Wk6: Attention

Question 1

Exogenous attention

Answer 1

• Draws attention
• “bottom-up,” stimulus driven
• Automatic involuntary response

Question 2

Endogenous attention

Answer 2

• Where you push your attention
• “top-down,” goal-directed
• Voluntary, intentional response

Question 3

Inattentional blindness

Answer 3

• Gorilla in the ballgame
• Focussing attention on certain items reduces attentional capacity for other factors
• Endogenous at work; voluntary attention prioritises task over other stimuli

Question 4

Change blindness

Answer 4

• Changes is a scene are missed because they co-occur with other changes
• E.g. a change in the drums you don’t notice because the melody changed with the pre-chorus
• Endogenous at work; scene changes missed alongside other brief visual disruptions

Question 5

How is attention related to objects and location?

Answer 5

• Different neurological attentions for “what,” “where,” and “when”
• Attention focussed on objects, not just visual field

Question 6

Simultagnosia

Answer 6

• Bailants syndrome
• Can only perceive one item at a time
• Grouping stimuli into single stimuli help

Question 7

Structural attentional limitation

Answer 7

• Bottleneck, gate, store, boxes and arrows
• Capex

Question 8

Process attentional limitation

Answer 8

• Resources, capacity, type of task demand, spotlight
• Opex

Question 9

Strategic view of attentional limitation

Answer 9

• Coordinate action based on correct, relevant info (attention)
• Avoid behavioural chaos of simultaneous actions (limitation)

Question 10

Attention definition

Answer 10

• Concentration and focussing of mental effort
• Prioritising cognitive operations
• Selecting relevant sensory input

Question 11

Selective attention

Answer 11

• Attend to one aspect of stimuli
• Attempt to ignore other stimuli and other aspects of stimuli
• E.g. Stroop test (“Yellow” in red font)
• E.g. Capers and peppercorns together - seperate them
• E.g. Skittles and m&ms together - seperate them

Question 12

Divided attention

Answer 12

• Attend to multiple concurrent tasks
• If you can’t do two tasks simultaneously, they are using the same processes
• Manipulation of task priority and timing

Question 13

Sustaining vs shifting attention

Answer 13

Sustaining: maintaining attention, e.g. lectures, arithmetic, movie plot, require persistent attention
Shifting: altering object/ focus of attention, E.g. waiting tables at work (shift attention between tables and tasks (coffee, bakery, food, napkins)

Question 14

What is not a key function of attention?
Selecting, forgetting, shifting, or dividing?

Answer 14

Forgetting
We select attentional objects
We can shift and divide attention

Question 15

Describe evidence attention spreads across objects

Answer 15

• Bailents Syndrome/ Simultagnosia
• Those with this disorder can only attend to one stimuli at a time.
• If presented with a stimuli including red and green dots and asked their colour, they only say either red or green.
• If these dots are then connected via a line, they are able to identify the dots as both red and green

Question 16

Overt attention

Answer 16

• Where the attentional spotlight shines
• Location of gaze
• Where attention is clear

Question 17

Covert attention

Answer 17

• Secondary focus area attended to

Question 18

Cocktail party effect

Answer 18

• Despite not attending to others’ conversations at cocktail parties, individuals will hear and attend to their own name
• Our names draw bottom-up attention

Question 19

Dichotic listening

Answer 19

• Play audio 1 in left ear and audio 2 in right ear
• Tell px to repeat audio 1 as they hear it
• See if audio 2 has influence on results

Question 20

Dichotic listening results

Answer 20

• Cannot report language (if using familiar phonemes)
• Cannot report shadowed message
• May identify own name
• May be influenced by message meaning (e.g. river bank vs. money bank)

Question 21

Early Selection

Answer 21

Theory that objects selected for attention are selected in earlier stages of cognitive processing.

Question 22

Late Selection

Answer 22

Theory that objects selected for attention are selected in later stages of cognitive processing.

Question 23

How would you test early or late selection?

Answer 23

Px must identify whether the target (always on the middle) is a Z or an X
There are distractors in the background
These distractors may be compatible (Z for Z, X for X), incompatible (X for Z, Z for X), or neutral (P).
Measure the reaction time
If there is a difference in compatible and non-compatible reaction time, it is late selection (processing of distractor letters despite not being attended to)
If there is no notable difference, it is early selection (no processing of distractor letters)

If the reaction time for the compatible over incompatible condition is faster, there is some attention to the whole image, where the non-attended letters are processed.

Question 24

How would you manipulate

Question 25

Perceptual load effect on early/ late selection

Answer 25

Low load = late selection High load = early selection More attention used for a task, the less attention is spared on background noise; the less attention is used, the more cognitive resources of attention move to late selection.

Question 26

Perceptual load is...

Answer 26

The amount of noise interfering with stimuli identification/ doing a task E.g. How loud the music is (load) when having a convo (stimuli/ task) E.g. How dirty your glasses are (load) when reading (stimuli/ task)

Question 27

Working memory is...

Answer 27

Similar to short term memory Items held in memory using methods of continual rehearsal to prevent forgetting E.g. remembering a new phone number

Question 28

Effect of working memory load on attention

Answer 28

Greater load on working memory increases attention on distractors; Greater load on working memory = worse attentional control Inverse is true for lower load, decreased attention on distractors, and better attentional control

Question 29

Broadbent's filter theory

Answer 29

* Perceptual features used to filter out irrelevant messages * Early selection * Structural model - filter stop information flow throughout system

Question 30

Kahneman's Processing Capacity Theory

Answer 30

* Attention as a resource to be allocated to tasks * Limits on processing, rather than structure * Resources of attention increases under arousal * Like a device battery, its depleted when running too many or intensive programs