Visual Attention

Question 1

purpose of attention

Answer 1

allows us to filter incoming information and hold onto information briefly (ex. across eye blinks)

Question 2

attention is ______

Answer 2

limited

Question 3

attention definition

Answer 3

large set of cognitive processes that restrict inputs to a subset of information

functions across many senses, not just vision

Question 4

selective attention

Answer 4

when you restrict attention to a subset of possible stimuli amongst a larger assortment

Question 5

divided attention

Answer 5

when you split attention across multiple stimuli at the same time

ex) taking notes while listening to the lecture

Question 6

sustained attention

Answer 6

continuously monitoring some stimulus over time; “vigilance”

ex) staring at a screen for 30 minutes to see how many times a dot changes color

Question 7

overt attention

Answer 7

when you direct your eyes toward a stimulus

Question 8

covert attention

Answer 8

when you attend to something without fixating on it

Question 9

response time (RT)

Answer 9

time it takes a person to respond to a stimulus or change

Question 10

cues

Answer 10

stimuli that indicate what to attend to, which can be valid, invalid or neutral

valid - true cue/statement

invalid - false cue/statement

neutral - no cue/statement is given

Question 11

Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA)

Answer 11

time between onset of stimuli (usually in realm of milliseconds)

Question 12

what 4 things does eye tracking measure

Answer 12

fixations
saccades
- movement between one fixation and another
duration of viewing
orderliness of viewing behavior

Question 13

peripheral cues

Answer 13

cue is in the periphery at the site of the target

Question 14

symbolic cue

Answer 14

cue signifies location without using that space

Question 15

valid cues ______ responses, while invalid _____ them

Answer 15

speed; slow

Question 16

peripheral cues _____ RT even at very short SOA, symbolic ____ _______

Answer 16

benefit; take longer

Question 17

inhibition of return

Answer 17

if attention is cued to a location but then leaves that location (due to time passing), often even slower to return to it than if there had never been a cue

Question 18

data suggest covert attention is _____

Answer 18

spatial

Question 19

spotlight model

Answer 19

attention is restricted to space and must move from one point to the next, requiring time

Question 20

zoom lens model

Answer 20

asserts that region of attention can shrink/grow

up to you to decide which to use due to situation

Question 21

3 things manipulated in visual search in lab

Answer 21

set size/# of items
distractor similarity
target complexity and salience/vividness

Question 22

when searching for a ________ of features, set size matters more

Answer 22

conjunction

Question 23

serial, self-terminating search

Answer 23

very long trials with no target to make sure you are paying attention

Question 24

2 attentional types/definitions in feature integration thepry

Answer 24

pre-attentive
- individual features are processed automatically, in parallel, and with little effort - the pop-out effect

selective attention
- objects (conjunction of features) are processed slowly, serially and require effortful attention

Question 25

binding problem

Answer 25

need to bind/unbind features to complete target search often processed by different brain regions/cells

Question 26

guided search

Answer 26

often our everyday visual search uses what we know to limit the scope of your search

Question 27

hemi-neglect

Answer 27

parietal brain damage results in spatial attentional neglect always contralateral side (right side of the brain damaged = left side of vision affected) not a loss of vision, but a loss of attention to information in that field

Question 28

attention manifests...

Answer 28

across the brain!

Question 29

attention serves to filter and select targeted information, so our brain has mechanisms to...

Answer 29

enhance relevant information and inhibit unwanted stimuli

Question 30

attention can modify how ... respond to stimuli, like FFA for faces and PPA for scenes

Answer 30

regions in the brain

Question 31

attention enhances or inhibits a region depending on ____ ____

Answer 31

task goal

Question 32

3 ways attention can impact orientation selectivity

Answer 32

enhancement (decrease selectivity = more orientations) sharper tuning (increase selectivity = less orientations) altered tuning (shift selectivity to one direction or another)

Question 33

The Posner Cuing Paradigm is usually a test of _____ and _____ attention. a. overt, selective b. overt, sustained c. covert, selective d. covert, sustained

Answer 33

c

Question 34

Which of the following is a demonstration of the binding problem? a. a hemineglect patient ignoring the left side of space even though they are sensing it b. a participant using covert attention to focus on something they could just move their eyes to c. an object popping out in visual search despite there being many distractors d. a person falsely remembering a blue circle from an array that only had red circles, but had other blue objects

Answer 34

d

Question 35

with the idea that attention can be object-based, people are much faster in finding the target when ...

Answer 35

the cue was part of the same rectangle (object) even if the spatial distance was greater

Question 36

in hemineglect, neglect travels with ...

