Chapter 4 (Attention)

Question 1

William James” view on attention

Answer 1

“,,, the taking of possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, one out of what seem several simultaneous possible objects or trains of thought”

Question 2

What does William James view on attention imply

Answer 2

attention is primarily a filtering process

Does seem fundamentally true,

though it’s equally true that attention means different things to different people

Question 3

A method of attentional filtering

Answer 3

Selective attention

Question 4

What is selective attention

Answer 4

view of attention which holds that its job is to identify relevant information, so that irrelevant information is filtered out

Question 5

One method to demonstrate selective attention (selective hearing)

Answer 5

The cocktail party phenomenon (Cherry, 1953)

Question 6

This model does not work for selective attention (we filter out irrelevant conversations with ease)

Answer 6

This model doesn’t work and assumes that no meaning is used to engage in selective attention

Question 7

What is the cocktail party method

Answer 7

5 ways people could potentially filter out one message from the rest with relative ease

Cherry (1953)

Question 8

What are the 5 ways people can filter out messages with relative ease (of the cocktail party method)

Answer 8

1. The direction of the voice in space
2. Body language (gestures, lip-reading, etc.)
3. Differences in speaking voices (pitch, speed, male vs female, etc.)
4. Differences in accents
   ***5. Transition probabilities (predicting the words you will hear and may have missed based on implicitly known probabilities and context)

Question 9

We need to lock out the extra auditory stuff to be able to pay attention to the main conversation, thus we would pay no attention to other auditory stimuli and its meaning

However,

Answer 9

the attentional filter is not fully blocking out the other stimuli

If two people talk simultaneously about different topics and switch topics half way through, you will follow the topic rather than the person, and will likely not notice

Similarly, if someone says you name across the room, you will likely hear it and recognize the meaning right away even if fully invested in another conversation

Question 10

What is an example of overzealous filtering

Answer 10

Inattentional blindness:

The failure to attend to critical information we ought to be able to notice

Eg A pilot landing a plane under difficult conditions might focus exclusively on the gauges informing him on his performance

he might not notice a truck sitting on the runway

Question 11

Daniel Simons was one of the first to show

Answer 11

change blindness out of the lab

The anatomy of the eye doesn’t help us understand this phenomenon at all

Again, something unexpected was completely filtered out

Question 12

The SART task Robertson et al. (1997)

Answer 12

Quick measure of sustained attention

Uses no-go trails to measure attention

Response to all didgets except 3

Question 13

Severe TBI patients have trouble

Answer 13

Adjusting their strategy

Prior to an error, people were likely to have been responding faster than they would have before a correctly withheld response.

This seems true for everyone
Some people correct their strategy mistake

Similar strategy between control + minor TBI
major TBI did not adjust their strategies, lose self-regulation, may not recognize they should change their behavior to do it better

Question 14

Does sitting vs standing make a difference for the SART task

Answer 14

Yep

Question 15

Capacity theory states that

Answer 15

the longer we use our brain, the less capacity will remain

This is only true for certain types of attention

Question 16

The structural limit model view attention as

Answer 16

Made of relatively independent modules

Each structure has its own capacity limit
Your attentional performance won’t diminish as long as you are switching between structures on a regular basis

This could suggest multitasking would be a good thing

Question 17

Multitasking Task by Watson & Strayer (2010)

Answer 17

Participants drove in a driving simulator, behind a braking pace car

While driving, they also performed an auditory version of the Operation Span (OSPAN) task.

On average, across the board multitasking was bad for task performance

The central bottleneck theory explains this – at some point we must alternate between tasks to do multiple things “at once

Question 18

Supertaskers

Answer 18

Not everyone showed multitasking deficits

As a general rule, multitasking is a bad idea. But for about 2.5% of undergraduate students, it seems not to be a big deal

Question 19

Does attention always filter critical information well

Answer 19

No

Inattentional blindness was the failure to attend to critical information we ought to be able to notice - overactive filtering

Some information is so salient that it breaks through the “filter, or in other words it can capture attention

Question 20

What is Attentional Blink

Answer 20

how a stimulus can capture attention

Observed in the context of a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task paradigm

This involves brief presentation (80 ms) of simple information (e.g. letters and digits)

One type of information is the distractors, and the other is the target - like the SART, there are more distractors than targets

Your task is to remember and report back only the targets

sometimes one, sometimes two number (33% of the time there was one)

We can identify all the targets, except when attention is captured

The relative position of the second target is critical to whether it is “blinked” out or not

The blink does not occur immediately - attention takes a bit of time to fully activate

Question 21

What did Cain et al. (2014) show

Answer 21

The video gamer advantage

They proposed the attentional blink should be less pronounced in frequent video gamers (VGP)
The blink (probably) does not occur to the same extent for everyone, but they were wrong about video gaming being good for it

There was no significant difference found

Question 22

In the SART, the likelihood of an error depends on

Answer 22

when the last 3 was shown

The version you completed kept the 3 in a fixed position in an otherwise random sequence

The fixed position can explain why we didn’t see slowing down after a mistake (good news - no evidence of TBI) and the very steep speeding up after corrects

