Attention

Question 1

James quote

Answer 1

“everyone knows what attention is”

Question 2

von Hemholtz 1980s

Answer 2

we can covertly select some objects and ignore others

Question 3

brief history of covert attention

Answer 3

• ignored by behaviourism

Question 4

early theory of covert attention?

Answer 4

Broadbent (1958) proposed a filter model of selective attention

filter selects with all-or-nothing fashion

Question 5

Contradicting Broadbent (1958)?

Answer 5

Cherry (1953) - cocktail party effect

Question 6

Post broadbent theory? i.e. other early theory of attention

Answer 6

Treisman (1960) found that people could switch channels to continue listening to relevant stimulus.

Treisman (1964) proposed ‘filter-attenuation model’ -> filter is not all-or-nothing, as it is aware of the other stimulus, just to a lesser extent.

Question 7

Support for Treisman theory?

Answer 7

Von Wright, Anderson & Stenman (1975) found that works associated with an electric shock give rise to galvanic skin responses even when presented under shadowing instructions to the less important side.

Question 8

What is the spotlight metaphor?

Answer 8

Posner (1980) cueing paradigm

Question 9

what are exogenous cues?

Answer 9

• grabs your attention (bottom up)
• fast but transient (i.e. disappears after a short while)
• fairly automatic (i.e. such flashes are hard to ignore)

Question 10

what are endogenous cues?

Answer 10

• you direct yourself (top down)

- much slower but sustained and requires the conscious effort of the subject

Question 11

Eriksen & Eriksen (1974)

Answer 11

found that interfering effects of task irrelevant flankers were minimised when they fell more than 0.5 retinal angle away from the target.

conclude that humans can set their attention to is 1 degree retinal angle

Question 12

Moran and Desimone, 1985

Answer 12

primate attention happens in visual cortex, v4 neuron especially responsive

Question 13

Buchel et al. (1997)

Answer 13

found that V1 and V5 are especially important

Question 14

Rees et al. (1997)

Answer 14

distractors mean that its harder to pay attention, shown that attention is in v5, and attention to motion is somewhere else?

Question 15

disorders of attention?

Answer 15

Unilateral Neglect Syndrome
Unilateral extinction
Balint’s Syndrome

Question 16

unilateral neglect syndrome

Answer 16

• damage to parietal lobe (+ other frontal/subcortical areas)
• can’t attend to left side stimuli

Question 17

unilateral extinction

Answer 17

• damage to parietal lobe

- when left and right stimuli presented together, can’t see left

Question 18

Balint’s Syndrome

Answer 18

• damage to parietal lobe

- simultanagnosia: inability to see two objects simultaneously/can’t switch between objects

Question 19

Feature Integration Theory?

Answer 19

attention is the glue that combines features (e.g. colour/orientation/depth, etc) into a multidimensional percept

Question 20

Evidence of FIT?

Answer 20

visual search tasks. Either target ‘pops out’ with unique feature (Feature Search) or does not pop out as there are variable features (Conjuction search)

Question 21

Treisman and Gelade (1980)

Answer 21

For feature search, RT is largely unaffected by adding stimuli
For conjuction search, RTs increased linearly with number of stimuli (2:1 slope ratio to detect target as absent: target present)

Therefore, visual search is parallel for feature search, but serial for conjuction search.

Question 22

problems with FIT

Answer 22

• not clear how many ‘features’ there are

- some conjuction searches can be done in parallel

Question 23

how does FIT explain treisman experiment etc

Answer 23

Focal attention selects a particular location within a master map of locations, and all features which have this location are automatically retrieved.

Question 24

examples of attention selecting objects rather than circular spotlight regions of space

Answer 24

Egly et al. (1994) - two objects, cues same distance apart but on either same object or dif object, responses were faster when cues were on the same object

Driver & Halligan (1991) - patients with neglect don’t ignore the left side of space, but the left side of an object

Mattingley et al. (1997) - patients with extinction noticed event on left side alone but missed it when presented simultaneously with a right-hand OBJECT

Question 25

examples of early detection theories

Answer 25

Broadbent filter model | Treisman and gelade FIT

Question 26

according to early selection views, what is the primary role of attention?

Answer 26

to prevent high-level visual and auditory processing from becoming inputs

Question 27

according to late selection views, what is the primary role of attention?

