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Attention and Consciousness
Chapter 3
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Outline
1. The Nature of Attention andConsciousness
2. Attention
1. Vigilance and Signal Detection2. Search
3. Selective Attention
4. Divided Attention3. Cognitive Neuroscientific Approaches to
Attention
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
Attention Is the means by which we actively process a limited
amount of information from the enormous amount ofinformation available through our senses, our storedmemories, and our other cognitive processes
Consciousness
More directly concerned with awarenessit includesboth the feeling of awareness and the content ofawareness, some of which may be under the focus ofattention
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1.The Nature of Attention and
ConsciousnessDifferent conceptions of consciousness:
Biopsychological different levels of arousal (sleep, coma, hyperactivity)
Meta-cognitive Reflection on your own cognitive processes
Being aware of cognitive processes
Psychoanalytic Unconscious informationwe do not have access to
it in normal awakened state Phenomenological
What it is like to have an experience of something
Individual, subjective aspects of experience
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
Relationship between attention andconsciousness
Attention + Consciousness
No attention + No Consciousness
Attention + No Consciousness
No attention + Consciousness
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?
Can you provide an example of each of thepossible relationships between attention
and consciousness?
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
1. Preconscious Processing
Information that is available for cognitiveprocessing but that currently lies outside
of conscious awareness exists at the
preconscious level of awareness
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
1. Preconscious Processing
Priming
Processing of certain stimuli is facilitated byprior presentation of the same or similar
stimuli
Sometimes we are aware of the prime
sometimes we are not Even when we are not aware of the prime,
the prime will influence the processing of the
target
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness1. Preconscious Processing
Antony Marcel (1983)
Participants had to classify series of words intovarious categories (e.g. pine-plant)
Primes where words with two meanings suchas palm followed by target word (tree or hand)
Task outline:
Is this a plant?
PrimePALM
Target - TREE
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
1. Preconscious Processing
Antony Marcel (1983) (cont.)
- If the participant was consciously aware ofseeing the word palm, the mental pathway foronly one meaning was activated
- If the word palm was presented so briefly that
the person was unaware of seeing the word,both meanings of the word appeared to beactivated
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
1. Preconscious Processing
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
We try to remember something that is knownto be stored in memory but that cannot quitebe retrieved
People who can not come up with the word,
but who thought they knew it, could identify thefirst letter, indicate the number of syllables, orapproximate the words sounds
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
1. Preconscious processing
Blindsight
Lesions in some areas of the visual cortex
Patients claim to be blind
When forced to guess about a stimulus in the
blind region, they correctly guess locationsand orientations of objects at above-chance
levels
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
2. Controlled Versus Automatic Processes
Controlled processes
Require intentional effort; full conscious
awareness; consume many attentionalresources; performed serially; relatively slow
Automatic Processes
Little or no intention or effort; occur outside ofconscious awareness; do not require a lot ofattention, performed by parallel processing;fast
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
2. Controlled Versus Automatic Processes
Many tasks that start off as controlledprocesses eventually become automaticones
Automatization
The process by which a procedure changesfrom being highly conscious to being relativelyautomatic
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?
Can you provide some examples
of automatic and controlled processes?
