Attention!

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Attention!

• Chapter 6
• p.179-186

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What is attention?

• To drive a car you
• Use effort
• Sustain attention
• Orient to several locations
• Restrict attention
• Select particular objects
• Search for particular objects
• Respond with a reflex
• Use less effort if well known
• Dont pay attention to body movements (?)

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Definitions of attention

• Attention as a mental process
• Effortful
• Attention as a limited mental resource
• Limited
• Involuntary or voluntary
• Stimulus-driven or automatic
• Goal-driven or controlled

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Attention metaphors

• Reflex
• Automatic
• Filter
• Discard unnecessary info
• Select important info
• Spotlight or Zoom lens
• Focus on limited location or object
• Research question
• Do we capture MORE or LESS information than we
  realize?

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Flicker task

• This task tests how well you can detect changes
  when you are trying your best to find them. A
  photo of a scene will appear briefly and then it
  will be replaced by a blank screen. After a
  fraction of a second a changed version of the
  scene will appear. The original and changed
  images will alternate for about 10s. Try to find
  the change.

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Change blindness Rensink (2002)

• Method
• Flicker Task
• IV time of blank between original and modified
  image
• IV location of change in picture
• Results
• Blind to changes
• Impossible to attend to all aspects of a scene at
  1 time
• Conclusions
• Failure to automatically notice change
• Requires focused attention (to objects or
  locations)

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Instructions

• You will see 2 teams of players one wearing
  white t-shirts and one wearing black t-shirts.
  Try to count the total number of times the team
  wearing white passes the ball.

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Inattentional blindness Simons Chabris (1999)

• Method
• Selective attention to white team passing ball
• Results
• 50 miss an unexpected object
• Discussion
• Selective attention to objects or locations
• Attention based on goal
• Can be blind to highly salient events

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Inattentional blindness Simons Levin (1998)

• Method
• Pedestrian asks directions, interrupted by door,
  change pedestrian
• Result
• 7 of 15 noticed change
• 7 were same age-grp as peds
• Conclusions
• Need effortful attention for complete
  representation

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Thought paper

• What is change blindness?
• What is inattentional blindness?
• Why do researchers get these effects?
• What comments/problems do you have regarding the
  methods?
• Can you think of any examples of these effects?
• What do they tell us about ATTENTION?

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Change detection and Inattentional blindness

• Change detection vs. Inattentional blindness
• Purposeful search for change or not
• Comments
• External validity not a real world event
• Assumption of unchanging visual world
• Cause of effect
• Where is focus of attention?
• Conclusions
• We do not have a detailed visual representation
  of the world especially if information is not
  attended to

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Card trick

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vvoAntzB7EwE

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Levin Simon (1997)Detect changes in a motion
picture
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Levin Simon (1997)

• Method
• Ss watch video with various types of changes
• Results
• 1 out of 10 noticed any changes
• After told to watch for changes noticed only 25
• Conclusions
• Importance of attention for perception
• Change blindness blindness Lack of awareness
  for ability to notice changes

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Attention

• Chapter 6

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Controlled attention

• Deliberate, voluntary allocation of attention
• Selective attention
• Attend to one, ignore other
• Real world examples
• Auditory tasks
• Dichotic listening task
• Shadow task
• How much is processed before selected?
• Early physical analysis
• Late meaning analysis

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Early selection

• Cherry (1953)
• Dont remember much about 2nd message
• Broadbents dual-task
• Hear 3 pairs of digits in each ear
• Subjects recall digits from one ear then other
• Support for early selection
• Problem
• Cocktail party effect

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Late selection

• Shadowing technique
• Message in each ear, attend to one, ignore other
• Treisman (1960) results
• Unattended message reduced
• But, attention can switch with message meaning

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Current theory of selective attention

• What do we select to pay attention to?
• Selection based on combination of
• Physical characteristics
• Pertinence
• Attention is flexible
• Trade-off between capacity and stage of selection
• ADHD example

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Automaticity

• Real world examples
• Riding a bike Driving a car
• Turning off alarm clock Turning off hotel alarm
  clock
• Turn to loud noise Watch a tennis match
• Tying your shoes Teaching how to tie shoes
• Writing your name Writing name after married
• Little or no conscious effort or awareness
• Attention without draining resources
• Rapid process

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Posners spatial cuing task
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Task instructions

• Your task is to name the color of the stimuli as
  quickly and accurately as possible. You will see
  2 columns. Start at the top left and after
  finished with the first column, start with the
  top of the next column. Again, you want to say
  the colors as quickly and accurately as possible.
• We will do this 4 times.

