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Understanding Attention and Consciousness by Stephanie Tobin, PhD Today

This lesson covers various aspects of attention, types of attention, and explanations for attention, including divided and selective attention with examples and research studies. It also discusses how stimuli capture attention and the challenge of multitasking.

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Understanding Attention and Consciousness by Stephanie Tobin, PhD Today

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  1. Attention & Consciousness Stephanie Tobin, Phd

  2. Today’s Plan • Iclicker Review of previous classes • Attention • Types of Attention • Explanations for Attention

  3. Iclicker Review Questions

  4. iclicker • Which of the following statements provides the best, most complete definition of the term perception? • A: Perception refers to the process of converting external stimuli into electrical signals within the nervous system • B: Perception refers to the registration of visual information on the retina • C: Perception refers to the mental images we create without any input from the external world • D: Perception uses our previous knowledge to collect and interpret sensory stimuli

  5. Review of Last class • The words in this sentence are being registered on the retina of your eye. What is this representation called: • A: Sensory memory • B: The template • C: The proximal stimulus • D: The distal stimulus.

  6. Attention

  7. Attention: An Example • Try to focus on everything you see in front of you • Every visual detail (ie., hair color, wall color, does the person in front of you have a pen or pencil) • Now try to focus on everything you see and everything you hear • Every breathing sound, cough, conversation • Now try to focus on everything you see, hear and feel • Every internal and external sensation (e.g., is it cold, how does your watch feel against your skin)

  8. What does our example tell us? • There is a lot happening and it is difficult to attend to everything • Asking you to focus on everything is asking you to divide your attention (Hard) • We must focus (Selective attention) • A lot of information gets ignored • e.g., How often do you think of how your socks feel against your skin • Unattended items are not processed in detail (attention is a gatekeeper) • If you do not attend to something it basically doesn’t exist for you

  9. What is attention? • Attention is …. • Concentration of mental activity that allows you to take in a limited portion of the vast stream of information available from both the sensory world and memory • Top down and bottom up process • Stimuli captures our attention (bottom up) • Concentrate mental abilities to pay attention to something specific (top down)

  10. Divided Attention • Divided Attention: • trying to pay attention to two or more simultaneous messages • respond appropriately to each message • speed and accuracy suffers (esp. for difficult tasks) • Related to divided attention: Multitasking • When people try to accomplish two or more tasks at the same time • Research does not support our perceived multi-tasking abilities • Testing of material read while multitasking (Bowmann et al., 2010)

  11. Divided Attention • An example of divided attention • Cell phones and driving • Collet et al. (2009) • Simulated-driving course and handheld cell phone • RT 20% slower • Strayer et al. (2003) • Heavy traffic conditions and hands-free cell phone • Significantly longer to brake • Inattentional blindness – Reduced attention for information appearing in center of visual field • Attention wanders Strayer & Drews, 2007

  12. Divided Attention • An example of divided attention • Cell phones and driving • Emberson et al. 2010 • Passenger on cell phone is more distracting than talking to passenger • Hearing half the conversation is less predictable • Produces measurable decrease in performance on cognitive tasks

  13. Selective Attention • Divided attention is demanding • Likely we are not paying equal attention • Selective Attention • Requires paying attention to certain information while ignoring other information • Allows for focused mental activity • Hopefully you are attending to me and ignoring irrelevant information

  14. Selective Attention • Examples of Selective Attention Tasks and Research • Dichotic Listening • The Stroop Effect • Visual Search • Saccadic Eye Movements

  15. Selective Attention: Dichotic Listening • I’m inviting you all to a party • But.. my apartment is small so I’m inviting three of you to a party • I am a good hostess and want to talk to everyone one-on-one • I encourage the two guests I’m not talking to each other to chat • I actively listen to the person I am talking to and have limited awareness of the other conversation taking place

  16. Selective Attention: Dichotic Listening • Studied in the laboratory by asking part. to shadow message presented in one ear of two ears • Researcher monitor mistakes in shadowing • Studies have shown people fail to notice change in language • Do notice change in sex • Dichotic Listening

  17. Selective Attention: Dichotic Listening • In general people can only process one message at a time • Able to process both messages under certain situations: • Both messages are delivered slowly • Main task is not challenging • Meaning of intended message is immediately relevant • Cocktail Party Effect • Wood & Cowan (1995) 1/3 of people report hearing their name in the message they are ignoring • Inversely related to working memory (High: 20%; Low: 65%) • Ecological validity?

