PL3103 Cognitive Psychology: Attention (Week 3) PDF

PL3103 Cognitive Psychology Dr. Cynthia Siew Today’s Topic: Attention (Week 3) After today’s lecture, you will learn about: 1. What attention is and how it is different from perception. 2. The difference between goal-directed and stimulus-driven attentional systems....

PL3103 Cognitive Psychology Dr. Cynthia Siew Today’s Topic: Attention (Week 3) After today’s lecture, you will learn about: 1. What attention is and how it is different from perception. 2. The difference between goal-directed and stimulus-driven attentional systems. 3. Discoveries about what characterizes auditory and visual selective attention. You will also gain an appreciation for: 1. How multitasking has detrimental impacts on various ac- tivities, such as driving. 2. The ubiquity of visual search in our daily lives. 3. The limited amount of attention we each have and a deeper appreciation for why it is important to allocate it carefully. 1 What is attention? According to William James (1890): “Attention is the taking into possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.” It is the “focalisation” of consciousness. Types of attention 1. Top-down, active: Attention is controlled by the individ- ual based on their goals or expectations. 2. Bottom-up, passive: Attention is controlled by external stimuli. Take a moment to list examples of active attention and passive attention from your own experiences. (selected students) to share your answers on PollEv. Two attentional systems in the brain 1. Goal-directed system (top-down) is influenced by expec- tations, knowledge, and current goals. Also known as endogenous attention control. 2. Stimulus-driven system (bottom-up) is invoked when there is an unexpected and potentially important stimulus. Also known as exogenous attention control. acts like a “circuit-breaker” to redirect attention Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (2011). Spatial neglect and attention networks. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 34(1), 569-599. 2 Auditory selective attention Early studies of dichotic listening and shadowing (Cherry) showed that listeners were poor at reporting information from the second unattended ear. Listeners used physical information (e.g. gender of speaker, voice features) as a cue to maintain attention to. Listeners were especially poor when the messages pre- sented to both ears were from the same speaker. Where is the bottleneck? 1. Early - Broadbent’s early selection theory input is briefly stored in a sensory buffer input is quickly lost unless attended to quickly 2. Flexible - Treisman’s attenuation theory processing of input begins with physical/acoustic proper- ties, and continues to its meaning but depends on availability of processing capacity, a lim- ited resource 3. Late - Deutsch & Deutsch’s late selection theory all stimuli are fully analyzed the input that is most relevant to the task is reported What factors help us pay attention to an auditory message? Both bottom-up and top-down systems interact. 3 Bottom-up factors temporal coherence: track similarity of auditory signal over time (distinctive features) location of auditory signal enhance attended message and suppress unattended mes- sage Top-down factors familiarity with speaker expectations about the meaning of message (sentences are easier than random words) integration and use of visual information Posner (1980) Cueing Task Demo A classic study in visual attention research. For those who have a laptop (any device with a keyboard), try out the demo here: https://tstbl.co/767-296 For those without, you can try at home or watch a friend try it out. Questions - PollEv Reflect on the demo: Did you make any mistakes? If so, did the mistake tend to be on valid, invalid or neutral trials? Did you feel “faster” on valid trials vs. invalid trials? Did you notice that the cross and target were presented for slightly different lengths of time? What is the reason for doing this? Discuss these questions with your friend. 4 Prediction RT_valid (fastest) < RT_neutral < RT_invalid (slowest) Orienting attention (RT of valid trials – RT of neutral trials). How long does it take to move the attentional focus from a neutral, to a task-relevant point? 5  Disengaging attention (RT of invalid trials – RT of neutral trials). How long does it take to disengage attention from an irrelevant location, before being able to move to a relevant one? You can read more about the specifics of the demo here: https: Endogenous version (internally-driven attention) //www.testable.org/experiment- guides/attention/posner-cueing-task Visual selective attention There are different metaphors about how visual attention works. spotlight zoom lens multiple spotlights Visual attention works like a spotlight attention is focused on a small area only information within this area is attended to, and not outside Explaining Posner (1980)‘s results: The center arrow shifted participants’ attention spotlight to the location indicated by 6 the arrow. This explains why participants were much faster on valid trials than invalid trials. Visual attention works like a zoom lens attention can be increased or decreased at will, to increase or decrease the size of the visual area covered example: