Attention

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Chapter 4

• Attention

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Attention

• Defining Attention
• Input Attention
• Selective Attention
• Attention as a Resource
• Neuropsychology

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Attention

• What do we mean by attention?
• What does it mean to pay attention
• How much control do we have over our attention
• Why are some things easy to pay attention to and
  other so hard

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Attention (William James, 1890)

• Every one knows what attention is. It is the
  taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid
  form, of one out of what seem several
  simultaneously possible objects or trains of
  thought. Focalization, concentration, of
  consciousness are of its essence. It implies
  withdrawal from some things in order to deal
  effectively with others

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Attention

• We are constantly confronted with more
  information than we can pay attention to
• There are limitations on how much we can attend
  to at one time
• We can perform some tasks with little attention
• With practice, some tasks become less demanding
  of our attentional processes

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Definitions of Attention

• The mental PROCESS that allows us to select
  relevant information and filter out irrelevant
  information
• Concentrating effort on a stimulus
• An activity within the cognitive system

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Definitions of Attention

• The LIMITED mental RESOURCE that allows us to
  optimize our processing of certain information
• Mental fuel
• A resource necessary to run the cognitive system
• E.g. Rush hour traffic cell phone

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Attention

• Defining Attention
• Input Attention
• Selective Attention
• Attention as a Resource
• Neuropsychology

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Input Attention

• The basic process of getting sensory information
  into the cognitive system
• Seems automatic
• Very fast
• Alertness Arousal
• Reflexive Attention
• Spotlight Attention

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Alertness Arousal

• Capacity to respond to the environment
• Necessary for explicit processing
• Processes involving conscious awareness that the
  task is being performed
• e.g, memorizing a word list

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Alertness Arousal

• May NOT be necessary for implicit processing
• Processing with no conscious awareness
• e.g., reading text faster a second time even
  though you do not remember reading it

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Cognition Without Attention (Bonnebakker et al.,
1996)

• Gave a list of words during anesthesia
• Gave an implicit memory test (word stem
  completion) after anesthesia
• Showed implicit memory for words heard while
  under anesthesia
• Implicit memory is VERY limited

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Reflexive Attention

• Orienting toward an unexpected stimulus
  (location-finding response)
• Reflexive response
• Important for survival
• Present very early in life
• Response to stimuli that are important or novel
• Over time, cease to be interesting ? Habituation
• A gradual reduction of the orienting response

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Spotlight Attention

• Attention is like a beam of light
• Information inside the beam is easier to process
• Information outside the beam is harder to process
• Mental shift of attentional focus ? visual
  attention

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Spotlight Attention

• The mental attention-focusing mechanism that
  prepares you to encode stimulus information
• Cognitive process ? deliberate
• Measure with
• Spatial Cuing Task (Posner)
• Visual Search Task (Triesman)

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Spatial Cueing Task (Posner et al.,1980)
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Posner et al. (1980)
Responses were slower after an invalid cue ?
Inhibition
Mean Response Time (ms)
Responses were faster after a valid cue ?
Facilitation
Cue Type
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Your Data from Coglab!
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Triesman Gelade (1980)

• Visual search for a target
• Disjunctive search
• Target different from distractors in ONE feature
  (e.g., color or shape ? T or bold)
• Conjunctive search
• Target was a combination of TWO features (e.g.,
  color and shape ? bold T)

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Visual Search Task
Disjunctive Search
Disjunctive Search
Conjunctive Search
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Visual Search
Mean Response Time (ms)
Distractors
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Feature Integration Theory(attention as glue to
bind features together)

• Disjunctive Search
• No increase in RT across the display sizes
• Visual search occurs in PARALLEL across the
  region of visual attention
• Search is automatic ? Popout Effect

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Feature Integration Theory (attention as glue to
bind features together)

• Conjunctive search
• Increase in RT across the display sizes
• Search is SERIAL (one-by-one)
• Attention can be only on one object at a time
• Conscious, deliberate act

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Your Data from Coglab
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Attention

• Defining Attention
• Input Attention
• Selective Attention
• Attention as a Resource
• Neuropsychology

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Attention

• Input
• Fast, automatic processes of attention
• Early stages of feature detection
• Data-driven

• Selective
• Slower, conscious attention
• Voluntary allocation of mental effort ? pay
  attention
• Conceptually-driven

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Selective Attention

• The ability to attend to one source of
  information while ignoring other messages
• Filtering
• Vision --?
• Hearing --?
• Selective attention in hearing is purely a
  cognitive process

