Attention and Information Processing

Attention and Information Processing

• Attention is a set of cognitive processes that allow for focused processing of specific information while diverting attention from other information.
• Various models exist, but separating attention from related cognitive processes like perception is difficult.
• Designing products and equipment must consider how people deploy attention and process information.
• Cognitive resources are limited. People are viewed as information processors with limited mental resources to devote to different incoming information (internal or external).

Selecting Sensory Information

• Sensory information is overwhelming.
• Attentional mechanisms select a subset, focusing on the information that needs to be acted on and passed to the next processing stage.
• Attention can also be viewed as controlling the transfer of information into working memory.

Limitations in Deploying Attention

• Limited mental resources constrain the simultaneous processing of multiple sources of information.
• Consequences of limited attention include how internal/external sources are processed.
• Processing can occur from stimuli/sources outside of actively attended stimuli.

Dichotic Listening Task

• Dichotic listening involves presenting different information to each ear simultaneously.
• The goal is to attend to one source (shadowing) and compare attended vs. unattended information regarding memory.
• Cherry (1953) found participants could identify physical aspects of unattended information (e.g., speech/noise, speaker gender) but couldn't report higher-order information, such as backward speech.

Are We Processing Unattended Stimuli?

• Participants only extract basic information from unattended stimuli, but lacking higher-level processing.
• Processing depends on where attention is directed.

Rapid Visual Serial Presentation (RSVP)

• Presents stimuli briefly (e.g., 100ms).
• Includes targets and distractors.
• Attentional blink: a processing deficit when T2 (target 2) follows T1 (target 1) within 200-500ms. T2 is less likely to be noticed or get processed if T1 is attended.

Theories of Attention

• Bottleneck Theories: Propose that available information exceeds processing capacity, and that attention acts as a filter, allowing limited information through.

  • Filter theory (Broadbent, 1958): Unattended messages are disregarded during initial processing (physical characteristics might be processed, but recognition/meaning is not addressed).
  • This theory can explain some limited information processing in the Cherry (1953) study, but if the message is appropriately slow enough, more than one message can be processed.

• Attenuation Theory (Treisman, 1960): Unattended messages are weakened (“reduced in volume”) but some semantic information is still available.

  • Attenuated attention involves multiple analysis levels: physical, linguistic, and semantic.
  • Key stimuli (e.g., name, fire alarm) have lowered processing threshold.

Factors Influencing Attention

• Cocktail Party Effect: Moray (1959) found that unattended information, like your name, can attract attention (i.e., disrupt shadowing).
• Switching Ears (Treisman, 1960): Demonstrated how meaning can modulate attention even if the stimulus is unattended.

Thresholds for Recognition

• Priming: Exposure to one stimulus affects subsequent response to another.
• The presence of a meaningful context can lower the threshold for processing a word.
• Semantic priming (e.g., dog -> cat).

Semantic Processing During the Attentional Blink

• Even if T2, presented during attentional blink, isn't consciously reported, it may still be processed semantically.
• ERP (electroencephalogram) measures electrical activity in the brain.
• The N400 component in the ERP waveform, reflects semantic processing that is affected by T1 which helps in decoding T2.

Schema Theory (Neisser, 1976)

• Unattended information is not acquired or processed due to cognitive biases.
• For example, if focusing on one movie, another superimposed movie may be missed.

Inattentional Blindness

• Failing to perceive an unattended stimulus or a change within that.
• Simons and Chabris (1999) demonstrated this by showing that people can miss an obvious stimulus that is not a target for attention.

Attentional Hypothesis of Automatization

• Attention is required while learning a task, with automatized tasks requiring less.
• The effort of the task influences the number of tasks that can be performed concurrently.

Attention and Perception

• Feature Integration Theory (Treisman):

  • Initially, features are perceived automatically (pre-attentive stage).
  • Attention is needed to integrate the recognized features into a coherent stimulus.
  • Illusory conjunctions can occur because attention is needed to correctly perceive an object's features.

• Can be impacted by the number of distractors.

Inhibiting Distractions

• Attention involves top-down and bottom-up processes, including the recovery and focusing of attention.
• Mindfulness practice may improve sustained attention.
• Working memory capacity plays a role in filtering distractions.

Networks Controlling Attention

• Attention is governed by interconnected networks, each contributing to the focus and processing of stimuli.
• Mental resources are distributed to ensure that processing is focused on important incoming stimuli.