Internal vs External Attentional Focus
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Questions and Answers

What role do schemas play in social situations for individuals with limited attention?

  • Schemas guide attention to relevant information. (correct)
  • Schemas have no effect on social attention.
  • Schemas hinder the processing of social information.
  • Schemas help in flexibly updating information as needed.
  • According to studies by Birmingham, Bischof, and Kingstone, what do people tend to focus on in scenes?

  • Faces and eyes (correct)
  • Inanimate objects first
  • Background settings
  • Textual information
  • What are the two types of gaze signals discussed that communicate emotions and intentions?

  • Dynamic and static gaze
  • Open and closed gaze
  • Intense and soft gaze
  • Direct and averted gaze (correct)
  • What characteristic of the human eye is suggested to have evolved to facilitate communication and gaze tracking?

    <p>White sclera surrounding the pupil</p> Signup and view all the answers

    In the study examining eye tracking in individuals with autism, what was one of the tasks participants were asked to complete?

    <p>Describe where people in the picture are directing their attention</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What was a key finding from Alfred Yarbus's research on eye movements and attention?

    <p>Faces draw significantly more fixation than backgrounds.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a notable difficulty for individuals with autism in relation to schemas?

    <p>They struggle to flexibly update or manipulate schemas.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What do facial expressions and eye gaze help individuals infer about others?

    <p>Feelings, thoughts, and communication</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is an example of internal attentional focus?

    <p>Thinking of your thoughts</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which network is involved in internal attention according to Fox et al (2005)?

    <p>Default mode network</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What type of attentional focus is characterized as voluntary and goal-directed?

    <p>Endogenous attention</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which concept refers to the awareness of one's own behaviors and how they align with social norms?

    <p>Self-monitoring</p> Signup and view all the answers

    In which type of task would the dorsal attention network be primarily active?

    <p>Visual spatial planning task</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following is NOT part of internal attentional focus?

    <p>Looking for a specific object</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What characterizes exogenous attention?

    <p>Stimulus-driven and spontaneous</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What happens when engaging in both internal and external attention according to the studies mentioned?

    <p>The brain dynamically switches between both forms.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is interoception as defined in the content?

    <p>Attention to internal bodily states</p> Signup and view all the answers

    In cognitive studies, what is typically involved in the frontoparietal control network?

    <p>Executive functioning and memory processing</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What did the results indicate about the fixation patterns of participants with autism during the first fixation?

    <p>They showed no difference in eye fixation compared to the control group.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How did the fixation patterns change during the second fixation for participants with autism in comparison to the control group?

    <p>Participants with autism fixedated less on the eyes compared to the control group.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What evidence suggests that faces activate specific brain areas differently than other objects?

    <p>Faces activate the FFA more than non-face objects.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What was the outcome of the Gauthier et al. study regarding the FFA's response to objects on expertise?

    <p>FFA activity increases when individuals are trained to differentiate objects.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What can be concluded about the expertise of participants in the Gauthier et al. study regarding faces and non-face objects?

    <p>Participants displayed higher FFA activation to faces than to objects of expertise.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What does the research suggest about individuals with autism regarding their understanding of social gaze?

    <p>They lack understanding of when to focus on eye fixation during social interactions.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What finding did Haxby et al. (2000) contribute to the understanding of brain processing of faces compared to other objects?

    <p>FFA involvement is crucial but not the sole contributor to face processing.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How did the research address the question of whether expertise affects the FFA's response?

    <p>FFA shows enhanced activation with familiarity to specific objects.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the role of essentialism beliefs in the persistence of stereotypes?

    <p>They reinforce existing stereotypes by discounting contradictory examples.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    In bottom-up models of perception, what occurs first?

    <p>Attention to the stimuli.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How do interactive models of perception differ from bottom-up models?

    <p>They allow for a blend of perception and cognition.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What does Jerone Bruner's work emphasize regarding perception?

    <p>Perception is fundamentally a process of categorization.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is predictive veridicality in the context of perceptual categorization?

    <p>The ability to predict properties of an object not yet tested.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is cue utilization in the context of perception?

    <p>The process of categorizing using specific sensory characteristics.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What happens during the cue search process?

    <p>A fit is established between sensory cues and category specifications.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Why is it important for mental representations to match reality?

    <p>To avoid confusion in everyday interactions.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How does social essentialism affect perceptions of individuals in a stereotyped group?

    <p>It leads to overlooking individuals who contradict group stereotypes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a characteristic of primitive categorization?

    <p>It isolates a sensory characteristic to categorize effectively.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What categorization cue did ancestral hunter-gatherers primarily use in their encounters?

    <p>Gender and age</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the primary reason for individuals having a harder time recognizing faces from other racial groups?

    <p>Lack of perceptual expertise for different racial features</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How do people typically process faces of their own race compared to faces of other races?

    <p>Holistically for their own race, but feature-based for others</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What influence does context have in the processing of faces?

    <p>It can aid in attention but not improve perceived facial differences</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What did Michel et al. (2006) find regarding white participants processing Asian faces?

    <p>They processed Asian faces similarly regardless of alignment</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How does the composition of backgrounds in the composite face task affect face processing?

    <p>Background color influences the perception of ingroup members</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following studies suggests that memory is influenced by socially meaningful categorization?

    <p>Bernstein et al. (2007)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a significant consequence of racial categorization in face processing within the criminal justice system?

    <p>Biases and misidentifications based on race</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What do studies suggest about the experience of Asian participants in recognizing white faces?

    <p>They have more experience recognizing white faces because of living in a majority white country</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What indicates that individuals may have an ingroup advantage in memory for faces?

