Chapter 4 Key Terms and Concepts - Attention
Filter Theories of Attention
Bottleneck or filter theories of perception
Where is the bottleneck?
Dichotic listening procedure/Shadowing
Early filter models – selection on just physical aspects of stimuli (pitch, location, color etc. (e.g., Broadbent).
- Evidence, people are unaware of much information presented in the unattended message. (Cherry, 1953
Late selection Model – all incoming stimuli processed for meaning and then selected for further processing into short term memory.
- Evidence Cocktail Party Phenomenon (Moray, 1959)
Conway, Conway and Brunning (2001) - cocktail phenomenon and Working Memory capacity
Treisman (1960) Attenuation Model
Selection is Early (i.e. attend to message coming from the attended ear) but the unattended message is not entirely filtered out, it is just attenuated. Stimuli are then processed for meaning in a “Dictionary Unit”. Different concepts or words have different thresholds that are required for them to be activated. Thus, words like “your name” or “Help” have low thresholds and will be activated even if the signal is attenuated. Words or concepts with higher thresholds for activation will not be processed for meaning.
Words that are salient will have lower thresholds and will be more likely to get through the filter. E.g., the word “cake” when you are hungry.
Attention as a limited Resource
Spot light metaphor - what aspects of attention does the metaphor capture.
LaBerge (1983) study
Attention as a limited resource
Kahneman’s (1973) capacity theory
Strayer and Johnson (2001) study – cell phone usage.
Hayman et al. (2009) study
Texting Pedestrian Observational Study (2012)
Ophir et al. (2009) study
Attention as a Feature Binder (Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory)
Illusionary Conjunctions
Treisman and Gelade (1980) Feature search vs. conjunction search
Pop-out effect
Zaretskaya et al. (2013) study – fMRI evidence for the feature integration theory.
How Attention Effects our perceptions
Inattentional Blindness (the gorilla study)
The Simon Effect
Two explanations
Attentional movement hypothesis
Referential coding hypothesis
Automatic vs. Controlled Processes
The Stroop Effect
Know the characteristics of automatic and or controlled processes
Practice and automaticity
Shneider and Schiffrin (1977) study
Logan Instance theory of automaticity
Spelke, Neisser et al. (1976) study
Return to the Gorilla
- Although on any given test of inattentional blindness, approx. 43% see the gorilla – this appears to be situational rather than due to individual differences (characteristics of the participants that make them more likely to detect the gorilla)
- Eysenck and Keane (2011) replication of Gorilla study
Corbetta & Shulman, 2002) Two attentional system theory
The Dorsal (bottom-up) system is responsible for capturing attention.
Change Blindness
Mindsight – gut feeling THAT something is changing without the ability to identify WHAT is changing.
- Similar to blind sight – activation of the dorsal pathway which detects THAT there is a change, without activation of the ventral pathway which identifies WHAT is changing.
- Enright (2006) – although 1/3 of people are able to accurately identify THAT there is a change in the stimuli, repeated testing found that it was not the same people that were able to do this from study to study. Factors that affect Mindsight are likely to be factors that affect the Dorsal pathway.
Subliminal Perception
Subjective (able to consciously identify the stimulus) and Objective Threshold (the stimulus effects behavior (e.g., speed of processing information, choice of options even though the person is unaware of the stimulus).
Subliminal = below subjective awareness but with evidence of objective awareness
Repetition Priming (Naccache et al. (2002) evidence
Corteen and Wood (1976) – City Names study
Lexical Priming Task – subliminal primes (e.g., Doctor) speed processing of words related in meaning presented after them (e.g., Nurse).
How long does the objective Effect last? About 1/10th of a second
Attentional Disorders
Hemineglect
- Damage to Right Parietal Lobe
- Woodrow Wilson
- What happens to unattended stimuli (degraded pictures task)?
- Spatial Extinction
- Prism Glasses