What is attention?

Question 1

Attention as defined by William James

Answer 1

“taking possession by the mind… a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others”
- lack of focus on unwanted stimuli, rather than honing in on what’s being attended to

Question 2

Dichotic listening tests (what did they discover about the non-attended ear?)

Answer 2

• testing selective auditory attention
• non-attended streams: people noticed physical, but not semantic aspects of the speech

Question 3

Broadbent’s Filter Theory

Answer 3

limited-capacity channel for higher processing, before which info is selectively filtered

Question 4

Attentional paradox

Answer 4

• Cocktail party effect
• How can we process information we don’t attend to?

Question 5

MacKay study (1973)

Answer 5

• attended ear: “The man approached the bank”
• non-attended ear: “money” “river”
• DID affect understanding of the supposedly ambiguous sentence, both ways

Question 6

“Breakthrough”

Answer 6

• participant shadows (repeats) the unattended info, in the case that it helps to form a coherent sentence when combined with the attended information
• criticism of filter theory

Question 7

Attenuation theory

Answer 7

• unattended input isn’t completely rejected, rather, it’s attenuated (reduced) by a filter
• lower threshold for processing familiar or more sensical information

Question 8

Deutsch & Deutsch’s Late-Selection Theory

Answer 8

• all information is processed, filtering occurs afterwards
• CRITICIZED by Coch et al. ERP: amplitude of action potential was greater in the presence of a target vs. a non-attended message

Question 9

Perceptual Load Theory (Lavie 1995)

Answer 9

• total, limited attentional capacity which is always allocated
• spare amount is allocated to irrelevant stimuli
• in a higher load condition, a distractor would interfere less with attention, as more resources are being allocated toward the focus

Question 10

Cueing (3 kinds)

Answer 10

• drawing of attention
• Exogenous: automatic, peripheral (e.g. arrows, flashing in the intended region of focus)
• Endogenous: controlled by expectations, central (e.g. being told that one color symbolizes one outcome)
• Social: based on eye movement

Question 11

Spotlight(s) or zoom lens?

Answer 11

• La Berge: identify when there is a word followed by the letter R (easier than identifying a single letter among many, followed by R)
• Awh & Pashler: locate 2 numbers among 23 other letters, with and without accurate cues
• almost “all or nothing” in the presence and absence of an accurate cue -> existence of multiple, isolated spotlights