PSYCH 1X03 Week 8 Attention PDF

WEEK 8: ATTENTION _____________________________________________________________________________________ UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO ATTENTION Allows you to navigate through a crowded world brimming with information and distractions Phenomenon -> model -> hypothesis 19th century psyc...

WEEK 8: ATTENTION _____________________________________________________________________________________ UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO ATTENTION Allows you to navigate through a crowded world brimming with information and distractions Phenomenon -> model -> hypothesis 19th century psychologist William James definition: "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought...It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state." Selection: attending to an object to select it part from the unattended objects When you first put on your clothes, you can feel the fabric as it touches your skin - as you go on with your day you are no longer aware of these sensations as they fade into the background noise of stimuli competing with your attention (unless something triggers you) ○ Some stimuli can trigger your attention in an automatic fashion (can’t help but draw your attention to it) Problem with selection: irrelevant information in the environment acts as noise that can make it difficult to identify and attend to important information ○ We are able to distinguish between relevant/irrelevant stimuli in an environment but sometimes get distracted Finding a friend in a big crowd Finding foods in a new grocery store Drive through busy traffic while on the phone UNIT 2: AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED ATTENTION Automatic: involuntary capture; attention gets quickly directed toward the sirens of an ambulance ○ Operate in fast, efficient, and obligatory manner Controlled: voluntary conscious attention; slow, effortful ○ Assumed to require more cognitive effort Controlled Processes Consciously choice to pay attention to many aspects of the environment to guide this goal-directed behaviour ○ When driving a car, you are using flexible controlled process: lane changing, speed up/down, engage in conversation, change music - conditions are made more challenging ○ Resources for controlled processes are LIMITED (example: listening to the radio and talking on your phone) Make adjustments to compensate, performance in all tasks will be disrupted Automatic Processes Salience: Some cues are more noticeable and lead to stronger and quicker association when paired with events ○ Naturally pops out at you ○ Example: driver honking their horn Through enough practice, you can accomplish all little tasks in sequence without much effort at all (learning to drive a car) ○ This can also happen for some simple cognitive skills, such as word recognition UNIT 3: THE SPOTLIGHT MODEL Attentional spotlight focuses on only part of the environment at a time Example: attention being consciously directed in a visual scene as you look for your friend in a crowd Can be hijacked by unconscious processes that can quickly grab your attention to avoid an oncoming speeding car when you step off the sidewalk Selection and the Spotlight Objects falling within the spotlight are processes preferentially: can respond faster with greater accuracy Automatic Processing Attentional spotlight is automatically attracted to the cued location ○ if a target appears in the cued location, the attention will amplify the perceptual processing of that target and be detected quickly ○ If the target is in the uncued location, the target is detected more slowly because the attentional spotlight will have been directed away from the actual target location Attention can shift faster than the eye (attend to something before we even look at it) CHECKPOINT: When an object is fixed in our "attentional spotlight", tasks related to that object will have: increased accuracy and decreased reaction time UNIT 4: FILTER MODELS Auditory attention: surrounded by many different sounds competing for attention but still able to single out the specific voice of your conversation partner Colin Cherry Cocktail party effect: listen to 2 different messages played from a single loud speaker at the same time ○ the ability to separate target sounds from background noise is based on physical characteristics, such as the gender of the speaker and the direction, pitch, or speed of the speech  Filter sifts away distractions and only allows important information through Readily applied to understand visual attention *** FILTER AND SPOTLIGHT MODELS PROPOSE VERY DIFFERENT MECHANISMS FOR ATTENTION*** Examining a flower on a field ○ Spotlight: attention would enhance the processing of visual information from the single flower relative to the grass ○ Filter: attentions helps us ignore or “block” the visual information from the grass, allowing the single flower to continue on for further processing Both types of models can be applied across modalities Broadbent’s Single Filter Model First model of attention proposed by Donal Broadbent in 1958 Used data from behavioural experiments to infer the functional stages of cognitive processing Early Single Filter Model: attentional filter selects important information on the basis of physical characteristic and allows that information to continue for further processing ○ Information that does not pass through the early physical filter was assumed to be completely eliminated and unavailable for deeper analysis for meaning and semantic importance  Dichotic listening paradigm: put on headphones and listen to a different message directed into each ear, shadow the message in the attended ear by repeating it back ○ No information was the message in the unattended ear was processed (speech could’ve been in a different language, said backwards, etc) ○ Attentional filter allows only information arriving through the attended ear to proceed to deeper processing Von wright: suggests that some information is processed even in the unattended ear ○ Conditioned response occurred even if the conditioned word was presented in the unattended ear - some information about sound and meaning is able to pass through the filter (cannot be predicted by Braodbent) Triesman’s Dual Filter Model Breakthrough: when participants remember unattended information and can catch attention ○ Common when unattended information is highly relevant (having a conversation with someone at a loud party but able to quickly divert attention if someone calls my name) 2 filters: Physical and Semantic ○ Information first passes through the physical filter: information is evaluated based on physical cues (intensity or pitch) to find the most relevant signal, weighs the importance of incoming stimuli brighter/louder stimulus > dim/quiet stimulus ○ Information passes through semantic filter next: evaluated for meaning, takes in account the weights assigned by the physical filter, considers the deeper meaning and relevance of the stimuli, and choose which information will be attended to or discarded Can override the early filtering decisions based on physical traits by considering the meaning of particular information RECAP Broadbent’s single filter: assumes sensory information is filtered based on physical characteristics (talking with a friend at a loud party) but any filtered information cannot be processed further (does not explain the breakthrough effect) Treisman’s dual filter: better account for the breakthrough effect, assumes the early filter only weighs the incoming sensory information based on physical characteristics and the late filter processes the resulting information in terms of meaning or semantics to determine what ultimately gets selected for attention UNIT 5: THE STROOP TASK Designed to test the limits of selective attention: measured by comparing the time difference on congruent vs incongruent trials First described in 1935: asked to state the colour the word is displayed in Can be congruent (matched) (“red” in red font) or incongruent (unmatched) (“blue” in green font) ○ Performance us much faster for congruent than incongruent The Stroop Effect and Attention Attend to information on the task relevant dimension (font colour) and ignore informant on the task irrelevant dimension (the word itself) Difference between incongruent and congruent trials serve as an empirical measure of processes involved in selective attention ○ Automatic word-readings interferes with colour naming performance Proportional Congruent Manipulation: change the ratio of congruent to incongruent trials ○ High proportion congruent condition: 75% congruent and 25% incongruent tails Leads to an increased stroop effect ○ When presented with a greater number of the more difficult, incongruent trials it leads to a decreased stroop effect (25% congruent, 75% incongruent)  Controlling the Stroop Effect ○ HIGH PROPORTION OF TRIALS ARE CONGRUENT Congruent: developing a strategy by consciously attending to just the word since they match the font colour Leads to genuine improvement in reaction times for congruent trials when receiving the stimulus’ you were expecting because word reading is a fast automatic process Word reading facilitates colour naming Incongruent: might still focus on the word reading despect the word being the irrelevant dimension, suffering performance Word reading impedes colour naming INCREASED STROOP EFFECT ○ LOW CONGRUENT TRIALS Early noticing that the words read do not match the colour Adopting an alternative strategy to actively ignore the word and instead process font colour on its own The infrequent benefit that you receive from reading the word on congruent trials does not justify how often it leads you astray on incongruent trials, and so you opt to take the slightly slower yet Stroop-reduced route. Suppressing the tendency to read the word and promoting the processing of font colour = SMALLER STROOP EFFECT The Stroop Task: Automatic and Controlled Measure the influence of both automatic and controlled processes of attention Automatic: word readings influences performance even when the word is being ignored ○ Occurs in the absence of voluntary intention Controlled: can adopt consciously controlled word reading strategies that modulate the Stroop effect UNIT 6: VISUAL SEARCH How we use everyday attention Looking for a target in an array of distracters Set Size: the number of items to search through Set Size Effect: increase in difficulty to set size increases ○ If distractors are uniform/identical, this makes the target easier to find Feature and Conjunction Search ○ Pop out effect: when the object of a visual search is easily found, regardless of a set size; easily induced by colour ○ Conjunction: identifying a target by considering 2 or more features (makes the task more difficult Easier with contextual cueing  If a target can be found by relying on just one feature, it becomes a single feature search, regardless of distractors (effectively ignore the other feature in order to conduct our search) ○ Single feature: one feature differentiates between 1 and other objects Some DON’T have a pop out effect Contextual Cueing: context of the search task served as a cue to help search more effectively ○ Gain by knowing something about our world ○ Find things quickly in the usual spot they are in ○ Simplifies life by creating designated spaced for essential items TEXTBOOK READINGS ________________________________________________________________________ Flashbulb memories: highly detailed and vivid “snapshots” of memory. Usually occurs during a time where important news was shared, but not always accurate Strongly intertwined with attention Bottom-up processing: refers to a stimulus-driven mechanism where we perceive events/stimuli by piecing together smaller pieces of sensory information automatic Top-down processing: memory-driven mechanism where we perceive events or stimuli more holistically based on prior experiences or context Controlled Orienting: act of shifting one’s attention to something in the environment Overt-attending: obvious process of looking where you are attending Covert-attending: attending to something without looking at it Invisible shifts of attention Inhibition of Return: tends to prevent your gaze to a previously attended locations (promotes searching new and unattended areas) Visual search paradigm: participant is set to find a target object within distractor objects Dichotic listening paradigm: one message is presented in one ear (attended to), and another message in the other ear (not attended to). Participant is instructed to repeat the message said in the attended ear immediately Inattentional blindness: limited attentional processes can miss out on very important things Change blindness paradigm: change has occurred in a visual scene, but the observer doesn’t notice or cannot identify it Bottleneck: only a certain amount of information can continue for further processing Early selection theory: attentional filter located early in the process, and is filtered out before any semantic processing Attenuation theory: unattended information is not completely filtered out, but rather ‘turned down’ or attenuated Late selection model: place the filter at a later stage—i.e., after all the incoming information has been analyzed for both physical properties and semantic content