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Pay Attention! Kimberley Clow kclow2@ uwo .ca http://instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/130/

Pay Attention! Kimberley Clow [email protected]

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Pay Attention!

Kimberley Clow

[email protected]

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

Automatic vs. Controlled Processing Visual Neglect

What Is Attention?

DefinitionAttention 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:

AlertnessConcentrationSelectivityControl

Big Issues in Attention

Facts that drive attention researchWe 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

Orienting

We don’t passively see or hearWe actively look and listen

Different ways to orient to a stimulusOvert OrientingCovert Orienting

Attentional GazeAttention can be drawn to a particular

location independent of where our eyes are looking or our ears are oriented

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?

Results

Different kinds of cues are possibleVoluntary Orienting

• Endogenous Cue• Arrow

Automatic Orienting• Exogenous Cue

• Flashing light

Find the T

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Find the T

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Find the Blue Letter

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Find the Blue Letter

LLL

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Find the vertical T

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Find the vertical T

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Find the vertical T

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Find the vertical T

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Find the Blue L

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Find the Blue L

TLL

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What’s Going On?

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Number of Items

RT

ConjunctionFeature

All Searches Are NOT Equal

A Is More Difficult Than B

A B

Why Is This Important?

Watch the Dial Watch for Light

Is There Trouble?

Dichotic Listening Task

Shadowing Results

Physical attributes of unattended channel are detectedMale vs. female voiceHuman vs. musical instruments

Semantic attributes of unattended channel were missedDon’t notice foreign languageDon’t notice repeated items

Filter Theory (Broadbent)

Cocktail Party Effect

Attenuation Model (Treisman)

Present a story in dichotic listening taskStory switches from attended ear to

unattended earParticipant 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

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

Context Effects

Attended ear:“They were standing near the bank”

Unattended ear:One of the following was presented

• “river”• “money”

Participants interpreted “bank” asa riverbank if they heard “river”a financial bank if they heard “money”

Late Selection (Deutsch & Deutsch)

Problems with Late Models

Even if pertinence is controlled forWe 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 evidenceEnhanced neural processing at early stages

Recognition

Attenuation (Treisman):

DetectionInput Recognition

Late Filtering (Deutsch & Deutsch):Filter

Attenuator

DetectionInput

Filter

Recognition

Early Filtering (Broadbent):

Input Detection

Bottleneck Theories

All information gets into sensory register Somewhere along the way, information is

filtered or selected for attentionEarly

• at perceptual level

Late• at response level

Only selected information makes it into awareness and long-term memory

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

Dual Task Performance

Divided attention is difficult when:Tasks are similarTasks are difficultWhen both tasks require conscious attention

Divided attention is easier when:Tasks are dissimilarTasks are simpleWhen at least one of the tasks does not

require conscious attentionTasks are practiced

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

Resource Allocation Model (Kahneman)

What Affects Allocation?Resources

• Arousal• Available Capacity

Other Effects• Enduring Dispositions• Momentary Intentions

Different Processes

Some tasks are easier to perform than others and don’t seem to affect attentionEspecially tasks that are well practiced

Other tasks are tedious and require our conscious attention

Two types of processing:Automatic or pre-attentive processingControlled or attentive processing

An Applied Example

Neely (1977)

Priming study, using a lexical decision task 4 primes

BIRD, BODY, BUILDING, XXX Manipulated expectancies of the target

BIRD - types of birdsBODY - building partsBUILDING - body partsXXX - bird, body parts, and building parts equally

often Short (e.g., 250ms) and long (e.g., 2,000ms) SOAs

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

Automatic vs. Controlled

Automatic ProcessesFast and efficientUnavailable to

consciousnessUnavoidableUnintentional

Controlled ProcessesSlow and less efficientAvailable to

consciousnessControllableIntentional

When Attention Is Lost

Visual Neglect

Their Visual Experience

Writing

Reading

Bisect All the Lines…

Drawings