Attention3.ppt best psychology notes for net and other competitive exams

attention

1. Pay Attention!
Kimberley Clow
[email protected]
http://instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/130/

2. Outline
What is Attention?
Orienting
Cueing Attention
Visual Search
Selective Attention
Dichotic Listening Tasks
Bottleneck Theories
Divided Attention
Capacity Model
Automatic vs. Controlled Processing
Visual Neglect

3. What Is Attention?
Definition
Attention is the process by which the mind
chooses from among the various stimuli that
strike the senses at any given moment
•allows only some info to enter into consciousness
Related Concepts:
Alertness
Concentration
Selectivity
Control

4. Big Issues in Attention
Facts that drive attention
research
We are bombarded by more
information than we can attend to
•Selective Attention
•Divided Attention
•Automaticity
Some tasks can be performed
with little, if any, attention

5. Orienting
We don’t passively see or hear
We actively look and listen
Different ways to orient to a stimulus
Overt Orienting
Covert Orienting
Attentional Gaze
Attention can be drawn to a particular
location independent of where our
eyes are looking or our ears are
oriented

6. Cuing Attention
Give people a cue where a
target will appear in the
visual field
Manipulate the kind of cue
Valid Cue
Neutral Cue
Invalid Cue
How does cue affect
performance?

7. Results
Different kinds of
cues are possible
Voluntary Orienting
•Endogenous Cue
•Arrow
Automatic Orienting
•Exogenous Cue
•Flashing light

8. Find the T
R
R
R
R
T
R
R
R
R

9. Find the T
R
R
R
R
T
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R

10. Find the Blue Letter
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L

11. Find the Blue Letter
L
LL
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
LL
L
L
L
L LL
LL
L
L
L
L
L

12. Find the vertical T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T

13. Find the vertical T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T

14. Find the vertical T
R
R
R
R
T
R

15. Find the vertical T
T
T
R
T
T
R
R
R
T
T
T
R
R
T
R
R
T
R

16. Find the Blue L
L
L
L
L
L
T
T
T
T
T

17. Find the Blue L
T
LL
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
LL
L
L
L
L
L
L
LL
L
L
L
L
L
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
TT
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
L

18. What’s Going On?
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
0 10 20 30
Number of Items
RT
Conjunction
Feature

19. All Searches Are NOT Equal

21. A Is More Difficult Than B
A B

22. Why Is This Important?
Watch the Dial Watch for Light

23. Is There Trouble?

24. Dichotic Listening Task

25. Shadowing Results
Physical attributes of unattended channel
are detected
Male vs. female voice
Human vs. musical instruments
Semantic attributes of unattended
channel were missed
Don’t notice foreign language
Don’t notice repeated items

26. Filter Theory (Broadbent)

27. Cocktail Party Effect

28. Attenuation Model (Treisman)
Present a story in dichotic listening task
Story switches from attended ear to
unattended ear
Participant mistakenly shadows from attended
ear to unattended ear
Attended Ear: Unattended Ear:
She had peanut butter freaking laser beams
you keep using that word and jelly
sandwiches

29. Problems with Early Models
Memory for unattended channel may depend on
familiarity or importance
Cocktail party effect
There are effects of practice
There is implicit memory for the unattended
channel even when there isn’t explicit memory
Shock study
People can shadow meaningful message that
switch from ear to ear
Treisman
Memory for unattended channel affected by
similarity to attended channel

30. Context Effects
Attended ear:
“They were standing near the bank”
Unattended ear:
One of the following was presented
•“river”
•“money”
Participants interpreted “bank” as
a riverbank if they heard “river”
a financial bank if they heard “money”

31. Late Selection
(Deutsch & Deutsch)

32. Problems with Late Models
Even if pertinence is controlled for
We are more likely to notice effects in the
attended channel (87%)
We are less likely to notice effects in the
unattended channel (8%)
If selection is late
Why do we feel like we’re consciously
selecting early?
Neuro evidence
Enhanced neural processing at early stages

33. Recognition
Attenuation (Treisman):
Detection
Input
Recognition
Late Filtering (Deutsch & Deutsch):
Filter
Attenuator
DetectionInput
Filter
Recognition
Early Filtering (Broadbent):
Input
Detection

34. Bottleneck Theories
All information gets into sensory register
Somewhere along the way, information is
filtered or selected for attention
Early
•at perceptual level
Late
•at response level
Only selected information makes it into
awareness and long-term memory

35. Divided Attention
Dual task experiments
Get people to perform
multiple tasks and look at
the effects on performance
Often find that
performance suffers
•This breakdown of
performance when two tasks
are combined sheds light on
the limitations and nature of
the human information-
processing system

36. Dual Task Performance
Divided attention is difficult when:
Tasks are similar
Tasks are difficult
When both tasks require conscious attention
Divided attention is easier when:
Tasks are dissimilar
Tasks are simple
When at least one of the tasks does not
require conscious attention
Tasks are practiced

37. Capacity Theories
Tasks take mental effort
We have limited mental
effort to allocate to all
demands on our attention
Conscious control of
allocation
Some tasks require more
attention than others

38. Resource Allocation Model (Kahneman)
What Affects Allocation?
Resources
•Arousal
•Available Capacity
Other Effects
•Enduring Dispositions
•Momentary Intentions

39. Different Processes
Some tasks are easier to perform than
others and don’t seem to affect attention
Especially tasks that are well practiced
Other tasks are tedious and require our
conscious attention
Two types of processing:
Automatic or pre-attentive processing
Controlled or attentive processing

40. An Applied Example

41. Neely (1977)
Priming study, using a lexical decision task
4 primes
BIRD, BODY, BUILDING, XXX
Manipulated expectancies of the target
BIRD - types of birds
BODY - building parts
BUILDING - body parts
XXX - bird, body parts, and building parts equally
often
Short (e.g., 250ms) and long (e.g., 2,000ms) SOAs

42. Neely (1977) Results
BIRD (expect types of birds)
BIRD - robin
•facilitation for bird targets at short and long SOAs
BODY (expect building parts)
BODY - door
•facilitation for building targets at long SOAs, but
not at short SOAs
BODY - heart
•inhibition for body targets at long SOAs, but
facilitation at short SOAs

43. Automatic vs. Controlled
Automatic Processes
Fast and efficient
Unavailable to
consciousness
Unavoidable
Unintentional
Controlled Processes
Slow and less efficient
Available to
consciousness
Controllable
Intentional

44. When Attention Is Lost
Visual Neglect

45. Their Visual Experience
Writing
Reading

46. Bisect All the Lines…

47. Drawings