    <p>Enhanced recognition accuracy depending on the socially defined group</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Study Notes

    Internal vs External Attentional Focus

    • Internal attention: Focus on thoughts and feelings; examples include mind wandering, interoception, proprioception, self-consciousness, and self-monitoring.
    • External attention: Focus on the external world.
    • Fox et al. (2005): Linked internal attention to the default mode network (cool colors) and external attention to task-positive networks (warm colors).
      • Default mode network: Active when engaged in internal thinking.
      • Task-positive networks: Active when engaged in tasks requiring external focus.
    • Spren et al.: Investigated how internal and external attention relate to different tasks.
      • Autobiographical planning task (internal): Activated the default mode network, demonstrating a focus on internal thoughts and organization.
      • Visual spatial planning task (external): Activated the dorsal attention network, indicating a focus on the external environment.
      • Both tasks: Activated the frontoparietal control network, highlighting the role of executive functions in planning tasks.

    What Captures Our Attention in the Social World

    • People are considered salient because they are perceived as intentional causal agents.
    • Birmingham, Bischof, and Kingstone: Found that people in scenes tend to capture attention more than inanimate objects.
    • Faces are particularly informative, conveying emotions, thoughts, communication, and actions.
    • Alfred Yarbus: Observed eye movements and found that people fixate on heads and faces, especially eyes.
    • Direct vs. Averted Gaze Signals: Communicate emotions, intentions, status, and power.
    • Cooperative Eye Hypothesis: Suggests the evolution of white sclera (surrounding the pupil) to facilitate gaze-tracking and communication, fostering cooperation.

    Autism and Focusing on the Eyes

    • Birmingham, Clerf, and Adolphs: Compared eye movements of individuals with autism and control participants.
      • Three tasks: Neutral (describing the room), Descriptive (describing the picture), and Social Attention (describing where people were looking).
      • Results:
        • No difference in overall time spent looking at eyes between groups.
        • Differences emerged in the order of eye fixations: Control participants focused on eyes more often in subsequent fixations, while individuals with autism did not.

    Does the Brain Process Faces Differently than Other Objects?

    • FFA (Fusiform Face Area): Strongly activated by faces compared to non-face objects.
    • Bentin et al. (1996): Found a distinct brain response (N170 component) specific to face processing around 100 milliseconds after face presentation.

    Is it All About Expertise?

    • Gauthier et al (1): Found that the FFA responded more to faces than novel objects ("greebles").
      • Increased responses to greebles after participants learned to differentiate them, suggesting the FFA is sensitive to familiar objects.
    • Gauthier et al (2): Studied participants with expertise in specific domains (cars, birds).
      • Found that the FFA responded more strongly to the specific objects (cars or birds) the individuals were experts in.

    Social Categories and the Brain

    • Social Categories: Like race, gender, and social groups.
    • Essentialism Beliefs: Assumptions that certain characteristics are inherent to members of particular social categories.
      • Can perpetuate stereotypes by discounting individuals who do not conform to those stereotypes.
    • Social Essentialism: Contributes to the persistence of stereotypes.

    Do Social Categories Influence Perception?

    • Bottom-up Models of Perception: Propose a strict separation between perception and cognition, with perception preceding categorization.
    • Interactive Models of Perception: Suggest that perception and cognition are more intertwined, with cognition potentially influencing how we perceive objects.

    Perception as a Categorization Process

    • Jerome Bruner: Influential proponent of interactive models of perception.
      • Believed perception is inherently tied to categorization.
    • Representative Function: Mental representations should align with reality for effective understanding and interaction with the world.
    • Predictive Veridicality: Using categorical knowledge to infer additional properties of objects, extending beyond direct perception.
    • Cue Utilization: Categorization as a process of comparing sensory input to stored category representations.

    Cue Utilization: Social Categories

    • Kurzban, Tooby, and Cosmides (2001): Suggested that race is not inherently different from other types of social categorization:
      • Evolutionary history likely shaped our capacity to categorize based on features like gender and age, but not necessarily race.
      • Race is a potentially useful cue for detecting group memberships and alliances.

    Social Categories: Perception and Cognition

    • Perceptually Salient: Features that easily capture attention.
    • Socially Salient: Features that hold social significance.

    Other Race Effect

    • "They All Look Alike": Increased difficulty in recognizing the individual identities of people from different racial and ethnic groups.

    Explanations for the Other Race Effect

    • Perceptual Expertise: Greater familiarity with faces from one's own racial group leads to better recognition.
    • Social Cognitive Processing:
      • Holistic Processing: Processing faces from own racial groups as a unified whole.
      • Feature-Based Processing: Attending to specific features when processing faces from other racial groups.

    The Other Group Effect

    • Hugenberg and Cornielle (2009): Used a composite face task with white faces from different social groups (Miami and Marshall students).
      • Found that faces presented with cues suggesting they were in-group members were processed holistically, while those with out-group cues were processed less holistically.

    Ingroup Advantages in Memory for Faces

    • Bernstein et al. (2007): Found better recognition accuracy for faces presented with social group cues (e.g., Miami students) even when those cues were not objectively meaningful.

    How Do Social Categories Interact to Influence Each Other?

    • Social categories can interact in complex ways, influencing how we perceive and process information about individuals.
    • Michel et al. (2006): Demonstrated how white participants processed white faces holistically, while Asian participants showed holistic processing for both white and Asian faces, possibly due to their experience in a white-majority society. 

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    Description

    This quiz explores the concepts of internal and external attentional focus, highlighting their implications in cognitive science. Based on research by Fox et al. (2005) and Spren et al., it examines how different tasks activate distinct neural networks. Test your understanding of these concepts and their relevance in psychology.

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