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Selective Attention

• Cherry (1953)
• How do we pay attention to what one person is
  saying when we are surrounded by other messages?
• Dichotic shadowing task
• Two messages are presented one to each ear
• Shadow the message in one ear (repeat)
• Ignore the message in the other ear

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Selective Attention

• Cherry (1953)
• Subjects could NOT report the content from the
  unattended ear/channel
• Did not notice if the language changed
• Did notice if the voice changed
• Male to female human to tone

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To Do List

• Attention as a filter
• Broadbents Filter Model
• Triesmans Attenuation Model
• Deutsch Deutsch Late Selection Model
• Normans Pertinence Model
• Johnston Heinz Multimode Model

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Outside world Physical processing
Semantic processing STM (awareness)
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Theory 1 Broadbents Filter Theory (1958)

• The filter is tuned to ONE message based on
  physical characteristics (e.g., loudness or
  pitch)
• Only one message goes through the filter
• Therefore, only information in the attended
  message can influence performance

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Broadbents Filter Theory (1958)
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Outside world Physical processing
Semantic processing STM (awareness)
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Theory 1 Broadbents Filter Theory (1958)

• Filter goes between physical and semantic
  processing
• Early selection
• Explains Cherrys (1953) data
• Does not explain how we often notice unattended
  info

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The Cocktail Party Phenomenon

• Moray (1959)
• Dichotic shadowing task
• Subjects noticed if their name appeared in the
  unattended channel
• According to Broadbents model only attended
  information is available for cognitive processing
  but unattended information somehow slips past the
  filter!

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Treisman (1960)

• Dichotic shadowing task
• Physical differences between the two messages
  were removed
• Same speaker recorded both messages
• Not possible to have early selection based on
  physical processing
• Predictions?

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Treisman (1960)

• Butfound that subjects could shadow very
  accurately!
• Is selective attention based on semantic
  (meaning) content?
• Dichotic shadowing task
• Coherent message being shadowed switched to
  unattended channel

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Treisman (1960)
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Treisman (1960)

• RIGHT EAR
• The
• Little
• Puppy
• Lives
• At
• The
• While
• On
• Summer
• Vacation

• LEFT EAR
• The
• Slow
• Car
• Finally
• Broke
• Down
• House
• By
• The
• Park

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Treisman (1960)

• Subjects switched to the message that completed
  the meaning of the sentence
• Semantic elements of the unattended message is
  receiving some analysis

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Theory 2Treismans Attenuation Theory (1960,
1964)

• Middle Selection
• Still Early Selection but leaky ? the pillow
  filter
• Unattended information comes in more weakly than
  attended information
• It is during the process of semantic analysis
  that we make our selection of messages ? top-down
  effect

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Outside world Physical processing
Semantic processing STM (awareness)
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Theory 3 Deutsch Deutsch (1963)

• Late selection
• Selection takes place after all messages have
  received full physical and semantic analysis

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Evidence for Late Selection

• Leaks from the unattended channel
• Triesman (1964)
• Moray (1959)
• Implicit processing
• Corteen Wood (1976)

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Theory 3 Deutsch Deutsch (1963)

• Corteen Wood (1976)
• Conditioned subjects to be afraid of a word
  (e.g., Amsterdam)
• Presented the word in the unattended channel
  during shadowing
• Measured GSR
• Evidence for implicit processing
• Everything is processed semantically, even if it
  does not reach awareness

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Outside world Physical processing
Semantic processing STM (awareness)
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Theory 4Normans Pertinence Model (1968)

• No filter
• Attention is the determined by
• Sensory activation
• Loudness, distinctive voice
• Pertinence
• The importance of the information

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Normans Pertinence Model (1968)
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Theory 4Normans Pertinence Model (1968)

• All information comes into the perceptual system
• Items with the highest combination of sensory and
  pertinence are selected for attention
• Selective attention is a continuous process

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Summary

• Selective attention can occur very early based on
  physical characteristics
• It can occur late based on semantic content
• It can be influenced by both permanent and
  temporary factors
• ATTENTION IS FELXIBLE!!!

