Unit 4 Flashcards

Question

Ventral Frontal Cortex (VFC)

Answer 1

Part of exogenous (reflexive) attention network Analyzes novelty of stimuli over short periods of time

Answer 2

Part of exogenous (reflexive) attention network Steers attention toward novel or unexpected stimuli -directs input from visual cortex to ventral frontal cortex

Answer 3

Engages voluntary attention Don't have to move eyes away from fixation point

Answer 4

Engages reflective attention Grabbing attention away from fixation point

Answer 5

short-lived supression of information processing at a just-attended location -aids our ability to find things as you avoid checking the same place over and over again

Answer 6

moving attention from one place to another -like in posner cueing task

Answer 7

Attention being directed to one place on an object -attention to one part of the object entails attention to the whole object

Answer 8

In an object based attention experiment invalid cues on the same side as the target had a quicker response to the target than invalid cues on a different side as the target But there shouldn't be a difference between these invalid cues -This suggests Holistic perception is taking place as the whole object is being processed which allows to invalid cue on the same side as the target to result in a faster response to the target

Answer 9

No attention paid to the left side of the body or things presented to that side due to damage to the right side of the parietal lobe

Answer 10

Tendency to direct attention to some types of stimuli over others

Answer 11

Participants try to respond quickly to a target (like a dot) that can appear at one of two locations Location 1: a threatening stimulus was shown just prior to the target appearing Location 2: a non-threatening stimulus was shown just prior to the target appearing Found that anxious participants respond more quickly to the target at the location with the threatening stimulus suggesting attention had been drawn to that location due to the perceived threat.

Answer 12

stimuli in a cluttered visual environment compete with eachother to drive the responses of neurons in the visual system -each neuron tends to respond optimally to stimuli falling within a specific part of the visual field -Each neuron has a receptive field that demonstrates a bias toward stimuli of interest

Answer 13

Part of biased competition Selection in favor of items that are goal related

Answer 14

Part of biased competition selection is driven by the salience of physical features

Answer 15

Each neuron's preferred region of the visual field -biased toward stimulus of interest

Answer 16

Selective attention resolves ambiguity of possible mental representations of the external world created by multiple stimuli -aspects of the environment (shape, color, size) are represented in the brain through broadly distributed clusters of neural activation -a cluster of neurons can actively support several representations like an overlapping network of green fruit -by selecting the object and placing attention this resolves ambiguity such as whether you are looking at a green apple or a pear

Answer 17

Attended and unattended stream playing in either ear Attended stream is payed attention to Different message is playing in unattended stream and participant is not asked to do anything with this message

Answer 18

People's ability to attend to one stream/channel of information while ignoring others

Answer 19

when we attentionally select stimuli based on physical features such as color, pitch, or location; we register their meaning after selecting them ie. if told to only pay attention to a women's voice you would filter out information falling below a certain pitch and then register the meaning of the words after selecting the stimuli to attend to

Answer 20

When we process the meaning of everything around us before selecting for heightened awareness ie. you hear your name mentioned in a different conversation even though you weren't attending to the other conversation

Answer 21

Extent to which we process information before attentionally selecting it

Answer 22

Participants knew that there was a message in the unattended stream and could identify the pitch or gender of speaker Participants could not identify what was said or if the language changed for example from English to German

Answer 23

Supports Early Selection Attended and Unattended message inputs These go into a sensory store that holds into information for a fraction of a second This information goes to the selective filter which identifies the attended message based on physical characteristics - the unattended message is completely blocked Just the attended message goes onto higher level processing

Answer 24

Early selection Attended stream playing a list of different names Unattended stream playing a list of names that included the participant's 1/3 of participants remembered hearing their name Suggests that some information in the unattended stream is still accessible and not completely filtered - doesn't comply with filter model of attention -perhaps we have a personal dictionary

Answer 25

Some words have personal significance and we care about them a lot more - they exceed the "dictionary threshold" and grab our attention even when unattended Other words don't exceed the threshold and we're unlikely to be aware of them in an unattended stream

