Attention Mechanisms: Spotlight, Filter, Glue

Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

• Cognition is about research methods according to Dr. Rowell.

Announcements

• There is information for Thesis students.
• A new educational data repository to review.
• Find exam page on Canvas.

ZAPS Presentation

• Contact will be made with the first two groups regarding details of presentation.
• Instructions are to be reviewed for the presentation which will be posted tomorrow including sample presentations and groups.

Participation and Groupwork

• Class discussions can be improved with preparation.
• Group presentation requires collaboration and practice.
• Other presentations require engaged listening and thoughtful questions as audience member.s

Outline

• The plan is to discuss how questions are answered.
• Measurements and manipulation of variables will be reviewed.
• Practices reading research

Research Questions in Cognition

• How people recognize items that are in their world.
• Attention is like a filter or a spotlight.
• Real and non-real memories
• Understanding Communication from others
• The comparison of mental imagery to vision.
• The rationality of human decision-making.
• How creativity happens

Research Methods

• Invisible processes have visible consequences.
• Questions are answered by measuring observable behavior and making inferences about cognitive processes

Stroop effect

• Identify the ink color as quickly as possible.
• Slower speeds occur when looking at words than non-words.
• Reading can interfere with directing attention toward a goal.

Forgetting Curve

• The effect of learning and relearning is often measured in lists of nonsense syllables (e.g., CAG, BEC).
• Repeat a list until memorized and measured by relearning after a time period.
• Wait times in the first two days are relearned faster compared to a day with the differences being less later on such as a week versus a month.
• After the first few times, forgetting happens in the first few days then that occurs much slower.

Cognitive maps

• Cognitive maps can be explored in rats when seeking food by creating mazes.
• Rats go in the correct direction even when starting in a new location.
• The rats learn the mental map rather than just turning right.

Measures in Cognitive Experiments

• Measurements include completeness, accuracy, and speed.
• Completeness is noted to see what is noticed or what is remembered.
• Accuracy is noted to see how types and kinds of errors result from experiments.
• Speed is noted to see how many seconds it takes to respond in an epxeriment

Manipulations in Experiments

• Input types, tasks, contexts, and people can be manipulated.
• Examples of different types of inputs could be real words versus images.
• Tasks can be manipulated with instructions to use certain strategies.
• Contexts can be different by motivating factors using money.
• People can be manipulated through younger versus older adults.
• Measurements and manipulations are utilized to make inferences

Brain Basics

• Structures and functions in brain
• Basic principles
• Review in Ch. 2 if needed

Brain Activity

• A PET scan and fMRI are used to understand brain activity
• Control groups are important for studies.
• To analyze speech production of two possible tasks, a control condition, and an experimental condition.
• It is important to be able to use a design to control the conditions and experiment to know areas that include speech production.

Cognitive Psychology: Brain Damage

• Carefully designed experiments and comparisons to matched control participants can be performed on individuals after brain damage
• Limitation of careful experiments and comparisons including multiple areas of damage, compensation from external validity.
• Ethics of these experiments are needed such as informed consent and the type and validity of surgeries.
• Henry Molaison is an example of brain experiments after brain damage.

Practice Reading Research

• Face recognition study. The study showed a series of picdtures that were upright and sometimes inverte,.
• Then test on pairs between on old and new, which are old in the first one, and new in the second.
• It is important to remember factorial designs as the interactions within them are common.
• The effect the experiment has on the IV depends on the variable.

Visual Perception 1- Problems to Solve

• The term "cognition" refers to all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used
• Sensory information comes from the world through:
  • Touch/Pressure
  • Smell
  • Hearing
  • Vision
  • Taste
• Why visual perception is difficult. 2 problems to solve when thinking about visual perception. 3 solutions people use to deal with visual peception

Problems In Visual Perception

• Main problems:
  • Too much information, little information in each piece
  • Information received is ambiguous.

Problem #1 in Visual Perception

• Brightness
• Color
• Objects Sizes Shapes Distances Textures Movement

Problem #2 in Visual Perception

• Shape/orientation
• Size/distance,
• Color/lighting
• Objects are embedded in complex scenes.

Methods

• The propper N review
• Small samples in propper perception.

