Lecture 4 (Attention).ppt

Attention Lecture 4 Overview of Major Topics • • • • Basic Input Attentional Processes Controlled, Voluntary Attention Attention as a Mental Resource Disorders of Attention / Hemineglect Multiple Meanings of Attention Our Intuitive Understanding • Have you ever thought about how much informa...

Attention Lecture 4 Overview of Major Topics • • • • Basic Input Attentional Processes Controlled, Voluntary Attention Attention as a Mental Resource Disorders of Attention / Hemineglect Multiple Meanings of Attention Our Intuitive Understanding • Have you ever thought about how much information impinges upon us every waking moment? • How do we select some items to attend to and others to ignore? • Are there limitations to how much we can attend to? • Why is it that some tasks (e.g., riding a bike) seem so “easy”? • Can we practice a task such that it can become less attention demanding? Two General Definitions of Attention • Attention as a mental process: The mental process of concentrating effort on a stimulus or a mental event. • Attention as a limited mental resource: The limited mental energy or resource that powers the mental system. Input Attention • The basic process of getting sensory information into the cognitive system. 1. Alertness and Arousal A necessary precondition for processing information? Bonebakker et al. (1996) Study phase: heard 2 lists of words, one when awake, one when anesthetized. Test phase: After the operation, complete words stems (e.g., SCH_ _ _) with the first word that comes to mind EXCEPT do not fill in word stems with words that you remember previously hearing. Assumption: if people do fill in the word stems with words that were presented earlier, the “error” is due to unconscious or implicit processing. Word Stem Results Level of Arousal Awake Anesthetized low score HIGH SCORE Although the patients did not consciously remember hearing the words while they were anesthetized (i.e., not alert), information was still processed. This result illustrates that not all cognitive processing requires attention. Implicit processing, for example, does not seem to require attention. Thus, attention is NOT necessarily required to process all types of information 2. Orientating Response: The redirection of attention toward an unexpected stimulus that is: (1) significant for the organism, and (2) novel. • Habituation: A gradual reduction of the orienting response back to baseline. Spotlight of Attention 3. Spotlight Attention • The mental attention-focusing mechanism that prepares you to encode stimulus information. • Measured with the Spatial Cuing Task, and the Visual Search Task. Posner’s Spatial Cuing Task Posner’s Spatial Cuing Task Properties of Attentional Spotlight • You can focus your spotlight of attention on a narrow or broad search space. • When shifting your attention, the spotlight disengages (shuts off). • It is cognitive, and not perceptual, in nature. Sample Visual Search Task 4. Controlled, Voluntary Attention • A deliberate, voluntary allocation of mental effort or concentration. • Selective attention: The ability to attend to one source of information while ignoring other ongoing messages around us. Studying Selective Attention • The Cocktail Party Effect • Dual Task Procedures e.g., The Shadowing Task Two Models of Selective Attention • Broadbent’s Filter Theory. Information is selected based upon the physical characteristics of the information. • Treisman’s Attenuation Theory Pattern recognition comes before attention. Treisman’s (1960) classic study When do we filter out the irrelevant information? Broadbent’s Filter Theory Treisman’s (1960) study Norman’s Pertinence Model • Donald Norman proposed a modification to Treisman’s model. • What is attended to is determined by Sensory Activation and Pertinence The Multimode Model of Attention by Johnston and Heinz (1978) • Attention is flexible. • Selective attention can operate in multiple modes (early, middle, late). • But, later selection uses more of our limited attentional capacity. • So, later selection is slower and less accurate than middle or early selection. Attention as a Mental Resource • Kahneman (1973) • Attention is mental effort-- the mental resource that fuels cognitive activity. • Attention is limited-- only so much of the fuel can be devoted to mental tasks. • Also called “controlled” attention. • Contrast to automatic processes. Automatic versus Conscious Processes The Stroop (1935) Task • Name the color of ink that each word appears in. • On Stroop trials, the words themselves identify colors (the word “red” printed in blue ink). • Word recognition is automatic, which interferes with color naming. Variations on the Stoop Task • Is it left or right of center? • card / • / door • / book • right / • / left • right / • Count the number of items on each line: • aaa • bbbb • 2 • 3333 • 11 • 44444 Practice and Automaticity • Practice can make a task more automatic. • Everyday Examples: Driving today (versus driving at age 16) Reading today (versus reading at age 7) • Examples from Research: Spelke, Hirst and Neisser (1976) Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) Disadvantages of Automaticity • Everyday Examples: Proofreading Negative Transfer (In your new car, reaching for where the radio knob was on your old car). Examples from Research: Barshi and Healy (1993) Hemineglect • Disruption or decreased ability to look at something in the (often) left field of vision and pay attention to it. • Research: Bisiach and Luzatti (1978) Duncan et al. (1999)