What are two main ways to define attention
- attention as a mental process (concentrating effort on a stimuli/event)
- attention as a limited mental resource (limited energy/resources)
Selective attention
you have so much stimuli but not a lot of time/cognition to fully process
- massive information+limited capacity
- selecting to focus on one thing and ignore others
Information processing model
- Sensation
- Perception
(attention) - Mental Representation
- Memory (retrieval if going backwards)
What is the effect when you are in a loud room and you hear someone say your name far away, even if you were in the middle of a conversation
cocktail party effect (you notice critical info)
Dichotic listening experiments
- one different message in each ear at the same time, the person may shadow (repeat one side and ignore the other)
For Dichotic listening experiments, who was a key player and what did they find
- Cherry
- found people could process surface level info of the voice (ie gender, pitch) but not the content
- suggesting info is processed but filtered
Early vs late filters for attention processing
- Early: can select physical characteristics. Broadbent says filter follows detection but is before recognition
- Late: can select via meaning. Deutshs says it happens after recognition (processes after some understanding)
How did Treisman build off of the filter theories for attention
- switching experiment (shadow message, but have it jump)
- Intermediate-selection model: attended messages can separate from unattended ones early in info processing, filter based on meaning or physical traits
Treisman’s attenuator
- attended message is let though at full strength (stuff that matters gets a signal boost, stuff that doesn’t is slowed)
- not all or none, strong or weak varies
Treisman’s dictionary unit
- contains words that have thresholds for being activated
- common words=low thresholds
- uncommon=high thresholds
t or f: for treisman’s dictionary unit, words with high thresholds have less of a need for a signal to activate
false, low threshold=less of a need for signal to activate and high=ignored
Because its hard to distinguish filter models for attention, emphasis has shifted to _______ of attention
- capacity theories
- ability/resources for info processing
- multitasking
automaticity
- highly practiced
- hard to overcome/override
Whether attentional capacity is exceeded depends on _____ and _____
the task and state of the person (ie. alertness/autonomic or effortful tasks)
Automaticity vs controlled attention
auto: no mental effort needed, practice, w out intention, unconscious, doesnt interfere w other tasks
control: deliberate, voluntary allocation of effort/concentration (ex creative, different situation each time)
When looking for a red circle among blue circles, this is a:
a) attentional control task
b) automatic attention task
b) automatic
When looking for a vertical red among vertical blue and horizontal red rectangles is it uses:
a) attentional control task
b) automatic attention task
a)
Because reading becomes an automatic process ______ words are often skipped
function/small (ex. of, the)
Stroop effect
- difficulty saying colour of font if word is a different colour
- reading is automatic
- solution: blue eyes
disadvantages of automaticity
- hard to undo/override
- brain is efficient at cutting corners
- even if task is set up, brain will skip things (ex proof reading)
Feature vs conjunction search
feature: easier, autonomic
conjunction: searching but you need to find combo of features to find it
Feature integration theory
- Treisman and Gelade
- Perception occurs in two stages: preattentive (physical features) and attention processes (features glues together)
- you only get true perception of things when you pay attention to it
- fast parallel processing of visual features
Conjunction errors
- attention is not enough
- confused with a near stimuli easier
some jobs require automaticity be avoided to ___________
accurately perform the job without error