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1.The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
3. Habituation
Habituation We become accustomed to a stimulus, we gradually
notice it less and less (e.g. music and studying)
Dishabituation A change in a familiar stimulus prompts us to start
noticing the stimulus again
Sensory adaptation Physiological phenomenon; not subject to consciouscontrol; occurs directly in the sense organ, not in thebrain
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2. Attention
1. Vigilance and Signal Detection
We vigilantly try to detect whether we did or didnot sense a signal (a particular target stimulus ofinterest)
Vigilance A persons ability to attend to a field of stimulation
over a prolonged period, during which the personseeks to detect the appearance of a particular targetstimulus
Example(Mackworth, 1948) Participants were watching when a clock hand took a double
step
Substantial deterioration after half an hour of observation
Vigilance can be increased with training
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2. Attention
2. Search
Search
Scan the environment for particular features
Whereas vigilance involves passively waiting for asignal stimulus to appear, search involves actively
seeking out the target
Distracters
Nontarget stimuli that divert our attention away from
the target stimuli
Can cause false alarm
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2. Attention
2. Search
2 kinds of search:
Feature search
When we can look for some distinctivefeatures of a target we simply scan theenvironment for those features (e.g. T vs. O)
Conjunction search We look for a particular combination of
features (e.g. T vs. L, p. 85)
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2. Attention
2. Search
Feature-Integration Theory (Anne Treisman) Each of us has mental map for representing the given
set of features for a particular item (shape, size, colorfeatures)
During feature searches we monitor the relevantfeature map for the presence of any activation in thevisual field
During conjunction searches, we can simply use themap of features, we must conjoin two or morefeatures into an object representation at a particularlocation
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2. Attention
2. Search
Similarity theory (Duncan and Humphreys)
As the similarity between target and distracter
increases, so does the difficulty in detecting
the target stimuli
Factors influencing search
Similarity between the target and the distracters Similarity among distracters (p. 86, 87)
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2. Attention
2. Search Guided search theory (Cave and Wolfe)
All searches involve two consecutive stages
Parallel stagesimultaneous activation of all the potential
targets Serial stagesequential evaluation of each of the activated
elements
Movement-Filter theory (McLeod at al.)
Movement-filtercan direct attention to stimuli with acommon movement characteristics
Movement can both enhance and inhibit visual search
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2. Attention
3. Selective Attention
Stroop effect (Stroop, 1935)
Demonstrates the psychological difficulty in
selectively attending to the color of the ink and tryingto ignore the word that is printed with the ink of that
color
Since reading is an automatic process (not readily
subject to your conscious control) you find it difficultintentionally to refrain from reading and instead to
concentrate on identifying the color of the ink
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2. Attention
3. Selective Attention
The cocktail party problem (Cherry, 1953) The process of tracking one conversation in the face
of the distraction of other conversations
Shadowing Listening to two different messages and repeating
back only one of the messages as soon as possibleafter you hear it
Dichotic presentation Listening to two different messages (presenting a
different message to each ear) and attending to onlyone of them
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2. Attention
3. Selective Attention
Filter and Bottleneck Theories
Broadbents Model
We filter information right after it is registered at thesensory level
Morays Selective Filter Model
The selective filter blocks out most information at the
sensory level, but some highly salient messages are
so powerful that they burst through the filtering
mechanism (e.g. your name)
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2. Attention
3. Selective Attention
Filter an Bottleneck Theories (cont.)
Treismans Attenuation Model
1. We preattentively analyze the physical properties ofa stimulus (stimuli with target properties)
2. We analyze whether a given stimulus has a pattern,
such as speech or music
3. We sequentially evaluate the incoming messages,assigning appropriate meanings to the selected
stimuli messages
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2. Attention
3. Selective AttentionFilter and Bottleneck Theories (cont.)
Deutsch and Deutschs Late Filter Model
Placed the signal-blocking filter later in theprocess, after sensory analysis and also aftersome perceptual and conceptual analysis ofinput had taken place
Neissers Synthesis Two processes governing attention Preattentive processes (rapid, automatic, parallel)
Attentive processes (controlled, occur later, serial)
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2. Attention
3. Selective Attention
Attentional-Resource Theories
We have attentional resources specific toa given modality
Explains why we can study and listen to a
music but not listen to news
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2. Attention
4. Divided Attention
The attentional system must perform two
or more discrete tasks at the same time
much better performance at two or more
automatic tasks (driving a car and speaking)
than controlled tasks (writing and
comprehending read text)
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3. Cognitive Neuroscientific
Approaches to Attention
Hemineglect (Martha Farah)
Patients ignore half of their visual field
Attention deficits have been linked to
lesions in The frontal lobe
The basal ganglia
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Stroop Effect
Read through this list of color names as
quickly as possible. Read from right to left
across each line
Red Yellow Blue Green
Blue Red Green Yellow
Yellow Green Red Blue
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Stroop Effect
Name as quickly as possible the color of ink
in which each word is printed. Name from
left to right across each line.
Red Blue Green Yellow
Yellow Red Blue Green
Blue Yellow Green Red