Question 23

Intenttention as mind wandering

Answer 23

When people reported mind wandering in an fMRI they had similar brain activity as when resting

Default mode network: mind wandering. Our default may be mind wandering, so at rest we mnd wander

Question 24

Multitasking is a generally bad idea, but

Answer 24

task-irrelevant stimulation could be okay

Question 25

What did Olivers & Nieuwenhis (2005) demonstrate (mind wandering and multitasking)

Answer 25

that background music reduces the attentional blink One explanation for this is that music decreases the likelihood of attentional capture May reduce mind wandering Not demonstrating bottleneck theory

Question 26

What is Complete filtering

Answer 26

If subsequent targets ar fully filtered, it won’t matter if they are related or not However, it seems like related targets were easier to find and reducing the attentional blink Connectedness of information may impact overall performance It can’t only be a fixed rate of a neuron firing because relatedness would increase firing

Question 27

When people look at this image, they need to direct they fovea to the information that seems most relevant

Answer 27

Based on Yarbus (1967) What you attend to the most when asked to describe ppl 1. Face

Question 28

William James said about attention

Answer 28

Everyone knows what attention is: "how we focus on things" Like a filter (but that's debatable)

Question 29

Attention has different forms

Answer 29

Forms of filtering Every time someone attempts to measure attention comes up with new kind of attention

Question 30

In Broadbents model of attention as a filter

Answer 30

It's filtered based on basic physical characteristic (sensory) So not higher order understandings

Question 31

Attention as a filter in the Broadbent's filter model

Answer 31

It's like a coffee filter (it lets some things through) You'll switch automatically (follow the thread with out noticing) Something can break through the filter (ex priority like your name)

Question 32

Filter makes sense & it's

Answer 32

Coherent with what James said

Question 33

Inattention blindness

Answer 33

Part of filtering (overzealous) keeping something out that would be important to you eg pilot landing a plane eg An invisible Gorilla (while you count the passes)

Question 34

Error for SART task

Answer 34

Did respond to a 3 For of mistake but not called error = omission = Not responding to another

Question 35

What is the average of response for the SART task?

Answer 35

350-400 ms

Question 36

What did Roberts et al find on their SART task

Answer 36

Ppl with traumatic brain injury had more errors than control (press 3 on no-go) Better than the Triplet traditional task Strategy changing -

Question 37

SART strategy adjustment

Answer 37

When make error adjust behaviour (response strategy) Unless TBI then don't adjust their behaviour

Question 38

Is there a difference SART sit stand

Answer 38

Not conclusive in the end

Question 39

No multitasking is not truly possible just switch (Attentional bottleneck Brodbent's idea fixed overall capacity)

Answer 39

So doing homework with music not truly better

Question 40

No multitasking deficit "supertaskers" in driving simulator

Answer 40

3% of undergrads fine

Question 41

Two ways of assessing mind wandering

Answer 41

1. Interrupting the task to ask 2. fMRI measure default mode network

Question 42

Things don't get filtered out completely

Answer 42

Primming can augment future word recall on task (Shapiro, Driver, Ward, Sorensen 1997)

Question 43

Eye tracking image (Yarbus, 1967)

Answer 43

Describe the people on the picture - Look at their faces!

Question 44

early selection view of attention

Answer 44

Eg selective attention - cocktail party effect that “attention can effectively prevent early perceptual processing of irrelevant distractors”

Question 45

late selection view of attention

Answer 45

Eg Stroop task both relevant and ir­relevant stimuli are perceived and participants must actively ignore the irrelevant stimuli in order to focus on the relevant ones. Late selection is often illustrated by the Stroop task

Question 46

Stroop task

Answer 46

Invented by Dr Stroop Vs Late selection view of attention Overlearnt process vs inhibit the reading of the word to read the colours Control vs automatic processes

Question 47

controlled processes of attention

Answer 47

Requires attention / energy Top - Down Goal directed / voluntary

Question 48

automatic processes of attention

Answer 48

Do not require attention Bottom - Up Stimulus driven / involuntary

Question 49

What is the spotlight metaphor

Answer 49

Selective attention is often referred to as the spatial attention The idea that spatial attention is like a spotlight that we shine on an object that we select for more complex and conscious processing

Question 50

What are exogenous shifts (vs spatial attention)

Answer 50

involuntary movements of attention triggered by external stimuli Also called attention capture

Question 51

What are endogenous shifts (vs spatial attention)

Answer 51

Voluntary movement of attention

Question 52

Selective attention is often referred to as

Answer 52

Spatial attention

Question 53

What is a peripheral cueing paradigm?

Answer 53

Exogenous shifts of attention typically demonstrated using this (attention capturing) They include catch trials (participants respond when its a no-go)

Question 54

In the peripheral cueing paradigm, people are ___ at detecting the target when it appears in the cued location than in the uncued location: this is called the ___ effect

Answer 54

Faster / the cueing effect

Question 55

What is the stimulus onset asynchrony in the cueing paradigm

Answer 55

The time difference between the onset of one stimulus and the onset of a subsequent stimulus

Question 56

What is inhibition of return

Answer 56

Slower responses to cued than to uncued trials in the cueing paradigm. target detection faster at the uncued location than at the cued location, because the delay in the appearance of the target has led attention to shift to the uncued location, and now it has to disengage from that location and shift back to the cued location if that is where the target happens to appear. The reversed cueing effect at long intervals between the cue and target is called inhibition of return

Question 57

What is the central cueing paradigm

Answer 57

An experimental method in which a central cue (e.g., arrow) points to a location in which a target might subsequently appear.

