W4.1 (C): Attention Flashcards
(15 cards)
What bottleneck occurs during sensory processing of attention?
Numerous sensory inputs filter into attended information where we can select a particular object and either subject it to further processing or act upon it
What does inattentional blindness demonstrate?
Demonstrates that we can be looking at something but not selectively attending to it and so we are not aware of it
What is the difference between overt and covert attention?
Overt- turning head or eyes towards a stimulus
Covert- paying attention to one thing while appearing to pay attention to another
How did Cherry (1953) conduct an experiment to assess covert selective attention in a dichotic listening task and what did they find?
Examined the recall of information from an irrelevant spoken channel in selective listening (participants had to only pay attention to the attentive channel and ignore the other one)
They found that subjects could not detect most properties of the unattended channel e.g. language used, meaning of the message and content
Subjects did notice the gender of the voice and its physical attributes e.g. whether it was a musical instrument or human
What theory does Cherry’s (1953) study support?
Early selection theory
What is the early selection theory?
Suggests attention operates at an early stage in processing streams and filters out irrelevant info
Awareness and response comes BEFORE semantic analysis
What is the late selection theory?
Suggests attention operates at a later stage
Awareness and response comes AFTER semantic analysis
What is an issue with the early selection theory?
Subjects tend to notice highly relevant info on the subchannel e.g. their name- this shouldn’t be the case as the early model states that semantic analysis comes later, however, this suggests that it would come before awareness and response (your brain is somehow aware that your name has been spoken)
What did MacKay (1973) find about ambiguous sentences in a dichotic listening task?
Intrusion effects were found experimentally
Attended stream- ambiguous sentences whereas an unattended stream with biasing words e.g. words that were heard in the attended stream, had an impact depending on the context
Biasing word had a clear effect e.g. if the word ‘money’ was said, ppts more likely to intetpret ‘bank’ in a financial context, however, if the word ‘river’ was said, they were more likely to interpret this as a coastal context
What theory does MacKay’s (1973) experiment support?
Late selection theory i.e. where processing operates later and gets processed up to a physical level but semantic analysis takes place before awareness kicks in
What is the spotlight model of attention (Posner, 1980) and how was it tested?
Posner argued that attention operates like a spotlight, enhancing sensory processing of objects in the spatial location to which it is directed
Frames from Posner’s experiment: fixation, cue, target and response
Ppts would have to make a response related to the target and it was found that if the target is on the same side of the cue then the response is faster
What does Posner’s experiment suggest?
This speaks to the idea that attention is like spotlight, and even if people do not move their eyes, there is something in the brain that leads to a baseline shift and activation of neurons in the occipital cortex
How have the Posner cueing effects been interpreted?
Suggests attention increases the efficiency of info processing by influencing sensory and perceptual processing- hypothesising that the behavioural effects of cues were caused by neuronal enhancement/suppression in early visual cortical areas, speaks to early selection. Attention enhances the processing of objects occurring in particular spatial locations
How have the Posner cueing effects been challenged?
Change blindness effect suggests that attention does not operate like a simple spotlight
Lack of clarity over what is selected by attention- locations or objects- objects are typically situated in a particular location so it is hard to distinguish between the effects of spatial attention and the effects of object-attention
What did Egly et al (1994) investigate and what selection theory does this support?
Cues and targets
Cue to target with three different target variations:
1. same location, same object
2. same object, different location
3. different object
Seems to be the case that attention operates within objects and spreads across- the implications of this mean that these occur pre attentively- there seems to be evidence for late selection as attentional selection operates on objects rather than locations
