ERPs and Attention (2)

Question 1

What is the psychological hierarchy from sensory input to motor response?

Answer 1

• sensory inputs
• low-level perceptual analysis
• high-level semantic analysis
• decision making, memory storage…
• motor response

Question 2

What are the three theories about where attentional selection occurs?

Answer 2

• early all or none filtering
• Late selection model
• strategic control of attention

Question 3

What is early all-or-none filtering? Where does it occur?

Answer 3

• AKA Broadbent’s filter model
• between low-level perceptual analysis and high-level semantic analysis
• attention kicks in before we know the meaning of things

Question 4

What is the late selection model? Where does it occur?

Answer 4

• McKay

- between high-level semantic analysis and decision making, memory storage

Question 5

What is an example of evidence towards the late selection model?

Answer 5

• when you’re filtering out or ignoring other conversations but someone says your name and it catches your attention
• if early all-or-none filtering, then you wouldn’t process your name at all

Question 6

What is the strategic control of attention?

Answer 6

• early or late selection can be chosen based on situation and approach
• attention is applied by top-down modulation
• addition of executive function sending feedback to all levels

Question 7

What is the neural hierarchy of eyes to multimodal association cortex?

Answer 7

• eyes
• thalamus
• primary visual cortex
• secondary/tertiary visual cortex
• multimodal association cortex

Question 8

What components are in visual evoked potentials?

Answer 8

• P1, N1, P2, N2, P3

Question 9

What is cued attention task?

Answer 9

• cueing (arrow) on screen
• stimulus (bar) on screen either matching cue or opposite side (4 resulting conditions)
• respond to stimulus as quickly as you can

Question 10

What does the cued attention task result in?

Answer 10

• shows evidence of early selection since attentional differences between when stimulus is attended or ignored is early in processing
• P1 is being modulated by attention

Question 11

What is the attentional blink task?

Answer 11

• given a fast sequence of letters
• must indicate if there is a x in the sequence
• there is a white letter that occurs before the x and makes it difficult to notice the x

Question 12

What is T1 and T2 in the attentional blink paradigm?

Answer 12

• T1: the letter in the different colour

- T2: what the participant is looking for

Question 13

What is the attentional blink?

Answer 13

• as if attention to find x is blinked off and on

Question 14

At what lag does the attentional blink occur? In what component does this occur?

Answer 14

• occurs especially at lag 3
• P1, N1, N400 are consistent
• P3 has a large drop at lag3

Question 15

What are the characteristics of P3?

Answer 15

• P3 amplitude depends on probability of a task-defined stimulus category
• P3 effect cannot occur until after categorization
• P3 latency is tied to the amount of time required to perceive and categorize a stimulus

Question 16

What is the psychological refractory period task?

Answer 16

• first task: hear a sound and respond with foot
• second task: if see O raise left hand, or see X and raise right hand
• compare how fast each task is alone and together

Question 17

What is seen in the psychological refractory period task?

Answer 17

• must respond to first stimulus first
• when the second stimulus is much later after the first stimulus, the reaction time stays the same
• as the delay between stimulus’ decreases, the reaction time increases

Question 18

What exactly is the psychological refractory period?

Answer 18

• the delay in reaction time when the stimulus’ are close in time

Question 19

What is a long SOA?

Answer 19

• stimulus onset asynchrony is long

- as long as response selection of each don’t overlap

Question 20

What is a short SOA?

Answer 20

• stimulus onset asynchrony is short

- cannot do response selection for both at the same time so get a bottleneck

Question 21

What is seen in P3 for the psychological refractory period task?

Answer 21

• the P3 does not slow down meaning P3 does not explain the slowing of reaction time
• P3 is a late perceptual stage of categorizing and is before the delay since it has not slowed down

Question 22

What is seen in the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) for the psychological refractory period task?

Answer 22

• the LRP shifts to the right meaning that it is delayed

- the delay occurs after P3 but before LRP

Question 23

When does attentional selection occur?

Answer 23

• can have an effect at many steps in processing
• cued attention (P1): low-level perceptual analysis
• attentional blink (P3): high-level semantic analysis
• PRP (LRP): motor response