Attention Flashcards
Selective Attention
The ability to prioritize and attend to somethings while ignoring others
Not a global brain state (allocated among relevant inputs, thoughts and actions while simulatneously ignoring irrelevant or distracting ones)
How does selective attention affect us
It influences how we process sensory inputs, store that information in memory, process it sematically, and act on it.
What is an assumption we make about attention in cognitive psychology?
attention is a limited resource
Top-down or goal-driven attention
Driven by an individual’s behavioral goals and shaped by learned priorities
Dorsal Attentional Pathway (Fronto-parietal)
Bottom-up or reflexive
Driven by a stimulus and much less dependent on current behavioral goals
Attentional Control Mechanisms
determine where and on what our attention is focused on
Types of Attention
Voluntary
Reflexive
Overt Attention
Covert Attention
Voluntary Attention
Our ability to intentionally attend to something
top-down process
Reflexive Attention
A bottom-up stimulus driven process in which a sensory event–maybe a loud band, captures our attention
Overt Attention
Turn your head to orient towards a stimulus whether it is for your eyes to get a better look, your ears to pick up a whisper, or your nose to sniff food
Covert Attention
Attention without orientation. It appears that one’s attention is on something but actually it is on something else.
Unilateral Spatial Neglect
Damage to one hemisphere (mostly stroke) only
Most sever impact is when the right hemisphere is damaged
Neglect of space contralateral to damaged hemisphere (ipsilesional bias in attetion. Have normal vison)
Not due to a memory failure, but spatial neglect can affect memory
Neuropsychological Tests for Unilateral Spatial Neglect
Line Cancellation Test - asked to bisect horizontal lines precisely in the middle by drawing a vertical line
Copying a Simple line drawing - copying a drawing of a daisy
Imagination - visual memory is neglected; attention to parts of the recalled images were biased not due to lacking memories
Extinction
Presence of a stimutaneous stimulus in the ipsilateral hemifield prevents the detection of a contralesional stimulus
Balint’s Syndrome
Severe disturbances of visual attention and awareness (perception)
Caused by bilateral damage to posterior parietal and occipital cortices
Only one or a small subset of available objects are perceived at any one time
Three main deficits of Balint’s Syndrome
Simultanagnosia
Ocular Apraxia
Optic Ataxia
Simulatanagnosia
Difficulty perceiving the visual field as a whole scene
Ocular Apraxia
Deficit in making eye movements to scan the visual field
Optic Ataxia
Deficit in making visually guided hand movements
Hermann von Helmholtz
1879 - studied visual attention and observed tha thwile keeping his eye fizated in the center of a screen during a very brief illumination of the screen he could perceive the letters located within this region but had difficulty perceiving the latters at other locations.
He attributed this phenomenon to attention and speculated on the possible mechanisms underlying this ability
E.C. Cherry
Dichotic listening paradigm
Can accurately repeat info in one ear when attending to it but could not recall the unattended input)
Cocktail Party Effect
Perceptual processing has limited capacity (information processing bottlenecks)
Early Selection
Stimulus can be selected for further processing, or it can be tossed out as irrelevant before perceptual analysis of the stimulus is complete
“gating”
Late Selection
All inputs are processed equally by the perceptual system; selection takes place at higher stages of information processing
