Attention - Chp. 6 Flashcards
(31 cards)
Attention?
The marshalling of cognitive processing resources on a particular aspect of the external or internal environment, or on internal processes such as thoughts or memories.
Arousal?
A global state of the brain (or body) reflecting an overall level of responsiveness.
Visual Spatial Attention?
Attention directed to a location in visual space.
Covert Attention?
The focusing of visual attention toward a location or item in the visual field without shifting the direction of gaze. Can apply to other sensory modalities or to attentional paradigms.
Overt Attention?
The focusing of attention (typically visual) by voluntarily shifting gaze.
Early Selection?
A model of attention postulating that attentional mechanisms can selectively filter out or attenuate irrelevant sensory input at an early processing stage, before the completion of sensory and perceptual analysis.
Late Selection?
A theory in attention postulating that all stimuli are processed through the completion of sensory and perceptual analysis before any selection or influence of attention occurs.
Endogenous Attention?
A form of attention in which processing resources are directed voluntarily to specific aspects of the environment; typically prompted by experimental instructions or, more normally, by an individual’s goals, expectations, and/or knowledge.
Top down processing (smiley face example from class).
Exogenous Attention?
Also called reflective attention. A form of attention in which processing resources are directed to specific aspects of the environment in response to a sudden stimulus change, such as loud noise or sudden movement, that attracts attention automatically.
Bottom up processing (think of smiley face ex. from class).
Inhibition of Return?
A phenomenon in a exogenously cued spatial attention paradigm that is apparent as a slower behavioral response to a target stimulus presented at the (validly) cued location later than 30 milliseconds after the cue.
Brainstem Evoked Response (BER)?
Also called auditory brainstem response (ABR). A series of small electrical brain waves that are elicited during the first 10 milliseconds after onset of a brief auditory stimulus and that can be detected at the scalp. BERs reflect activity in the auditory brainstem nuclei as the sound stimulus information reaches them in sequence via the auditory afferent pathways.
Attentional Stream Paradigm?
A paradigm used in attention research in which two or more segregated series of stimuli are presented in parallel and subjects selectively attend to one of the series to perform a task.
Basically: dichotic listening task type of stream.
Auditory N1?
The first major negative ERP wave elicited by an auditory stimulus, arising mainly from secondary auditory cortex and peaking at about 100 milliseconds after the stimulus; can be strongly modulated by auditory spatial attention.
P300?
Also called P3. A large positive ERP wave elicited by stimuli that are surprising, are of an infrequent event type, or are task-relevant targets, usually when occurring within a stream of other sensory events; typically peals between 300 to 500 milliseconds after the stimulus.
P20-50 Attention Affect?
An enhanced positive-polarity ERP wave elicited by an attended auditory stimulus, occurring between 20 to 50 milliseconds after stimulus onset; this effect provided particularly strong support for early-selection models of attention.
Mismatch Negativity (MMN)?
A negative ERP wave peaking at about 150 to 200 milliseconds following a deviant stimulus in a stream of otherwise identical stimuli (usually sound stimuli).
Biased Competition?
A theory of attention that proposes that stimulus inputs compete in a mutually inhibitory fashion for neutral processing priority and that a key role of attention is to bias the processing towards those items that are attending.
Reentrant Process?
Following a stimulus or event, a process in which neural activity is fed back to the same brain region activated earlier in the processing sequence.
Perceptual Load?
The level of processing difficulty or complexity of a task being performed by an individual; usually measure by the time it takes for perceptual analyses of the stimuli.
Processing Negativity?
A slow, long-lasting negative-polarity ERP wave that is elicited during auditory selective attention, the amplitude of which reflects how well each stimulus matches an attention ‘template’.
Selection Negativity?
A slow, sustained, negative-polarity ERP wave, typically starting about 150 milliseconds after an attended visual stimulus, resulting from attention to a nonspatial visual feature of the stimulus.
Feature Similarity Gain Model?
A model in which the attentional modulation of the amplitude (gain) of a sensory neuron’s response depends on the similarity of the features of the currently relevant target and the feature preferences of that neuron.
Visual Search?
The searching in a visual scene with multiple stimulus items for a particular type of item possessing one of more specific feature attributes.
Supramodal Attention?
The focusing of attention of stimulus information across multiple modalities at the same time.
Ex.) paying attention to a visual stimulus & auditory stimulus at the same time.
