Lecture 6 - Attention and Performance Flashcards
(25 cards)
What is attention?
Mental process of concentrating effort on a stimulus
List the four interrelated ideas about attention.
- We are constantly confronted with more information than we can attend to
- There are serious limitations in how much we can attend to at one time
- We can respond to some information and perform some tasks with little if any attention
- With sufficient practice and knowledge, some tasks become less demanding of attention
What is focused (selective) attention?
Select one input while ignoring all others
What are eye movements used for in attention?
Move eyes so that input of interest falls on the central fovea
What triggers the reflex of head movement?
Position ears for better hearing
What are the two processing stages in feature integration theory?
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Basic features processed rapidly and pre-attentively in parallel across visual search:
* colour
* shape
* size
* orientation
* motion -
Slower serial process with focused attention:
* Happens when objects share similar features
* You have to focus your attention on one item at a time
* This is a slower, serial process (item-by-item)
What are illusory conjunctions?
When your brain accidentally mixes up features from different objects — and combines them into something that wasn’t actually there.
1. No difficulty perceiving features on display
2. However, unsure how features are combined
3. Report illusory conjunctions
[e.g. saw a red circle and green square flash on-screen. Then asked what you saw; you say “a red square”]
What are the two major attention networks identified by Posner?
- Exogenous
- Endogenous
What is the difference between bottom-up and top-down attention?
- Bottom-up: Stimulus-driven
- Top-down: Goal-directed
How does a central cue affect reaction times (RTs)?
RTs faster for valid cues
What is the Cocktail Party Problem?
How do we focus on one conversation at a time?
1. Using physical differences (e.g. person we want to listen to is female so we listen out for a higher pitched voice).
2. We extract little info from unwanted stimuli.
3. Exogenous (attention-driven), as we hear salient info in unattended stimuli.
What is exogenous attention?
- Bottom-up
- Stimulus-driven attention
- Automatically shift attention (e.g. someone walks into the room; this grabs your attention
- Peripheral cues
What is cross-modal attention?
Coordinate information from 2 or more modalities simultaneously (combine visual & audio)
What is the Ventriloquism effect?
May think audio is coming from one object but isn’t:
1. Close together in time/space
2. MUST match expectations (hear a dog bark, expect to see a dog)
3. Example of visual dominance (we trust visual stimuli more than audio)
What is the McGurk effect?
Input from vision influences auditory perception:
1. Same sound in both clips BUT visual was different (“Ba, Fa, Va”)
2. Further evidence for visual dominance
What is divided attention?
Present two stimulus inputs at the same time and must attend to all inputs
1. also known as multi-tasking
2. Tells us the capacity of attention
What factors determine dual-task performance? (how well we can perform 2 tasks as same time?)
- Similarity between tasks modality (e.g. visual vs auditory)
- Similarity between responses (e.g. manual vs vocal)
What is the traditional approach to automatic processing?
Practice-makes-perfect = processes become automatic
1. Controlled processes:
* Limited capacity
* Require attention
* Used flexibly in changing circumstances
* SERIAL
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Once practiced, becomes Automatic
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2. Automatic processes:
* No capacity limitations
* Do not require attention
* Hard to modify once learned
* PARALLEL
Automaticity? And the factors associated (Moors & deHouwer, 2006)
- rejects the assumption that there’s a clear-cut disctinction between controlled & automatic processes
- Factors associated w/ automatic processes (automaticity):
1. Unconscious
2. Efficient
3. Fast
4. Goal-unrelated
What is change blindness?
Failure to detect changes in the environment
Causes:
1. Representations may be incomplete due to limited attention focus
2. Representations may decay or be overwritten
3. Representations of pre-change stimulus may be limited to the unconscious (dont notice change because never paid attention/processed what simulus was like before)
4. Impossible to compare pre & post-change
5. Perception accuracy sacrificed for continuous & stable perception of enviro
[Experiment = Door carried inbetween when asked directions]
What are two causes of change blindness?
- Representations may be incomplete due to limited attentional focus
- Representations may decay or be overwritten
What is inattentional bias?
Fail to notice an unexpected, but fully visible item when attention is diverted to other aspects of a display »_space;> Depends on the probability that th eunexpected object attracts attention.
2 factors of importance:
1. Similarity between the unexpected object & the task-relevant stimulus
* Black gorrilla ignored if people passing ball have black t-shirts
2. Observer’s available processing resources
What distinguishes change blindness from inattentional bias?
Change blindness occurs due to failure to:
1. Attend to the location of change (was it blocked or were we not paying attention?)
2. Encode. (haven’t encoded pre-change so can’t compare it to post-change)
3. Have’t encoded the post-changes (what change?)
4. Recognise at unconscious lvl (it happened on an unconcious lvl so didn’t notice changes)
What is neglect (or spatial neglect)?
Lack of awareness of stimuli presented to the side of space opposite to brain damage
* Typically = right-hemisphere damage = left side of objects neglected. Objects presented to left visual field ignored.
