perform a task
- Single resource is just one
- Multiple resource is two or more
- Locating the bottleneck caused some researchers to take a different approach, the resource model of attention
- Resource models postulate that attentional limitations arise because a limited capaciy of resources are available for mental activity
5
Q
Executive Control Models of Attention
A
- Models that do not hypothesize any capacity limitations
- View decrements in performance as a consequence of the need to coordinate and control various aspects of human information processing
6
Q
Filter Theory
A
- Proposed by Broadbent (1958)
- Early selection model in which stimuli enter a central processing channel one at a time to be identified
- Extraneous or unwanted messages are filtered out early, before this identification stage
- The filter can be adjusted on the basis of relatively gross physical characteristics to allow information from only one source of input to enter the identification stage
- i.e. you are looking for red squares in a box of toys so you’re going to ignore things that are not red
- Filter theory is supported by research of “selective attention”
- i.e. cocktail party phenomenon
- Although useful, Filter Theory is not entirely correct
- even unattended messages can be identified at least sometimes
- A different way to explain the Filter Theory issue was to move the bottleneck to later in the processing sequence, after identification occurs
7
Q
Filter-attenuation Model
A
- Attenuation and late-selection theories were developed to help explain what Filter Theory could not
- Filter-attenuation model (Treisman, 1964) claims an early filter serves only to attenuate the signal of an unattended message rather than to block it entirely
8
Q
Late-selection Model
A
- The late-selection model describes how all information comes into the processing sequence but if they are not important they decay rapidly
9
Q
Load Theory
A
- Bottleneck model
- Recent evidence supports a hybrid early and late-selection theory called the load theory (Lavie, 2005)
- Whether selection is early or late will depend on whether the perceptual load is low or high
- High perceptual load, early selection
- Low perceptual load, late selection
10
Q
Unitary-resource Models
A
- Hypothesize attention is a limited-capacity resource that can be applied to a variety of processes and tasks
- Performing several tasks at once is not difficult unless the available capacity of attentional resources is exceeded
- when capacity is exceeded, performance decreases, and the information processing system needs to allocate resources to different tasks
- Kahneman (1973): suggested that available capacity may fluctuate with the level of arousal and the demands of the task
- if the task is easy, the available attentional resources may be reduced
- Different tasks have different attentional requirements
- To test this, research was conducted using dual-task procedures to measure performance when attempting to do a primary and secondary task simultaneously
- increased attention to the primary task reduced performance on the secondary task
- these types of studies are good for predicting performance when attempting to perform different combinations of tasks
11
Q
Multiple-Resource Model
A
- The prominent theory in HFE
- Based on the multiple-resource theory which states that instead of one resource of attention, there are several distinct cognitive subsystems and each have their own limited pool of resources
- Wickens (2002) presented a 4D system of resources consisting of distinct stages of processing, information codes, and input and output modalities
- General idea: performance of multiple tasks will be better if the task dimensions (stages of processing, codes, and modalities) do not overlap
- The model by Wickens can predict how much two tasks will interfere with each other by looking at whether the tasks rely on the same or different resources
12
Q
Models of Attention
A
- Multiple resource theory is not widly accepted because patterns of dual-task interference are much more complicated than expected from the simple concept of multiple resource theory
- Bottleneck and resource models explain decrements in multiple-task performance as consequences of a limited capacity for processing information
- These models do not place much emphasis on executive control processes which supervise how limited capacity is allocated to different tasks
13
Q
EPIC Theory
A
- Executive control model
- Meyer and Kieras (1997) analyzed performance in terms of executive control processes
- Developed a framework for cognitive task analysis that they call Executive-Process Interactive Control (EPIC) theory
- The EPIC theory states that decrements in multiple-task performance are due to the strategies tha tpeople adopt to perform different tasks in different manners
- The EPIC theory differs from other models of attention because it assumes there is no limitation in the capacity of central, cognitive processes
- people’s physical abiities are limited (i.e. you can’t move your arm left and right at the same time)
- EPIC accounts for decrements in multiple-task performance through flexible strategies used to accommodate task priorrities and the physical imitations
- EPIC is the favored theory for attentional models because it incorporates much of what we already understand about the fixed mechanisms of human information processing and how they interact with task-specific strategies to determine how cognitive operations unfold over time
14
Q
Selective Listening /
Auditory Selective Attention
A
- Used to present a target message with a distractor message to determine what characteristics of the distractor interfere with the target message by masking the target or confusing the listener
- Selective listening is easy when:
- the target message is physically distinct from the distractor
- there is spatial separation of the target and distractor
- the target and distractor are of different intensities
- the target and distractor are from different frequeny regions within the auditory spectrum
- Meaning and syntax affect selective listening performance when both signals are speech messages
- Listeners make fewer errors when:
- the target and distractor are of different languages
- the target message is prose rather than random words
- the target and distractor are distinctly different types of prose
- when listeners perform well in selective attention tasks, it is to the detriment of the distractor
15
Q
Visual Selective Attention
A
- Visual selective attention experiments find that observers have little awareness of events to which s/he is not attending
- For selective attentoin studies, the required response to a target can be made more quickly when the distractors require the same response as the target
- but the response to a target is slowed when the distractors require a different response
- The focus of visual attention is much like a spotlight of varying width that can be directed to differen tlocations
- the spotlight cannot always be made small enough to prevent distracting stimuli from being attended
- this suggest that visual attention has a lower limit, it can only get so mall
- there is also an upper limit
- The upper limit of visual attention is achieved by moving your eyes to different places in the visual field; this allows you to focus on what was in your peripheral vision
- Visual attention “jumps” in a discrete way from one point to another instead of a gradual motion
