Week 4: Chapter 22 - Attention and Consciousness Flashcards
What evolutionary problem do attention and consciousness address?
They help organisms select which sensory inputs to act on and determine appropriate behaviours.
What is attention?
A mental spotlight that selectively focuses on sensory input, thoughts, or actions.
Can attention be unconscious?
Yes, attention can be automatic (unconscious) or deliberate (conscious).
What is the role of language in attention?
Language may enhance the capacity for conscious attention.
What are the two levels of consciousness?
Primary consciousness (basic awareness) and secondary consciousness (self-awareness and planning).
What is primary consciousness?
Basic awareness of sensory experience.
What is secondary consciousness?
Awareness of one’s own awareness, including reflection and planning.
How do blindsight and numb touch demonstrate dissociation?
They show responses to stimuli without conscious awareness, indicating separate sensory processing and awareness.
What does the case of H.M. reveal about consciousness and memory?
He could learn tasks without remembering doing them, showing implicit memory without conscious recall.
What is hemispatial neglect?
A condition often after right parietotemporal damage where patients ignore the left side of space.
What do Koch and Tsuchiya argue about attention and consciousness?
They are distinct neural processes—attention is selective and top-down; consciousness is holistic and integrative.
What is the functional distinction between attention and consciousness?
Attention narrows focus for action, while consciousness broadens awareness for understanding.
What distinguishes automatic from conscious processing?
Automatic is fast, involuntary, and bottom-up; conscious is intentional, effortful, and top-down.
What did Treisman’s visual search experiments show?
Feature search is automatic; conjunction search requires focused, serial attention.
What is the role of attention in feature binding?
Attention integrates separate feature maps into unified object representations.
Why do sad or fearful faces capture attention faster?
Due to amygdala sensitivity to biologically significant, negative stimuli.
How did Moran and Desimone demonstrate attention affects neural activity?
They showed neurons in V4 respond more strongly when attention is directed to the stimulus.
What does divided attention research reveal?
Attention is a limited resource and performance suffers when multitasking.
How does task difficulty affect neuronal firing in V4?
Harder tasks increase firing rate and selectivity, enhancing discrimination.
What is the pulvinar’s role in attention?
Modulates attention by prioritising behaviourally relevant stimuli and guiding spotlight shifts.
What happens during cross-modal attention?
The DLPFC activates to coordinate divided attention across different sensory modalities.
How do real-world tasks like driving demonstrate attention limits?
Multitasking overloads the PFC, impairing attention to competing tasks.
What are the three attention networks identified by Petersen and Posner?
Alerting, orienting, and executive control networks.
What modulates the alerting network?
The noradrenergic system from the locus coeruleus.