Question 58

What is inattention blindness

Answer 58

Failure to notice events that we would be expected to notice Eg pilot landing a plane don't see truck on the landing strip Eg Gorilla in the ball game Eg Crosses which one is larger ... add square (faces more often detected)

Question 59

What is attention capture

Answer 59

Exogenous shifts of attention, external stimuli salient enough captures our attention when we are focused somewhere else

Question 60

What is the flanker task

Answer 60

An experiment in which participants may be influenced by an irrelevant stimulus beside the target Congruent and Incongruent conditions

Question 61

Is face processing mandatory

Answer 61

Yes, even when we try to ignore it

Question 62

Is deja vu a thing?

Answer 62

Yes Most likely to happen to people who have travelled, higher socio-economic better educated

Question 63

What are domain-specific modules

Answer 63

The hypothesis that parts of the brain may be specialized for particular tasks such as recognizing faces

Question 64

What is the primary determinant of selective attention

Answer 64

Meaning We see what interests us and what we are looking for and expecting

Question 65

What are notions around the capacity of attention

Answer 65

As tasks become more complex they start to interfere with each other 1. Capacity model = attention as fuel tank 2. Structural limits = tasks with similar activities will compete and interfere 3. Central bottlenec = only 1 path at a time for info to travel

Question 66

What is a central bottleneck hypothesis of attention

Answer 66

The hypothesis that there is only one path along which information can travel, and it is so narrow that the most it can handle at any one time is the information relevant to one task. Doing two things at once= task switch Can be overcome with practice!

Question 67

What is the Capacity model of attention

Answer 67

= attention as fuel tank with limited capacity

Question 68

What is the Structural limits model of attention

Answer 68

= tasks with similar activities will compete and interfere with each other

Question 69

Divided attention

Answer 69

The capacity to attend attention to more than one thing at once We can't prove if it's truly divided or if it's just good switching

Question 70

What is stimulus response mapping?

Answer 70

figuring out what response goes with what stimulus

Question 71

The attentional blink task illustrates the

Answer 71

Limits of human attention When two stimuli presented within 550 ms of each other (we don't see the second)

Question 72

Could allocating attention to a secondary task improve performance on a primary task?

Answer 72

Yes if the other task regards task-irrelevant activity (ex visual & music)

Question 73

What is a set (task switching)

Answer 73

A temporary, top-down organization in the brain that facilitates some responses while inhibiting others in order to achieve a certain goal; also referred to as a “mental set.”

Question 74

What is task switching

Answer 74

changing from working on one task to working an another; usually studied in situations in which the switching is involuntary

Question 75

What is switch cost

Answer 75

The finding that performance declines immediately on switching tasks

Question 76

What is vigilance

Answer 76

Sustained attention that is imposed eg your job

Question 77

What is sustained attention

Answer 77

the act of maintain attention focused on a single task for a prolonged period of time

Question 78

Mackwork clock task

Answer 78

Having participants monitor a line Watch for clock hand skipping Performance drops (vigilance decrement)

Question 79

What is the vigilance decrement

Answer 79

Imposed sustained attention (vigilance) going down on sustained attention tasks Eg Driving & lectures

Question 80

What are three views on the cognitive mechanics under vigilance decrement

Answer 80

1. Overload view (tasks overwhelm) 2. Ressource depletion account (limited attentional ressources) 3. Underload view (task boring we switch)

Question 81

embodied attention 2 for ms

Answer 81

1. Covert attention (attending to something with out moving eyes) 2. Overt attention (attending to something by moving eyes)

Question 82

What is the sequential attention hypothesis?

Answer 82

relationship between overt and covert attention = tight relationship Covert attention shifts first and overt eye movement follows

Question 83

eye tracking vocab

Answer 83

Saccades = Rapid chaotic Fixation = Stillness Nystagmus = small mvmd during Fixation not exactly still Regression = left to right motion when reading

Question 84

We look for entry point (when reading a newspaper)

Answer 84

Where we focus our eyes before we start reading Either a heading or a picture

Question 85

What is smooth pursuit movements

Answer 85

Movements of the eye that, because they are not jerky, enable the viewer to maintain fixation on a moving object. Eg follow a finger

Question 86

What is task-related knowledge

Answer 86

An observers knowledge of the goals and the task at hand as it guides the eyes during a visual task

Question 87

What is the quiet eye?

Answer 87

Sustained and steady eye gaze prior to action or behaviour

Question 88

what is the location-suppression hypothesis

Answer 88

A two-stage explanation for the quiet eye phenomenon: in the preparation stage, the quiet eye maximizes information about the target object; then, during the location stage, vision is suppressed to optimize the execution of an action or behaviour