Cog- Attention

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  • Created by: Amy
  • Created on: 17-12-21 16:32
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  • Attention
    • The ability to focus mental resources on something
      • William James (1890)- Everyone knows what attention is, Harold Pashler (1998)- no one knows what attention is
    • Selected attention
      • Focusing on specific stimulus and ignoring everything else
      • Helps simplify our experience of the world by giving control over which stimulus receive our attention and any subsequent processing
        • without it we would be overwhelmed by info all the time
      • Dichotic listening task- two different messages in two different ears
      • Inattentional blindness- failure to process info that's not attended to
        • Gorilla noticed more when people were counting players in black- demonstrates how little info we attend to
      • Overt attention- shifting eyes from one place to another, easily observable, eg wordsearch-some words jump others require overt searching
        • Stimulus salience is a bottom up process driven by the data or the stimulus itself eg colour, when it happens involuntarily its called attention capture, can happen for safety eg something coming towards you
        • Top down process- knowledge, expectations help to interpret the stimulus, perception of a scene is soon impacted by these cognitive factors, eye movements and scanning are influenced by our schemas (what we expect to see), knowledge influences where attention is directed
          • Vo & Henderson (2009)- ps spent longer looking at the printer in B than A (on cooker)
          • Shinoda et al (2001)- ps noticed stop signs at junctions but not in the middle of streets (in a simulator)
      • Covert attention- attention is directed in the absence of eye movement, common in sport when completing a 'no look' pass
        • Posner cueing task (Posner et al 1978)- ps given endogenous cue (explicit gives a voluntary expectation) as to where the target might appear in the visual field, manipulated type of cue, for valid trials ps faster to notice has appeared and slower in the invalid
          • Without moving their eyes ps can shift attention (eyes had to stay on fixation point, covert attention)
          • exogenous cue trial indicated where a target might appear in the visual field- faster on valid trials, slower on invalid than neutral
    • Controlled processing
      • the conscious use of attention and effort and is slow- focus on specific aspects of the task eg learning to drive
    • Automatic processing
      • Can be performed without conscious awareness or effort and is typically fast, brain areas involved in conscious thought become less active (Jansma et al 2001), however it can reduce the ability to find new ways to approach problems (Langer 1989)
    • Treisman and Gelade (1980)- stroop test uses parallel processing which is fast for eg blue letter and serial processing which is slower and effortful for eg blue written in pink
    • Posterior attention network
      • Parietal lobe (visual search of stimuli), neurological studies (increased blood flow associated to visual search), brain damage patients able to notice only stimuli in the left or right side
    • Anterior attention network
      • Frontal lobe, inhibiting automatic responses
    • (hemi) neglect- A disorder of visual attention
      • stimuli presented to opposite side to the damage of damage remained undetected, typically damage to RH, remain unaware with no conscious awareness of stimuli in the left visual field
        • Vuilleumier et al reported some processing of stimuli in the left visual field so while there is some processes taking place it is not sufficient to reach conscious awareness (degraded pics 2002, checkerboard design 2008)
    • Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
      • Neurological dev disorder,
        • Wittchen et al (2011)- 5% of children, 70% of them male
      • Constantly in motion, cannot stop talking, very impatient, easily distracted, frequently switch tasks, have difficulty maintaining focus on one task

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