Solutions and Edges

• Solution 1: Edge detection
• Solution 2: Parallel Processing
• Solution 3: binding

What is the advantage of creating an edge

• Sudden discontinuity in intensity
• Presents boundaries for objects and provides a stable presentation when lighting conditions change

How do people detect edges?

• Rods are sensitive to brightness and acuity.
• Cones are sensitive to color and higher acuity.
• Lateral inhibition is an illusion.

Vision Basic Processing

• Detect edges through parts located in the eye and brain.
• Before processing even gets to the brain.
• Processing goes to the visual cortex.

Edges In The Cortex

• Edges are selectively responded in different orientations of the visual cortex.
• There is not enough time for processing so the brain needs to know how the process

Receptive Fields

• Single-cell recording in animals
• Firing rate higher (most firing) the more similar input is to receptive field orientation Engles Motion and direction

Solutions and Edges

Solution 1: Edge detection Helpful to detect edges when solving vision problems

Parallel Processing

• Different parts in each area in the brain have different features at the same time.
• Systems and processing are fast and efficient with helping each other.

Case Study

• Case study of visual agnosia
• Basic vision, where an individual had the ability to basic vision and was intact with it
• The individual had impairement of object recognition Visual has impairment with object recognition and basic perception
• Parallel is in the temporal lobed causing visual agnosia.
• Parallel what pathway includes visual agnosia.
• Parietal lob = Where pathway

Problem 1: Solution 3: Binding

How to bind while there's a parallel processor Spatial processing Neural sychrony and simultaneous neurons happen different areas in th brain

• Attention and parallel processing

Object Recognition

• Object recognition beings with identity individual features Bottom-up processing Hierarchy of testors Input stimulates testors Activation of certain features

###Object Recognition & Testing what kind of picture do you look

• What does the effect of inversion depend
• The effect of vision depends on the type of picture.

####Top-Down processing

• "Primed" from light posts, side walk, and mailboxes
• "lighted or partially activated*
• It gets activated in this system

Holistic and Face Recognition Processing

• Holistic and facial recognize can be broken up into some evidence.
• Inversion, part-whole and compositing features all play into this process.

Other Race Effect

• Adults will be adults and there group consist of three: adoptees- from Korean to a french to cacasain family, french- cacasain in France, and Koreans- living in France or few months to 10.

Super recognizes

Face perception occurs when faces are accurate and easy to process through memory advantage.

Face perception

Face perception occurs in inverting factors which is more difficult to recognize if something it is facing up side-down.

Attention and Perception

• Attention = taking procession to the mind in clear for form, object or thought.
• It is important to know it is not some ability can only have at limited resources can work a once.

Select Attention

Important selection focuses on something that ignores others

" Glue as a spotlight or is it what select it is"

• Attention glue- binds into the future

• Balint syndrome: What it can see a object but can not see or the parts around it is how can affect as a glue.

• This leads to have a conjuctions" and if do not take care of the person they are

• As a person that as Balint's, there partal lobe get damage with their vision. and can lead up there spatial attention.

###Priming vs Selective Attention

• Select priming is the the research with stdues that the example had

Why is innatentniousblindness is a both a good thing and bad thing? And What there are the things they enviored that what do you override like gorillas.

• There the different point with high and low frequent on the other hand.
• Priming. If the stimulus stand it is what come to find.

Attensions applications

Attention works by the same set of applications:

• Education
• Safety
• advertising
• And more

###Education and ADHAD What are the key function on difficulty and how attnetion what happens

• How a person to lead someone how do they think to have an adhad

###What Can you do for applications

• To help a driver that has a disability

Automatic Vs Control procession

• Automatic the amount to resources with intention and awareness. How many time the flexibility.
• Control is the higher amount of resources with only awareness

Multitasking

• Mulitasiking reqire two task together
• train by at
• but does not have intentions

Attention

• Attention can be the way that in the world can be easy and know to use.
• there is three thing there what they use such as filter
• glue or is it a spotlight.

Explore attention mechanisms: 'attention as glue' binds features, 'attention as a filter' explains selective processing, and 'attention as a spotlight' focuses resources. Priming and object selection are discussed.