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Pay Attention!

Pay Attention!. Kimberley Clow kclow2@uwo.ca http://instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/130/. Outline. What is Attention? Orienting Cueing Attention Visual Search Selective Attention Dichotic Listening Tasks Bottleneck Theories Divided Attention Capacity Model

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Pay Attention!

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  1. Pay Attention! Kimberley Clow kclow2@uwo.ca 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

  9. Find the T

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

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

  12. Find the vertical T

  13. Find the vertical T

  14. Find the vertical T

  15. Find the vertical T

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

  17. T L T T L L L L L L T L L T L L T T T T L L T T L L L T T L L L T L L T L L L L T L L T L T L T L L L L L T T Find the Blue L

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

  19. All Searches Are NOT Equal

  20. A B A Is More Difficult Than B

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

  22. Is There Trouble?

  23. Dichotic Listening Task

  24. 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

  25. Filter Theory (Broadbent)

  26. Cocktail Party Effect

  27. 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 butterfreaking laser beams you keep using that wordand jelly sandwiches

  28. 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

  29. 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”

  30. Late Selection (Deutsch & Deutsch)

  31. 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

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

  33. 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

  34. 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

  35. 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

  36. 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

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

  38. 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

  39. An Applied Example

  40. 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

  41. 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

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

  43. When Attention Is Lost Visual Neglect

  44. Their Visual Experience Writing Reading

  45. Bisect All the Lines…

  46. Drawings

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