Answer 26

Late selection Attended stream: Dear, seven, Jane Unattended: Nine, Auntie, Five Participants incorrectly remember hearing "Dear Auntie Jane" -People used information from the unattended stream to find meaning Suggests some information in unattended stream is still accessible and not completely filtered out

Answer 27

Late selection Attended: throwing stones at the bank Unattended: water related words like river Participants incorrectly identified sentences like "throwing stones in the river" when shown a list of sentences and asked to report what they heard

Answer 28

Late Selection Attentional selection initially occurs based on early, physical properties but does not eliminate processing of unattended information Instead of being completely eliminated, the strength of the unattended signal is weakened, even as the attended information is fully processed. Suggests why particularly meaningful stimuli (like one's name) are perceived in unattended streams. -meaningful information needs to reach a lower threshold of processing in order to reach awareness Attended + unattended stream = sensory and language buffer for physical characteristic selection = dictionary that makes sense of words and whats important = Attenuator that selectively attenuates to unattended streams if relevant to task = higher processing

Answer 29

Ability to attend to or filter out information based on features like color, shape, or motion; tuning attention to certain features Looking for a particular feature increases activity in neural regions sensitive to the target feature across the visual field, even without sensory stimulation When people tune their attention for specific features, those features are more likely to reach awareness

Answer 30

Participants look for a target embedded in embedded in an array of non targets Single features of stimuli are parsed easily in isolation - ie. a white square among black circles : parallel processing Multiple features require binding of features into one salient object - ie. a white square among white circles and black squares : serial processing

Answer 31

Taking stimuli in all at once In visual search task: a white square among black circles -Search time remains consistent regardless of number of items in the display because we don't have to search through targets one by one

Answer 32

Taking in items one at a time In visual search task: white square among white circles and black squares -Search time increases as the number of items in the display increases because we have to search through items one by one

Answer 33

During preattentive processing (processing information before it's attentionally selected) we experience the world as a jumble of simple features that are not bound together into cohesive objects Focusing attention on an object binds these features together (color, shape, motion), which allows us to perceive a meaningful object Findings are consistent with the idea that although we can process features prior to attentional selection we need attention to combine them accurately

Answer 34

The challenge of figuring out which visual features in the environment combine together to form cohesive perceptions of objects

Answer 35

The incorrect combining of features that are not actually combined ie. presented a red A and a blue X, people are likely to report a blue A, and a red X. Support for feature integration theory: although we are able to process features prior to attentional selection, we need attention to combine them accurately

Answer 36

Attentional selection depends on how demanding the attended task is -Unattended information or distractors can take attentional resources, be analyzed more, reach awareness, and interfere with the task at hand in a low load task -Unattended information or distractors is filtered out early with a high load task

Answer 37

Ability to pay attention to points in time -Rapid serial visual presentation task: participants try to find two targets in a very rapid sequence of items-they have difficulty reporting the second target if it appears too soon after the first target

Answer 38

When the second of two targets in rapid succession of items is more difficult to detect than the first

Answer 39

Attention resulting in conscious awareness -measures usually rely on conscious report

Answer 40

Attention that does not lead to conscious awareness -measured via response time, eye movement, etc.

Answer 41

a condition in which patients who have suffered damage to their visual cortex (e.g., through stroke) are sometimes able to respond to and localize visual stimuli that they report not being able to see -demonstrates implicit attention

Answer 42

The failure to see rapidly presented targets that appear right after a rapidly presented emotional non target -With strong emotional content we're more likely to focus on specific details of the emotional content -Like in a robbery- we don't pay attention to the robbers face we pay attention to the gun

Answer 43

Involuntary (reflexive) grabbing of attention by certain kinds of stimuli Saliency map: the visual system computes differences between signals across the visual field and forms a topographical representation ;across a field of view, areas with sharp visual contrast (ie. a yellow dandelion in a green lawn) are salient and draw attention -aspects computed to have high salience capture attention automatically

Answer 44

Tests attentional vigilance -Required to stay on task for a prolonged period of time -Real world implications such as for TSA agents who have to remain vigilant for prolonged periods -Findings have discovered people are poor at detecting objects that appear rarely

Unit 4 Flashcards

(68 cards)