Answer 27

all items in a scene are processed at high level, but then one item is selected in order to control the next action.

Question 28

evidence for early?

Answer 28

single-unit recording from the primary visual cortex

Question 29

evidence for late?

Answer 29

shiffrin & gardner | duncan (1980)

Question 30

Threats to early selection view?

Answer 30

conjuction of features can pop out: - Nakayama & Silverman (1986) showed it with depth x colour red/blue - Macleod et al. (1991) showed it with motion x form

Question 31

Shiffrin & gardner (1972)

Answer 31

asked participants to look for an 'F' or a 'T' in either a successive condition (should be easier) or a simultaneous condition (should be harder). Equal performance in each -> showed that at least four, fairly complex objects can be processes in parallel at quite a high level of processing

Question 32

Duncan (1980)

Answer 32

Replicated shiffrin & gardner, but showed that if 2 targets are presented simultaneously, one vertical, one horizontal -> much harder for simultaneous than successive Therefore, showed that only one object at a time can be selected at a time when we need to act.

Question 33

which neurons help with vision?

Answer 33

neurons in primary visual cortex (V1) =orientation neurons in higher level cortical areas - FFA fusiform face area = faces - LOC lateral occipital complex = complex shapes

Question 34

Marr's work?

Answer 34

treated vision as an information processing system. It extracts retinal low level representations -> complex representations of 3rd objects

Question 35

passive vision vs active vision

Answer 35

``` passive = non-selective, sees everything active = selective, based on goals and intentions ```

Question 36

We move our eyes on average

Answer 36

3-4 times per second

Question 37

saccades

Answer 37

eyes' voluntary step-like eye movements

Question 38

‘overt’ attention

Answer 38

Orienting towards objects of interest with eye

Question 39

Yarbus (1967)

Answer 39

-showed subjects a painting, tracked their eye movements -asked questions, saw people made different eye movements to focus their attention depending on task

Question 40

Why do we move our eyes?

Answer 40

- when we focus on dif objects, we align it with the fovea | - the fovea has an area of highest resolution (where relative acuity is best), so this needs to be aligned

Question 41

equation for why saccadic eye movements are stereotyped and ballistic?

Answer 41

relation between duration and amplitude: Ts = 2.2*As + 21, where Ts is saccade duration and As is amplitude.

Question 42

How do we perceive a stable view of the world while we make saccades?

Answer 42

"saccadic suppression" - reduced sensitivity to light during eye movements, we are essentially blind during

Question 43

Brain evidence that our vision depends on what we use it for?

Answer 43

We have parallel processing streams: - parvocellular (detailed analysis) - magnocellular (helps with guiding actions) With the combined activity of the Retina, LGN, and cortex, we can distinguish between these two processing streams

Question 44

Mishkin and Ungerleider (1982)

Answer 44

lesion work in monkeys lesions to inferotemporal cortex = feature analysis problems = 'what' pathway (ventral stream) lesions to posterior parietal cortex (PPC) = visuospatial problems = 'where' pathway (dorsal stream)

Question 45

Goodale (1995)

Answer 45

where = 'vision for action' what = 'vision for recognition' supported by patient studies - patient DF with visual agnosia had damage to ventral stream, but could act (where) could not recognise (what) objects - Balint's syndrome is damage to dorsal stream, patients couldn't see when he had to reach out to an object.

Question 46

How do we move our eyes?

Answer 46

areas that steer eye movements: - Frontal Eye Fields (FEF) - Lateral intraparietal cortex (LIP)

Question 47

FEF details?

Answer 47

- visual cells - motor cells - visuo-motor cells - electrical stimulation in this area = eye movement in the motor field Goldberg (1985) if you stimulate certain cells, a monkey will move his eyes to a specific location!

Question 48

What is the premotor theory of attention?

Answer 48

people thought overt (eye movement) and covert (spatial) attention = different circuits Rizzolatti (1987) proposed that they actually use the same circuits.

Question 49

support for Rizzolatti (1987)

Answer 49

Moore and Fallah (2001) stimulated cells in the FEF of monkeys. Task was to detect a stimulus despite distractors. Even subthreshold stimulation in the FEF (so eye movements didn't happen) improves the monkeys response rate, just like covert attention