driving a car Muller et al. (2003) manipulated the size of the attended region (1 vs. 4 squares). RTs are fastest when attended region was small and slowest when attended region was large. Visual attention can be split across space visual attention is highly flexible, not limited to a single continuous area research has shown that up to 5 distinct regions can be attended to Awh & Pashler (2000) showed that attention could be directed to separate regions of space that do not need to be adjacent. Awh & Pashler (2000) Space-based vs. Object-based visual attention spotlight and zoom lens models assume that we selectively attend to specific spatial regions but studies have also provided evidence for object-based attention (Egly et al., 1994) 7 8 9  Images from: Müller, N. G., & Kleinschmidt, A. (2003). Dynamic What happens to the unattended stimuli? interaction of object-and space-based attention in retinotopic Do we really not attend to it at all? visual areas. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(30), 9812-9816. Even unattended stimuli receive some processing. This is true even for patients with neglect! We can be distracted by stimuli because evolutionarily we are evolved to be vigilant to threats in our environment. Our bottom-up attention gets directed to sudden and salient stim- uli, beyond our top-down control. How effective the distraction is depends on the following fac- tors: 1. Features of the stimuli itself: especially salient and dis- tracting. 2. Situational factors: task load and relevance 3. Individual differences in distractibility & personality. we can also be distracted by internal stimuli (random thoughts) 10 Multitasking: Real world implications Multitasking is defined as doing two or more tasks at the same time, such that attention is divided among tasks. Examples: Distracted driving Texting while walking Surfing the Internet during Prof. Siew’s lecture Distracted Driving Questions to think about - PollEv https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=XToWVxS_9lA Is it safe to talk on the phone while driving? Why is texting even more dangerous than talking on the phone? Will the use of voice assistants like Siri help improve driv- ing performance? Discuss these questions with your friend. 11 Distracted Walking Questions - PollEv 1. How often do you use your phone while walking? 2. Why do you use your phone while walking? 12  3. What can you do to redirect your attention away from the phone and to your surroundings? Discuss these questions with your friend. Costs of multitasking you are not necessarily more efficient when multitasking (even if it seems like it!) attentional resources are divided leading to poorer per- formance even though practice can improve dual task performance, there is almost always some evidence of interference ef- fects (Maquestiaux & Ruthruff, 2021) Maquestiaux, F., & Ruthruff, E. (2021). Testing the over-reliance on central attention (ORCA) hypothesis: Do older adults have difficulty automatizing especially easy tasks?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(9), 1722. 13 14 15 Visual search: Real world implications Find the red T Find the red T Guided search model (Wolfe, 2021) Attention plays an important role in two ways. 1. Attention selects items to “bind” their features into rec- ognizable objects. 2. Attention “guides” the search to process scene informa- tion efficiently. This creates a spatial, dynamic “priority map” that is updated as the search unfolds. Wolfe, J. M. (2021). Guided Search 6.0: An updated model of visual Why is the second red T harder to find? search. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28(4), 1060-1092. According to the guided search model, Salient, single features (e.g., color) can be detected in parallel throughout the priority map – a “pop-out” effect When two or more features are needed (e.g., color + letter identity), attention is needed to bind them together for search – resource intensive and search has to be serial, not parallel 16 Real world examples of visual search in action airport security checks detecting tumors or abnormalities in medicine finding your friends for lunch at The Deck finding my favorite snack at Donki can you think of more? The art of misdirection | Apollo Robbins “If you could control somebody’s attention, what would you do with it?” https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=GZGY0wPAnus sell you stuff on social media? pickpocket story in Europe make you watch endless netflix? sensationalist news, conspiracy theories Today’s Topic: Attention (Week 3) After today’s lecture, you have learned about: 17  1. What attention is and how it is different from perception. 2. The difference between goal-directed and stimulus-driven attentional systems. 3. Discoveries about what characterizes auditory and visual selective attention. You will also have gained an appreciation for: 1. How multitasking has detrimental impacts on various ac- tivities, such as driving. 2. The ubiquity of visual search in our daily lives. 3. The limited amount of attention we each have and a deeper appreciation for why it is important to allocate it carefully. Remember that there is no in-person lecture next week. Please watch the recorded lecture on “Short-Term Memory” instead! 18