PSYB57 Final: Attention
Inattentional blindness
Not seeing/percieving anything outside of what you're concentrating/focusing on.
Usually takes the form of not being able to describe the image, but can also be change blindness or inattention deafness.
Change blindness
Inability to see differences between 2 alternating images.
Mostly happens when you're not paying attention, but can also happen right as you stare at it.
Gamers are not as suceptible.
Inattentional deafness
Auditory information not heard because you're concentrating on a different task.
Selective attention
Allocating your attention to a specific project/object and tuning out others.
Focusing on something at the cost of others.
Cocktail party effect
When you can focus on one person's voice is a noisy enviornment
That one definition of attention
Enhancing certain stimuli while inhibiting others.
Enhancing is picking it out and focusing on it.
Inhibiting it picking it out to ignore it.
Dichotic listening test
2 different messages played from either side of the headphone. Person is able to follow one and tune out the other completely.
Proves selective attention.
Will stay that way unless there is a change in physical properties, they call your name, or they say something shocking.
2 selection models
Early selection model and late selection model.
The question determined is just when does selective attention filter out stimuli. The stimuli is definately going into the nervous system because it's not like you can stop light/vibrations from going into your body.
Attention and ability to detect stimuli
Attention is a matter of the brain, not of the nervous system. Attention does not stop the nervous system to taking in stimuli.
Early selection model
Only basic characteristics of a stimuli are processed with no semantic meaning. Selective attention will filter through it for the characteristics they're looking for and process only what they're into.
Ex: in the cocktail party effect, they look for a female voice and tune out the other voices that are not female.
Broadbent filter theory
Broadbent filter theory
Stimuli encoded into the nervous system, held in sensory memory for selective attention to pick through, goes to the detector and becomes processed.
Detector
The mechanism that processes information
Problems with early selective theory
Information unattended to can still break through.
People can detect their names and shocking words.
Dichotic listening task where people can follow a sentence when it is played through alternating headphone sides. So they must be processing something.
Late selection model
Basic meaning of unattended stimuli is processed along with attended stimuli. Selective attention goes through it to look for ones that are relvant to current tasks or the self. Everything else is forgotten because the meaning is shallow.
Includes the attenuator model.
Attenuator model
Unattended information is processed with attended information, but at a less through/attenuated manner. They go through it for key words that are relevant and the rest if forgotten.
Helps with the processing of attended words because resources can be saved for it.
Context and processing.
Dichotic listening task people are given an ambiguous stimuli but context could be provided by the other ear. They will interpret the sentence based on what they hear in the other ear even when they have no idea that they're hearing it.
Unconcious attention processing
Dicotic listening task where information from the other ear is used interpret the ambigumous sentence even though they don't remember hearing it.
Attentional load
The measure of perceptual resources that is used to pay attention to something.
Resources are not distributed equally. Difficult tasks will take up more resources, sometimes from simpler tasks. If all tasks are simple, there may be leftover resources that process irrelevant information.
You can get tired from increasingly putting resources into attention.
Studies: Eriksen flanker test and eriken flaner test 2.
Flanker tests and what they prove
1. Three types of letters, two of them assigned one key and the third assigned a different key. Participants are meant to look at the center letter and press the corresponding button excpet that letter is flanked by another. Participants make more mistakes and took more time when the flanking letter corresponds with a different button. They are involuntarily taking in extra stimuli.
2. Two circles of letters. Look for an O. In one of them, the O is in the middle of a bunch of other letters exactly the same flanked by a different letter. In the other, it is surrounded by many different letters and flanked by another. Participants were hindered only in the first condition because there are so much leftover resources that they can process the flanker while the same does not go fo rthe second circle.
Proves that neither the early or late selection model is perfect.
Gamer's differences.
Got distracted by the second conditon in the second flanker test because they are better at spreading their resources. It could be that those with this skill are naturally drawn to video games, but video games have been shown to improve/train this skill.
Better at not having change blindness.
Better at not getting distracted. There is less activity in the peripheral lobe that alocated attention.
Less distracted by motion.
More focused on goals.
Attention as a filter.
Attention is flexible and how strongly it is enforced depends on the situation. If concentration needed, it will be applied heavily. In casual situations, it will not.