  18. Selective Attention: Stroop Effect • We’re about to do an experiment • I am going to present you a series of words printed in different colors • Your task is to tell me the color of the text and ignore the meaning of the word • Lets get started

  19. RED

  20. BLACK

  21. RED

  22. YELLOW

  23. BLUE

  24. Selective Attention: Stroop Effect • This is known as the Stroop Effect • Created by James R Stroop (1935) • People longer to name the ink color when the word and printed color are incongruent (ie., RED in black ink) • Approx. 100 sec for 100 words • People can quickly name color when print color and word are same (ie., Black in black ink) • Approx 60 sec for 100 words • People take longer to pay attention to color when distracted by another feature of the stimulus (the meaning)

  25. Selective Attention: Stroop Effect • Theories behind Stroop Effect: • Parallel distributed processing approach • Pathway for color naming task • Pathway for reading task • More practice reading words than naming colors • Automatic process (reading) interferes with non-automatic process (naming colors)

  26. Selective Attention: Stroop Effect • The Stroop test has been presented in many forms since its inception • The Emotional Stroop Task: Word with strong emotional significance • Used by clinical psychologists • More time needed to name color of words which provoke strong emotional reactions • Ie., hairy and crawl for those with spider phobia • Hyper alter to such words (attentional bias) • Similar findings for Depressed individuals and individuals at risk for eating disorders when words are related to sadness or body shape CRAWL

  27. Selective Attention: Visual Search • Visual Search: Requires an observer to find an object in a visual display that has numerous distractors

  28. Selective Attention: Visual Search • Factors influencing visual search: • Frequency: More able to identify object that appears frequently (e.g., target represent in same background) • Isolated-feature/Combined feature effect • Feature-present/Feature-absent effect

  29. Selective Attention: Visual Search • Isolated-feature/Combined-feature effect • Treisman & Gelade (1980) • Part. able to quickly detect target when it differed from irrelevant items with respect to a simple feature Ie., Color • Same time to detect for A1 and A2 • Search for the blue X again • Now there is a big difference • Must search each irrelevant stimuli • Combined features

  30. Selective Attention: Visual Search • Feature-present/Feature-absent effect • Our cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information • Positive = Feature is present (bottom-up) • Negative = Feature is absent (bottom-up and top-down) • Based on Treisman & Souther (1985) • Royden et al. (2001) • Easier to spot a moving target if distractors still than a still Target if distractors moving

  31. Selective Attention: Saccadic Eye Movements During Reading • Saccadic Eye Movements During Reading • Saccade • Rapid movement of eyes (jumps) • Brings fovea over word

  32. Selective Attention: Saccadic Eye Movements During Reading • Selective attention in that this is an active search for new information (the words that are to be read) • Each saccade brings eyes forward 7-9 letters • Eyes alternate between jumps and pauses • Information processed during fixation (pause)

  33. Selective Attention: Saccadic Eye Movements During Reading • Perceptual Span • Number of letters and spaces perceived during fixation • 15 letters to the right of fixation and 4 letters to the left for English • Lopsided • We are looking for cues about what is to come (e.g., spaces and word length) • Saccades have predictable patterns • Jump to center of word • Jump past short or frequent words • Small saccades if next word is misspelled • Good readers have larger saccades and make fewer regressions

  34. Explanations for Attention • Similar brain regions activated which paying attention and during visual object recognition • Importance of cortex in attentional processes • The Orienting Attention Network • Executive Attention Network

  35. Explanations for Attention: The Orienting Attention Network • The Orienting Attention Network • Involved in selecting information from sensory input (Visual search) • Importance of the parietal lobe • Evidence from stroke victims (lesions) and PET scans • Unilateral spatial neglect http://www.labspaces.net/blog/1552/Hemispatial_neglect__a_one_sided_world

  36. Explanations for Attention: Executive Attention Network • The Executive Attention Network is responsible for the kind of attention required when task focuses on conflict (ie., Stroop Task) • Top down control of attention • Network begins to develop around age 3 • Importance of the prefrontal cortex • Network overlaps with areas of the brain related to general intelligence

  37. Explanations for Attention: Theories of Attention • Bottleneck Theories • Early approach to attention • Focused on limitations of attention • Bottleneck limits information we can attend to • As one message flows through bottleneck other information is left behind • Theory rejected: Information not lost at one point

  38. Explanations for Attention: Feature-Integration Feature-Integration Theory (Anne Treisman) The basic elements (continuum) focused attention slower serial processing identify one object at a time complex objects identify which features belong together distributed attention • register features automatically • parallel processing • identify features simultaneously • low-level processing

  39. Explanations for Attention: Feature-Integration • Research supports both types of attention • Related to Feature-integration: Illusory conjunction • inappropriate combination of features • occurs when attention is overloaded or distracted • features processed independently • binding problem (e.g., an apple) • illusory conjunctions with printed and verbal material • Hear dax and kay, report day • role of top-down processing

  40. Next Class • Consciousness • Exam Discussion • Finish reading Chapter 3

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