Psychology Chapter on Attention

What is Attention?

• Attention is the brain's ability to select which sensory stimuli to discard and which to process further.
• Attention is like a spotlight, focusing on specific information and fading outwards.
• We can move our attention away from our fixation point, but this takes time.

Attention as a Spotlight

• Attention is based on three systems:
  • Orienting system: Disengaging and shifting attention.
  • Alerting system: Maintaining an alert state in the brain.
  • Executive system: Controlling voluntary actions.
  • These systems work together to form a control system for attention.

Selective Attention

• Attention shifts faster than eye movements.
• Eye movements take about 180 milliseconds, while attention shifts can occur as early as 150 milliseconds.
• Eye movements are not the same as attention.

Eye-Tracking and Attention

• Eye-tracking can provide clues about attention.
• Fixations are instances when the eye pauses at a point.
• Saccades are eye movements from one fixation point to another.
• Factors influencing what we attend to include: interests, importance, visual prominence, beliefs, expectations, and culture.

Characteristics of Attention

• Attention is limited in capacity and resources.
• Although we can handle multiple simultaneous inputs, multitasking is difficult due to limited resources.
• Attention does not equal awareness. You can process information unconsciously.
• Attention takes time. The amount of attention required varies based on the task and experience.

Change Blindness

• Change blindness occurs when we fail to notice a significant change in something we are attending to due to a disruption in our attention, such as a brief distraction.

Inattentional Blindness

• Inattentional blindness occurs when we fail to see something unexpected because we are focused on a task. This happens even without a disruption in attention.
• This suggests that "no perception without attention".

Inattentional vs. Change Blindness

• Similarities: Both are failures of awareness, and we fail to notice something obvious if we know to look for it.
• Difference: Change blindness is the failure to notice a change, while inattentional blindness is the failure to notice something that is present.

Multitasking

• Multitasking is the ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.
• We are not good at multitasking because we have limited resources.

Cognitive Resources

• Cognitive resources are specialized, with the central executive (pre-frontal lobe) playing a crucial role.
• The visuospatial buffer (visual-spatial sketchpad) located in the right hemisphere is responsible for visual and spatial information.
• The articulatory rehearsal loop (phonological loop) located in the left hemisphere is responsible for speech and auditory information.