Exam 1 - L6 Flashcards
(15 cards)
Stroop task
Class example of reading words, reading words of different colors, reading colors of words and not the word, etc.
Selective (focused) attention
Paying attention (selectively) to a single channel of info and ignoring everything else
Ex: cocktail party effect - you are having a
conversation with a friend at a party and ignore the
loud environment to focus on what your friend is
saying
Divided attention
Dividing your attention among multiple channels of information
We are very bad at dividing our attention
Ex: paying attention to the road when you are
driving while also talking on the phone
Auditory attention
Dichotic listening task: hear two messages (one in each ear), pick one and repeat it (i.e., shadowing), and ignore the other message
What helps attentional selection:
Location: left or right, near or far
Physical characteristics: deepness of voice,
different tones
What does NOT help attention selection:
Meaning: we can’t differentiate auditory messages
on meaning alone
Unattended messages
We remember very little, but can still recognize:
Physical characteristics
Sometimes important info like our name or
emotional words get through
We do not process:
Meaning
Language
Class example when Prof. Lee started reading in
spanish but we didn’t notice because we were
listening to another speaker
Early filter theory
Low-level physical characteristics of attended and unattended info is detected
Processing of the unattended message is filtered out before recognition
Late filter theory
Both attended and unattended messages are processed for meaning
The unattended message is filtered out after recognition but before it reaches conscious awareness
Attenuation theory
-Attenuate: to reduce or weaken
-Unattended message is not completely filtered out
-Attenuator lowers the strength of unattended message before it reaches recognition
-Attenuator can be thought of as a leaky filter; some info gets through the filter
-Partial info may sometimes be enough for recognition
Overt vs covert visual attention
Overt attention: eyes move to object of attention
Covert attention: attending to something without looking at it
Posner’s spatial cueing task
Fixate on center, arrow (cue) shifts covert attention to the side it is pointing to
Faster to respond if arrow points where the stimulus appears; slower if it points opposite
Spotlight model of attention can explain this - when the stimulus appears to the opposite side of the cue, you have to shift the spotlight to the other side
Spotlight metaphor
Visual attention is shifted like a spotlight
Allows for covert shifts of attention without eye
movement (spotlight of attention shifts but eyes
don’t)
Feature integration theory
Attention is what allows us to integrate different features into object representation
We use selective attention to then process what we
want
Features are bound together by attentional glue
Feature search
distractors only have one different feature
Automatic and fast
“Pop-out” effect
Performance (RT) is unaffected by the number of distractors
Features processed in parallel (all at once)
Is not automatic/fast if looking for a target that is missing a feature
Conjunction search
distractors have more than one different feature
Controlled, slow, and effortful; requires attentional glue
Performance is worse when there are more distractors (it takes longer to find the target)
Features processed serially (one-by-one)
Attention modulates sensory neural responses
Higher firing rate when attending to a stimulus compared to ignoring
Remember simple cells in the visual cortex that are responsive to specific orientations of a bar of light
Paying attention to a stimulus (black squares) increases firing rate compared to when you are ignoring (white circles), while still looking at stimulus in each case
Visuospatial neglect
Disorder where patients neglect a certain side of their visual field
They can perceive but do not attend to info on the
neglected side
Occurs after damage to the parietal lobe (usually right hemisphere)
The effect is contralateral: the side of space they neglect is opposite the side of the brain that is damaged
Extinction: inability to detect contralesional info when competing info is present
Possible explanations:
-Disengage deficit: patients no longer able to
disengage attention from ipsilateral side of damage
-If the right side is damaged, no longer able to
disengage from the right side of space
-Unbalanced competition: in healthy brains, left
and right hemispheres compete; if the right side is
damaged, it can no longer compete with the left
side
