Attention Flashcards
The two senses of “attention” in psychology
- Sustained attention
Related to psychological arousal
Problem of vigilance - Selective attention
People as limited capacity systems
Attend to one stimulus at the expense of others
In Cherry’s (1953) Dichotic listening and shadowing task
What is picking out; Dichotic; Channel?
Picking out: processes take sound energy at ear; translate to understanding
Dichotic: “di” (two) + “oto” (ears); involving or relating to the simultaneous of the right and left ear by different sounds.
Channel: sensory pathway acting as a source of information
What is Filter theory (Broadbent, 1958)?
Attention acts as a filter to select stimuli for further processing
Senses –> Short term store –> selective filter –> Limited capacity channel (p system)
What is the function of STS; Selective filter; Limited capacity channel (p system) in Broadbent’s Filter theory?
- Short term store
• STM: encoded cognitively, have to keep it awake by rehearsing it.
• STS: All stimuli stored briefly in short term store; a trace that hands around for very briefly period. - Selective filter
Filter precedes channel, protects it from overload - Limited capacity channel (p system)
Meaning extracted in limited capacity channel
Raw acoustic trace, decays quickly if not selected
The failure of filter theory
Split-span experiment with meaningful material: “Dear Aunt Jane” experiment (Gray & Wedderburn, 1960)
Preferred recall follows semantic context, not presentation ear
Filter theory explains simple findings, but can’t explain semantic processing of unattended stimuli.
The early selection (Treisman, 1961)
The late selection (Dutsch, 1063; Norman, 1968)
ES:
Sensory Analysis –> Filter –> Semantic Analysis (LTM) –> Report (LTM activation = conscious awareness)
LS:
Sensory Analysis –> Semantic Analysis (LTM) –> Filter –> Report (All stimuli access LTM, not sufficient for awareness, need to pass filter for awareness)
Attention Model (Treisman, 1961)
Broadbent’s (1958) filter completely blocks unattended stimuli; Treisman’s partly blocks (attenuates) it.
Late selection model (Norman, 1968)
Activate materials in LM in one of the two ways: Bottom-up and top-down selection mechanism
Bottom-up: stimulus driven, sensory analysis –> Memory system
Top-down: Expectations –> Pertinence (relevance to task) –> Memory system
All stimuli activate semantic representations in LTM, but need to be selected by pertinence to get into consciousness.
What is Cherry’s Binaural listening task?
Binaural presentation: both ears receive both messages, same voice, differ only in content
Binaural: involving or relating to both ear
Structural and Capacity Theories (The 70’s View)
Attention limit performance in two ways
Structural (Bottleneck) Theories
• Some neural structures can only deal with one stimulus at a time
• Competition produces processing “bottleneck” (filter theory)
• ES: Bottleneck getting into LTM; LS bottleneck getting out
Capacity (Resource) Theories
• Information processing is mental work
• Mental work requires activation of neural structure
• Limited capacity to activate structure
• Reduction of capacity produces deficit in divided attention tasks
• Differs from structural theories because capacity can be allocated flexibly to simultaneous tasks
Strayer and Johnston (2001): Taking on a mobile phone interferes with driving (sharing capacity reduces accuracy and increases RT)
Dual task trade-off
Attention operating characteristic (AOC)
• Vary proportion of attention allocated to two tasks in dual task paradigm
• “Graceful degradation” of performance as available capacity is reduced
Attentional orienting (1980s)
- First work on attention looked at auditory system
- Problem of eye movements
- “Covert” attention – movement independent of eye movements
- Attention shifts precede (before) eye movements and can occur without them
Shifts of attention called attentional orienting
Posner: The “Spotlight of attention”
Shifts of attention likened to moving spotlight
Selective enhancement for stimuli ‘illuminated by the beam”
• Expresses selective (Allocable, I can control them)
• Limited-capacity idea in spatial terms (The size of the spotlight is limited)
It is a lot like “filter theory”
Method of studying the spotlight of attention
Spatial cuing paradigm (Posner)
Attract attention to A, present stimulus at A or B, compare performance
Two attentional control systems
Endogenous - Top down - Voluntary
Central (symbolic) cue (arrow)
Exogenous - Bottom up - reflexive
Peripheral (spatial) cue (falsh of light)
Two systems engaged by different kinds of cues
- cognitive (need to interpret);
- direct, spatial (no need to interpret)
