Chapter 3- Attention

Attention

Attention is the means by which we actively process the enormous amount of

information available through our senses, our stored memories, or other
cognitive processes.
Focus and exclude -conscious experience
Concentration
Vigilance
Nature of Attention
Attention is:
Selective- Process one stimulus while ignoring
another.
Shiftable leading to
attentional capture —a rapid shifting of attention
usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise,
bright light, or sudden movement 1
distractions —one stimulus interfering with the
processing of another stimulus.
Dividable- Process both stimuli, by giving some
attention to each.
Limited- Only small amount of information can
be processed
Both conscious & unconscious
Overt and Covert Attention
Shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes is called
overt attention
Shifting attention from one place to another while keeping the eyes
stationary is called covert attention
Overt Attention
Eye movements, attention, and perception
Saccades: rapid movements of the eyes from one place to
another
Fixations: short pauses on points of interest
Studied by using an eye tracker

Stimulus salience: areas that stand out and capture attention

Bottom-up process
Depends on characteristics of the stimulus
Color and motion are highly salient in attentional capture1 or
Exogenous control2
Covert Attention
Posner et al (1978) examined whether paying attention
to a location improves a person’s ability to respond to
stimuli presented there.
Used the pre-cueing procedure: directing attention
without moving the eyes
Participants respond faster to a signal at an expected
location than at an unexpected location
Even when eyes kept fixed

Caption: Procedure for (a) valid trials and (b) invalid trials in Posner
et al.’s (1978) pre-cueing experiment; (c) the results of the
experiment. The average reaction time was 245 ms for valid
trials but 305 ms for invalid trials.
Covert Attention

Egly et al. (1994)

Participants saw two side-by-side rectangles,
followed by a target cue
Reaction time fastest when target appeared where
indicated
Reaction time was faster when the target appeared
in the same rectangle
The enhancing effect of attention spreads
throughout the object
Types of Attention: Summary
Functions of Attention

Selection for perception: The type of attention necessary for encoding and
interpreting sensory data.

Selection for action: The type of attention necessary for planning controlling
and executing responses, or actions1.

Binding: Bind together what an object is, together with where it is and how to
act on it2
Models of Selective Attention
PRP and Attentional blink (AB)
When two stimuli are presented in rapid succession and the participant
must make a fast response to both, response time (RT) to the second
stimulus depends upon the time interval between the presentation of
the two stimuli (Welford, 1952).
RT to the second stimulus is slower than when there is a longer interval.
Welford called this delay in responding to the second stimulus
the psychological refractory period (PRP).
When two successive visual targets are briefly flashed, people may fail to
detect the second target-AB
Filter Models vs. Capacity

Filter models assume that attention operates as

a filter that blocks the processing of some
stimuli and allows processing of other stimuli

Capacity models assume the agent selects

stimuli for additional processing
Filter Models
Dichotic Listening & Shadowing
Dichotic Listening Task is when a user is
listening to two different messages in
both ears.
Shadowing: Messages are presented to
both ears but subject is told to attend to
only one of the messages and repeat it
out loud (Cherry, 1953).
Selective attention to the shadowed
message results in the ignored message
not being remembered.
Early Selection: Filter model
Broadbent (1958) proposed a filter model with “early selection” to account for results
from SHADOWING tasks and from DICHOTIC LISTENING tasks
Model claims:
Sensory channels have an unlimited capacity, holding information from various
sources
There is a bottleneck allowing only one piece of information into working
memory at a time
Select information on the basis of physical features: the sensory channel (or
ear) that a message was coming in, the pitch of the voice, the color or font of
a visual message.
Information from unattended channel is completely blocked, except some
perceptual properties of messages 1
Evidence Against “Early Selection” Model

