LEC 12&13: Attention & Cognitive Control

Question 1

Bottom-Up attentional selection

Answer 1

An aspect of the stimulus itself cause it to be attended (loud sound for ex)

Question 2

top-down attentional selection

Answer 2

the person determine how to direct his or her attention

Question 3

covert attention demonstrated…

Answer 3

valid cues resulted in faster reactions and invalid cues led to slower responses than neutral cues implication cost of inattention and benefits of attention

Question 4

early selection model

Answer 4

the idea that attentional selection occurs at early stage before items are identified

Question 5

late selection model

Answer 5

the idea that selection occurs only after sensory processing is complete and items have been identified and categorized

Question 6

evidence for early selection (feedback)

Answer 6

Feedback from PFC to thalamus and V1 feedback to thalamus

Question 7

evidence for early selection (ERP)

Answer 7

EEG data show that unattended stimuli receive less processing than attended stimuli in primary sensory areas

Question 8

alertness and arousal

Answer 8

most basic levels of attention

Question 9

vigilance

Answer 9

ability to maintain alertness continuously over time

Question 10

selective attention

Answer 10

selection of info essential to a task

Question 11

divided attention

Answer 11

when we have to split attention across task

Question 12

covert attention

Answer 12

• asked to pay attention to an area without looking or moving eyes to that area
• possible to process items in covert location

Question 13

attention probe experiment implication

Answer 13

split attention just as bad as zoning out for answering questions

Question 14

line bisection task

Answer 14

draw line through center of horizontal line, line is off in patients w hemispatial neglect

Question 15

hemispatial neglect

Answer 15

• failure to pay any attention to objects presented to one side of the body
• typically observed after right hemisphere lesions

Question 16

allocentric neglect

Answer 16

ignoring all left sides of every object

Question 17

personal neglect

Answer 17

unawareness of anything on the left side of the body

Question 18

spatial neglect

Answer 18

tendency to ignore the left side of the body or the left side of objects

Question 19

line cancellation task

Answer 19

• cross out every line on page
• patients don’t cross out lines of certain side of page (most common left)

Question 20

does attentional neglect come from one region?

Answer 20

No, many regions and connections can be damaged and result in neglect

Question 21

where is cognitive control (or executive function) regionally located?

Answer 21

frontal lobe

Question 22

patients with frontal lobe damage are __ & ____ ____ moves to complete this task of planning and sequencing balls on stick

Answer 22

slower & take more

Question 23

Wisconsin sorting task implications

Answer 23

• Measure: see whether participant changes their strategy after feedback that rule was switched
• if you continue to sort according to old rule you are PERSEVERATING

Question 24

perseverating associated with

Answer 24

frontal lobe and unable to change and adapt

Question 25

environmental dependency syndrome

Answer 25

forced to engage in a behavior triggered by a stimulus
- ex: seeing a pen causes them to pick it up and start writing

Question 26

frontal lobe lesions struggled with _____ responses

Answer 26

default
- leading to decreased inhibition and environmental dependency syndrome

Question 27

error-related negativity (ERN)

Answer 27

• reflects error monitoring
• an electrophysiological marker that occurs when participants make errors in cognitive tasks

increased for:
- error vs correct
- bigger error vs smaller error

• originate at anterior cingulate cortex

Question 28

ERN w frontal lobe damage

Answer 28

• no differences in errors and correctness
• struggle w monitoring

Question 29

convert spatial attention

Answer 29

attending to diff regions of space w/o moving your eyes can enhance processing at the attended location (at cost of decreased processing at the unattended location)

Question 30

object-based attention

Answer 30

parts of an objects get preferential enhancement of processing even if they are far in space from the focus of spatial attention

Question 31

feature-based attention

Answer 31

attend to objects based on features
(ex: color or shape)