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Theory 5 Multimode Model

• Johnston Heinz (1978)
• Attention is highly flexible process that can
  operate in multiple modes
• Both early and late selection
• Subjects listened to multiple messages that were
• Physically different
• Semantically different
• Physically and semantically different

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Theory 5 Multimode Model

• Remember information from the target message
  while monitoring a light
• If selective attention is difficult (because of
  similarities of competing messages) this should
  slow detection of the light

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Johnston Heinz (1978)

• Having to listen to one message slowed down
  detection
• Having to listen to two messages slowed down
  detection more
• It took a little extra attention when given two
  types of cues
• But, it took a lot more attention when only given
  one cue
• Physical only (early selection)
• Meaning only (late selection)

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Johnston Heinz (1978)
Cost (ms)
Number of Messages
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Theory 5 Multimode Models

• We alter the type of selection depending on task
  demands
• But, later selection (semantic processing) uses
  more of our attentional capacity so it is slower
  and less accurate

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Attention

• Defining Attention
• Input Attention
• Selective Attention
• Attention as a Resource
• Neuropsychology

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Attention as a Resource

• Attention is mental effort
• The mental resource that fuels cognitive activity
• Attention is limited
• Only so much of the fuel can be devoted to mental
  tasks
• Contrast to automatic processes

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Attention as a Resource

• As tasks become automatic they take fewer
  resources ? you can do more things at once
• Brainstorm Activities that are automatic (they
  used to take cognitive resources, but now they
  dont because of practice)
• Can you increase the size of you pool of
  resources?

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The Stroop (1935) Task

• RED BLUE GREEN YELLOW
• YELLOW BLUE GREEN RED
• Name the ink color (ignore the printed words)
• Congruent
• Incongruent
• Interference
• Word recognition is automatic, and it interferes
  with color naming

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The Stroop (1935) Task
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Your Coglab Data
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Automatic vs. Conscious (Posner Snyder, 1975)

• Automatic
• Automatic
• No access to consciousness
• Consumes no (few) resources
• Fast (no more than 1sec)

• Conscious
• Voluntary
• Conscious
• Requires lots of cognitive resources
• Slow

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Practice and Automaticity

• Practice can make a task more automatic
• Everyday Examples
• Driving (today vs. at age 16)
• Reading (today vs. at age 6)
• Examples from Research
• Spelke, Hirst Neisser (1976)
• Shiffrin Schneider (1977)

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Spelke, Hirst Neisser (1976)

• Gave subjects two difficult tasks
• Reading out loud and taking diction
• Lots of interference at first
• With LOTS of practice, no interference

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Shiffrin Schneider (1977)

• Subjects given 1-4 letters (targets) to detect
• e.g., B and R
• YES, if target was in the frame (1-4 distractors)
• Consistent mapping
• Same targets from trial to trial (practice)
• B R
• Varied mapping
• Different targets from trial to trial
• B R 2 7 3 B M Z

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Shiffrin Schneider (1977)

• Should it be faster to search for 1 target or 4
  targets?
• Should it be faster if there is 1 distractor or 4
  distractors?

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Shiffrin Schneider (1977)

• With practice
• For consistent mapping, search rates were fast,
  regardless of how many targets or distractors ?
  automatic
• For inconsistent mapping, search rates were
  longer for larger displays ? not automatic
• Conscious, controlled processing because the
  stimuli they had to detect kept changing

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Shiffrin Schneider (1977)
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Disadvantages of Automaticity

• Barshi Healy (1993)
• Scanned multiplication problems for errors
  (multiple times)
• Fixed-order condition
• Varied-order condition
• Fixed order 55 detection rate
• Varied order 90 detection rate

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Disadvantages of Automaticity

• Everyday Examples
• Landing a plane with no landing gear (1983)
• Negative Transfer (In your new car, reaching for
  where the radio knob was on your old car)

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Attention

• Defining Attention
• Input Attention
• Selective Attention
• Attention as a Resource
• Neuropsychology

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Neuropsychology

• Mrs. S. (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
  Ch8)
• What experiments would you do to help you
  understand her problem?

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Hemineglect

• Disruption or decreased ability to pay attention
  to something in the (often) left-visual-field
• Disorder of attention in which one half of the
  perceptual world is negelected
• Cannot direct attention to half of the perceptual
  world (regardless of the modality of the
  stimulus)
• Not sensory damage

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Patient with Hemineglect
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Hemineglect

• Bisiach Luzatti (1978)
• Have patients image standing at one end of piazza
  and describe what they see
• Can only describe buildings on the right, even
  when they imagine facing the opposite way (what
  they had previously omitted!)
• Neglect occurs for internal mental representations

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Hemineglect

• Duncan et al. (1999)
• Patients with hemineglect can attend to stimuli
  in the neglected field if nothing is displayed in
  the right-visual-field
• Ability dramatically reduced if a stimulus is
  present in the right-visual-field