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(No Transcript)
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• ROD
• STUDY
• DEPENDENT
• NEURON
• LOBE
• SCHEMATA
• CONE
• VALIDITY
• ATTACHMENT
• TEMPORAL
• ETHICS
• SLEEP

• CORTEX
• TEMPERAMENT
• PIAGET
• PLACEBO
• REM
• AXON
• OCCIPITAL
• INDEPENDENT
• DEPTH
• FOVEA
• ATTENTION
• ILLUSIONS

25

• GREEN
• BROWN
• BLUE
• GREEN
• RED
• GREEN
• BROWN
• RED
• BLUE
• BROWN
• GREEN
• RED

• GREEN
• BLUE
• RED
• BROWN
• BLUE
• GREEN
• BLUE
• BROWN
• BLUE
• RED
• BROWN
• GREEN

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• RED
• GREEN
• BROWN
• BLUE
• GREEN
• RED
• BROWN
• RED
• BLUE
• BROWN
• GREEN
• GREEN

• BLUE
• GREEN
• BLUE
• RED
• BROWN
• BROWN
• BLUE
• GREEN
• BLUE
• BROWN
• BLUE
• RED

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Stroop say the color

• GLPD XTPB RSLJ ZMQ
• BAR ROD CUT HEAD
• RED BLUE GREEN BROWN
• BLUE BROWN RED GREEN

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Stroop

• Stroop (1935)
• Congruent (same word/color) 63s/100 items
• Incongruent (diff word/color) 110s/100 items
• Measure interference Reaction time or errors
• How does automatic processing explain Stroop?
• Automatic processing (reading) interferes with
  controlled processing (name color)
• Other examples
• 333 4444 22 333 4444
• 33 222 44 2222 444

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How to develop automaticityHirst, et al. (1980)

• Divided attention Dual-task
• Read stories silently
• Copy irrelevant words being dictated
• Results
• Week 1 handwriting illegible, reading slow
• Week 6 improvement, poor recall of dictated
  words
• At end, trained to copy complete sentences while
  reading, with understanding of both
• Conclusion
• Practice can alter limits of attentional capacity

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Thought paper

• SoDo we attend to MORE or LESS than we realize?
• Given your answer then
• Should talking on the cell phone while driving be
  illegal? Why or why not given what youve learned
  about attention?

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Strayer Johnston (2001) Cell-phones driving
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Horswill McKenna (1999)

• Question
• Does talking on a cell phone negatively affect
  driving?
• Method
• Single-task Simulated driving
• Dual-task Also monitor auditory list for letter
  K
• Divided attention
• Results
• Dual-task worse driving performance and worse on
  monitoring task
• Conclusion
• Participants took more risks driving in dual-task
  condition
• Limited attention resources

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Disorders of attention

• Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
• ADD vs. ADHD
• General difficulty in concentration
• Dopamine system involved
• Treatment medication, training programs
• Visual neglect
• Damage to right parietal lobe
• Tend to ignore left side of visual field

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Unilateral visual neglect
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Review Attention

• What is attention?
• What is change blindness and inattentional
  blindness? What are the methods used?
• What is early versus late selection? What are the
  methods used to test selective attention?
• What is automaticitiy and how has it been
  studied?
• Explain two disorders of attention.

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From last class

• Describe the auditory selective attention tasks?
• Information selected based on physical
  characteristics is considered ___________
• Information selected based on meaning or
  pertinence is considered _____________
• What is the Stroop task and why is it related to
  the attention chapter?

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From the last class

• What is the flicker task?
• What are the conclusions?
• What is the difference between change blindness
  and inattentional blindness?

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Thought paper

• Tell me a little about the research article you
  read for your first summary paper.
• What was the purpose of the study?
• What did the participants do (method)?
• What did the researchers find?
• 2nd summary paper

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Thought paper

• What is attention?
• Use driving as an example.