Automatic processing
When something is processed instantly without resources because you've practiced the skill so much it becomes second nature.
Ex: reading. Maybe not the entire deep meaning of the words are processed, but it is individually.
Divided attention
Multitasking. paying attention to two tasks/objects at once.
This hinders the performance of both tasks. The people who think they're great at multitasking are the worst ones at it.
Ex: driving while texting is just as bad as driving drunk. It doesnt hinder the physical performance of the task, just the attention.
There is a debate about whether it is task switching or split attention.
Task switching
You're not actually paying attention to 2 things at once, you're just quickly switching between the two and this takes up time.
Might be good if you're exhausted from working on one thing for too long.
Split attention
You're payting attention to many things at once. Can pay attention up t0 4-5 objects at once.
People often think they're doing this when they're multi-tasking/task-switching/divided attention
Purpose of attention
1. Firing up the processing mechanism in preperation for an upcoming stimuli. Experiment where a cue to future got people to see and press a buttom indivating it to be faster than if the cue was invalid because the process was already fired up.
2. Feature-integration theory: attention is needed to bind together the individual features of an object.
Feature-integration theory
Everything is made up of multiple features. They have different processes and different brain parts. Attention helps the top-down processing that brings them together.
Conjuction mistakes happen to unattended stimuli where they attribute the wrong features to the wrong objects. This is gone when they are given meaning.
Visual search paradgm with 2 conditions:
One they have to look for a shape that is different from the others in one feature. Adding more shapes does not hinder performance. It just pops out.
In the other, the shapes differ on more than one feature. Shape does not pop out, takes more time, and every time a new shape is added the performance is hindered because they have to put together more features.
2 types of attention
Exogenerous attention: when something in the enviornment captures your attention.
Endogenerous attention: when you direct your own attention for your own tasks or goals.
Overt attention
when your eyes are focused on what youre paying attention to.
The best way to maximize the effectiveness of attention is to stare at the object.
Covert attention
When youre not staring directly at what you're paying attention to.
Might be because you don't want other people to see you. Might be because you need attention to direct/guide your eyes somewhere.
Where does attention happen in the brain.
Everywhere.
Different types of attention activates different brain parts.
Mostly done pre-activation in anticipation of incoming stimuli.
Parts of the brain activated in attention.
Brain measured when people are shown an arrow, moving dots, and asked the direction of the dots. Median temporal lobe for motion activated. The introparential sulcus activated, asoociated with endogenous attention and meant to moludate median temporal lobe and control which brain portions are paying attention.
Exogenerous attention activated on the right side parietal lobe, at the frontal eye field. Stems fron the frontal lobe. Has a retinotopic map where the spatial qualities of the enviornment are perserved. If certain areas are activated in a monkey, their eyes would be directed to the corresponding area. If stimulated not as match, their eyes wouldnt move but attention would still be paid.
Disorders related to attention
Attention deficit disorder/ADD/ADHD
Balint syndrome
Autism
Visual neglect
ADD
Inability to focus on one thing, always getting distracted, attention could be focused but will easily be drawn away. Inability to control attention and surpress impulses.
Support avalible through parental support, behaviour management, training classes, medication.
Medication often taken for studying by those that don't have it. No addictions yet. Debate about giving to children. No idea what long-term effects are.
Balint syndrom
When both pariental lobes are damaged.
Oculomotor aparxia: inability to do visually guided movement.
Silultanagnaosia: inability to see an image globally, only locally. Sticky attention, where only individual features of an image are recognized.
visual neglect
Ignoring the left side of vision. Unable to draw out stuff's left side due to damage to the right temporal lobe. They can see it once it is pointed out, but they ignore it.
The same does not happen for the left temporal lobe.
Autism
Can not identify people's eyes will look at outside of face instead. Might be because they don't read emotions well so there's no point.
Trouble figuring out people's emotions. Might be because they don't look at face.
Trouble distance tracking tasks.
Posterior parietal lobe
Contols which brain regions of activated.
Certain forms of attention have been down to be resposible for preparing relevant brain regions. Attention based on anticipated goal-related behaviour. Brain region is activated becayse they are anticipating the use of that attention.