Perception: Attention – Module 11

General Psych 1March 1, 2005

Class #11

How important is attention?

1987 Northwest Airlines jet from Detroit crashed moments after take-off 154 passengers and crew, 2 on ground, died

Attention

Close or careful observation or mental concentration. The ability or power to concentrate mentally (Webster’s New Dictionary, 1996). A selective narrowing or focusing of consciousness (Merriam-Webster’s, 2000)

The process of directing and focusing certain psychological resources to enhance perception, performance, and mental experience (Bernstein (2000), p. 164)

Different Aspects of Attention

Selective Attention Visual Auditory

Divided Attention Automatic Processing

Selective Attention

Focusing our awareness on only part of everything we are experiencing Trying to attend to one task over

another…. Difficult to attend to more than one thing

at the same time

The Stroop Test

Selective Attention – Visual

Stroop Test (1935) Participants were significantly slower

naming color when word says a different color

Why does this happen? Reading is an automatic process (effortless) Color naming is a controlled process (effortful) Automatic process of reading interferes with our

ability to selectively attend to ink (crayon) color

My Stroop Experiments: Successful Replications?

Three Rivers CC (2001): Yes Three Rivers CC (2002): Yes Three Rivers CC (2003): Yes Three Rivers CC (2004): ???

Selective Attention – Visual

Neisser et al. (1979) Lets see how our class does… In this

one minute video, there will be two basketball teamsOne team is wearing black shirts, the

other is wearing white shirtsPick either team and count the number of

passes that are made by that particular team

Sights unseen???

Mack and Rock (1998) Research on a phenomenon known as

inattentional blindness suggests that unless we pay close attention, we can miss even the most conspicuous events

Participants were asked to focus on a cross They often failed to notice an unexpected

object, even when it had appeared in the center of their field of vision

Selective Attention (Auditory)

Dichotic listening task (Cherry, 1953) Any task where two streams of auditory

information are presented simultaneously, one to each ear (generally over headphones). Subjects are required to attend to one ear only.

Shadowing task -- Two messages played, one to each ear. One message has to be "shadowed" by the subject (repeated back out loud). This is called the “attended message.

Selective Attention (Auditory)

Shadowing Task

“the Mets will win it all this year...”

“Dr. Weiss is the toughest teacher at Three Rivers ……”

“Dr. Weiss, uh what?”

Cherry (1953) Cherry: Early researcher on selective

attention. Posed question:Q: How can one attend to a single conversation in a room of simultaneous conversations (cocktail party effect)? A: By making use of physical differences - sex of speaker, voice intensity, location of speaker etc. If two messages are presented simultaneously in the same voice, separating the messages is very difficult.

In Shadowing Task…

Listeners seldom noticed the unattended message being in a foreign language or in reversed speech However, they nearly always noticed physical

changes in the unattended message Cherry’s conclusion? 

People can shadow accurately but its not easy 

Unattended auditory information receives very little processing

Moray (1959)

Dichotic Listening Experiment Affecting the two ears differently in regard to

a conscious aspect or a physical aspect of sound

Let’s try it ourselves… 3 participants and 2 readers please Results???

Treisman (1960)

Experiment 1 Subjects asked to shadow a story being presented to one ear. At some point, the story was switched to the unattended ear. What do you think happened?

Experiment 2 Attended ear: Dear…3…Jane Unattended ear: 7…aunt…10 What do you think happened?

Effects of an Unattended Word

MacKay (1973): Experiment 1 Attended Ear:

“The boy threw a rock at a bank” Unattended Ear:

“Scissor...ladder…money…finger Question:

Where did the boy throw the rock? Answer:

At a financial bank

Effects of an Unattended Word

MacKay (1973): Experiment 2 Attended Ear: “The boy threw a rock at a bank” Unattended Ear: “ Scissor...ladder…river…finger

Question: Where did the boy throw the rock? Answer: At the riverbank

In both MacKay experiments, unattended message influenced interpretation of attended message

Divided Attention

Trying to attend to two stimuli at once and making multiple responses rather than making one response to multiple stimuli

Performing more than one activity at a time. Can be done when at least one task is so automatic

it requires little or no attention Can be very difficult Can also be accomplished on two tasks that require

attentional focus if it taps into different kinds of attentional resources

Automatic Processing

Does not require attention Example: Driving a car & listening to the radio Example: Reading (as in the Stroop task)

Parallel Processing The ability to search for things rapidly and

automatically (effortless) Reber (1967)

Implicit or automatic processes allow us to be experts – more efficient

Some drawbacks???

Once automatic, hard to unlearn… Any examples of when this might be a problem?

Everyday attentional slips Driving down familiar road when you should be

taking the next road… Maybe part of what happened to Northwest

Airlines tragedy in 1987 Can make it difficult to attend when you really

need to…