Answer 36

object

Question 37

key symptom of balint's syndrome

Answer 37

simultanagnosia

Question 38

simultanagnosia

Answer 38

only one object can be attended to at one time no matter what if shown red and green circles, report only one or the other. But if these circles are connected with a line patients can report both

Question 39

benefits of object-based attention

Answer 39

object tracking - as objects move through space, may not be able to overtly attend to all of them, but can potentially track them via object-based attention

Question 40

a valid cue is given on trial of the Posner Cuing Paradigm. However, the cue actually *slows* the participant's response relative to no cue at all. Which of the following would produce this result? a. trial was a symbolic cue b. trial was a peripheral c. trial's SOA was long enough to cause inhibition of return d. trial's SOA was so fast the participant couldn't attend to it

Answer 40

c

Question 41

bottleneck

Answer 41

more information is available than can pass through attention can result in attentional blink or change blindness

Question 42

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task

Answer 42

show stimuli for under 10 ms, all you have to do is report if you saw a particular one task gets harder if you are looking for 2 pieces of information

Question 43

attentional blink

Answer 43

if 2nd item appears within 200-500 ms after 1st item, it may be missed

Question 44

why does attentional blink happen

Answer 44

part of the role of attention is to maintain information over time you only have so many attentional resources (only so much you can process at once) to apply to a given task or stimulus

Question 45

two pathways to scene perception (object based)

Answer 45

non-selective pathway - picks up *gist* and overall broad scene features, relatively automatic selective pathway - allows you to pick out particular objects in a scene, usually serially and only one or two at a time - more effortful attention/serial processing ex) shown an image of cluttered kitchen non - pick up cues quickly that tell us it is a kitchen selective - need to focus attention to find particular items though

Question 46

ensemble statistics

Answer 46

along with non-selective pathway the average of properties across the scene like overall color, types of objects, etc.

Question 47

gist based memory

Answer 47

part of non-selective pathway quite accurate

Question 48

change blindness

Answer 48

fail to notice a change between scenes because the overall gist is the same not necessarily attending to or encoding specific details

Question 49

inattentional blindness

Answer 49

type of change blindness where you fully miss a new item because it is not expected monkey business study is an example as well as gorilla in CT scans

Question 50

some attentional resources are _______, or shared across senses

Answer 50

global

Question 51

dual task inference generally worse if tasks share a domain, suggesting some ________ resources

Answer 51

specific

Question 52

dual task

Answer 52

things like making a response likely resource general ex) - if your brain is already engaging in response, it will take until you're done with first response to engage another response aka psychological refractory period

Question 53

ADHD

Answer 53

most common disorder of attention doesn't have a strong impact on things like visual search or RSVP evidence there may be particular difficulty inhibiting off-task distraction, which these tasks don't necessarily test

Question 54

A patient with hemineglect for the left side of space is shown a diamond (left) connected to a star (right) with a line. The object is then rotated 180 degrees. What will the patient perceive before (1st) and after (2nd) the object is rotated? a) 1st: Diamond, 2nd: Star b) 1st: Diamond, 2nd: Diamond c) 1st: Star, 2nd: Diamond d) 1st: Star, 2nd: Star

Answer 54

d

Question 55

A patient with Balint’s Syndrome is shown the below objects to their left visual field (a pacman with three blue dots to its left). They note they can only see 1 object, a small blue circle near closest to the center of their visual field. How could you adjust this image to help the patient see all of the objects? a) Shift the objects to their right visual field b) Rotate the objects 180 degrees c) Draw a line through the objects connecting them d) There is no way a for them to perceive all of the objects at the same time

Answer 55

c

Question 56

Paula is a participant in a divided attention study. Her primary task is to detect the presence of a red T in a RSVP paradigm that flashes colored letters. There are two dual task conditions: Condition 1 – Audio also plays and she must detect when the audio says the letter Q. Condition 2 – She must also monitor for when the screen slightly darkens What is the most likely outcome from this experiment? a) Only condition 2 will impact her RSVP performance, since it is also visual b) Both conditions will equally impact her RSVP performance c) Both will impact her performance, but Condition 1 will impact it more than Condition 2 d) Both will impact her performance, but Condition 2 will impact it more than Condition 1

Answer 56

d, if the dual task shares a domain it will increase difficulty

Question 57

example of global resource

Answer 57

phone calls interfere with driving performance

Question 58

example of domain-specific resource

Answer 58

listen to a basketball game while playing a visual matching game