What is attention?
The mechanism we use to process only what is most relevant or important
What is a dichotic listening task?
When participants are played two different messages - to different ears - over headphones and asked to ‘shadow’ (repeat back) one of the messages
What wass the result of the dichotic listening task?
- participants noticed somebasic physical characteristics of the unattended channel (e.g. voice vs silence vs pure tone)
- Ps did not notice any of the content of the unattended channel
- Ps did not notice when the language changed from English to German or when the speech changed to backwards speech in the unattended channel
- so some of the baisic physical features of the unattended message are processed but not the higher level semantic properties
What’s Broadbents filter theory?
- participant presented with sensory input
- this enters a short term store which holds the information for a while
- this information then goes through a selective filter which selects one message for processing
- after the selective filter we have a limited capacity channel
- the one part of information that went through the filter goes through the limited capacity channel to be processed then a response is carried out.
What’s the attentional paradox?
- ‘Cocktail party effect’
- you’re engaged in conversation with your friend
- then you hear your name said by someone else and your whole attention is switched to them
- so how do you notice something you’re not paying attention to? Broadbent’s filter theory can not account for this
What’s Bon Wright et al. (1975) fate of unattended information? (Unconscious effect)
- he paired some words with an electric shock
- then conducted a dichotic listening task with those words associated with an electric shock presented in the unattended message
- Ps demonstrated an increased galvanic skin response (GSR - indicative of emotional arousal)
- found that during dichotic listening tasks there was still an increase in arousal for words that were associated with the electric shock in the unattended message
- according to the filter theory tuis shouldn’t have occured
- this suggests that there was some analysis of the content of the unattended message and this affected unconscious physiological measures
What’s MacKays fate of unattended information? (Effects on behaviour)
- in the shadowed ear the phrase ‘the man approached the bank’ was played
- in the unattended ear ‘money’ or ‘river’ was played
- the task was to paraphraze the attended message
- despite being unable to recall content Ps who were played ‘money’ in the shadowed ear were more likely to paraphrase it to ‘the man went into the building where the money is kept’ instead of talking about rhe river bank’
What’s Treisman’s ‘breakthrough’
That unconsciously words from the unattended channel breakthrough in the dichotic listening task and this is more likely to happen when the word is highly likely given the context
What’s Treismans attenuation theory?
• unattended input not completely rejected but filter attentuates (reduces) analysis of unattended signal
• the unattended message still gets through to the filter, just not as strongly as the attended message
• our threshold for processing stimuli which are consistent with the context is lower and this accounts for breakthrough effects
Partially processed stimuli in the unattended message sometimes exceeds the threshold for conscious awareness making it more likely we process task relevant information
• our name is always task relevant
• the theory is a bit circular - more descriptive than explanatory
What is Deutsch and Deutsch’s late selection theory?
- suggests filtering occurs late - so that all stimulu are analysed equally and the most relevant stimuli determines the response
- accounts for the extensive processing of stimuli just as well as Triesmans attenuation theory
What doesn’t Deutsch and Deutsch’s theory not explain and what is this?
- Triesman and Rileys dichotic listening task.
- they instructed Ps to stop shadowing and tap whenever they heard a word in either message. According to Deutsch and Deutschs theory we would have expected an equal number of stimuli to have been detected in either cannel but more target words were detected in the attended ear
What’s Lavie’s (1995, 2000) perceptual load theory?
- everyone has limited attentional capacity
- total available capacity is always located
- spare capacity that is not required for primary task is automatically allocated to irrelevent stimuli
- attentional capacity allocated to main task depends on perceptual load
What is perceptual load?
Number of units and the display and the nature of processing required for each unit. High perceptual load means high difficulty and vice versa
In experiment where Ps is asked to say whether there is an X or N on a card with a distractor on it what happens according to the perceptual load theory?
There will be less interference from the distractor on the more difficult task relative to the easier task (because there is less attentional resource left over for processing it.
What are the findings in the experiment where Ps are asked to say whether there is an X or N on a card with a distractor on it?
- If the perceptual load is high the distractor made no difference to response time
- if perceptual load is low: the more incompatible the distractor the longer the response time
- So stage of selection is variable and task-irrelevant information can be processed if there is spare capacity.
What does the likelihood of noticing an unexpected event depend on?
- difficulty of primary task
- similarity to attended event
What may we selectively attend to?
- An area or location or region of space (location- based attention/ spatial attention
- A given object or objects (object-based attention)
- either or both of these things
What is the ‘attentional spotlight’?
A mental spotlight for visual attention
What is ‘covert attention’ and who suggested it?
Posner (1980) suggested that the attentional spotlight can shift to a different visual location without eye movements
How do we control the attentional spotlight according to Posner and Petersen (1990)?
- Disengagement of attention from a given visual stimulus
- Shifting of attention from one target stimulus to another
- engaging or locking attention on a new visual stimulus
What is Posner’s exogenous attentional cueing paradigm and what are the findings?
- he set up an experiment where you are sat at a computer and a target star either appears in a box on the left or the right of the screen and you have to tap which side it appears in. Other things may appear on the screen to direct or misdirect your attention
- valid trial: the cue directed you attention to the side of the star
- neutral cue: the cue is directed in the middle
- invalid trial - the cue is directed at the opposite side of the screen from the star
- found that the response time is quickest for valid cues and slowest for invalid cues. This is called exogenous cueing.
What was Posners endogenous attentional cueing experiment?
Instructions: ‘look at the cross in the centre, if it turns red the stimulus is more likely to appear on the right, if it turns green the stimulus is more likely to appear on the left’
What are the features of the exogenous system?
- automatically shifts attention
- involved when uninformative peripheral cues are presented
- stimuli that are salient or that differ from other stimuli are most likely to be attended
Give features of the Endogenous system
- controlled by the individual’s intentions and expectations
- involved when central cues are presented