Evidence 1:Cocktail party effect (Experiments by Moray,

1959)
Evidence 2: ‘Dear Aunt Jane’ Experiment
Evidence 2: Subliminal priming studies
During the training phase, subjects were given a mild
electric shock every time a certain word was presented.
Dog, Hat, Beer, Couch ("Ow!"). Rabbit, Money, Cup,
Couch ("Ow!"), Pine, .....
After training, hearing the word "Couch", even without
the electric shock, produced a mild fear response (via
Classical Conditioning) which could be measured by
Glavanic Skin Reponse (GSR).
Later on in a shadowing task, when the word "Couch" was
presented to the non-shadowed ear, subjects showed an
emotional response to the word even though they were
not consciously aware of hearingit. Gray and Wedderburn, 1960
Anne Treisman's Attenuation Model (1964)

She asserted messages differ in terms of "subjective loudness". Paying

attention means increasing subjective loudness.
When shadowing, messages from the shadowed ear have a higher subjective
loudness than messages from the non- shadowed ear.
Different concepts have different awareness thresholds – these are the
subjective loudness required for that concept to be noticed.
Some concepts are permanently set with a low threshold for awareness
(especially pertinent or meaningful like one's name) and others depend on
context.
This a still early selection model
Evidence against
‘Early selection’
model
Filter Theories: Late Selection
Capacity Models
Capacity Models

Capacity models drop filters and assume attention as mental effort

Assumes attention is limited in overall capacity.
Lavie (1995) asserted Task varies in
Processing capacity, which refers to the amount of information people can handle
and sets a limit on their ability to process incoming information.
Perceptual load, which is related to the difficulty of a task.
Load (Capacity) Theory of Attention

Task load: how much of a person’s

cognitive resources are used to
accomplish a task
High-load: uses almost all; no resources
for other tasks
Low-load: uses few; resources for other
tasks
Divided Attention
Divided attention — the distribution of
attention among two or more tasks 1
Schneider and Shiffrin (1977)
Divide attention between remembering
target and monitoring rapidly presented
stimuli
Required divided attention because task
requires the subject to carry out two tasks
simultaneously: (1) holding information
about target stimuli in memory and (2)
paying attention to a series of “distractor”
stimuli and determining whether one of the
target stimuli is present among these
distractor stimuli.

Findings indicate participants were able to

divide their attention
Schneider and Shiffrin’s (1977) experiment.
Divided Attention can be Achieved with Practice:
Automatic Processing

Caption: Improvement in performance with practice in Schneider and Shiffrin’s (1977) experiment. The
arrow indicates the point at which participants reported that the task had become automatic
Divided Attention

Divided attention is difficult when:

Tasks are similar or require same modality
Tasks are difficult
When both tasks require conscious attention
Divided attention is easier when:
Tasks are dissimilar
Tasks are simple
When at least one of the tasks does not require conscious attention and are well
practiced
Dual Task Processing

Stimulus onset
Asynchrony
Explanations

Central Limit on Processing (bottleneck models) – some common internal

processing stage is required by both tasks, creating a bottleneck for resources.
We can only process one thing at a time within a single modality (vision, hearing).
What Happens When We Don’t
Attend?
Inattentional blindness
A stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though a person might
be looking directly at it (Mack & Rock, 1998).
 Change Blindness
If shown two versions of a
picture, separated by brief
masking, differences
between them are not
immediately apparent
Task to identify
differences requires
concentrated attention
and search
(Simons and Levin, 1997)

Further reading: Change

blindness and visual perception:
https://www.accessscience.com
/content/change-blindness-and-
visual-perception/BR1111171
Perceptual Binding

Visual attention is needed for integrating

stimulus features (e.g., color, shape, and
location) in perception.
The question of how an object’s individual
features become bound together, which is
called the binding problem, has been
addressed by Anne Treisman’s (1986,
1988, 1999) feature integration theory.
Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory
(FIT)
 Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

Preattentive stage
Automatic
No effort or attention
Unaware of process
Object analyzed into features
Focused attention stage
Attention provides “glue” binding features together into an object (conjuction);
Features are combined, affected by stored knowledge 1
Without focused attention, features combined randomly, producing ‘illusory
conjunctions’
 Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

Treisman and Schmidt (1982) conducted research

using this display
Participants report combination of features from
different stimuli2 e.g. “small red circle”, “small
green triangle”
These combinations of features from different stimuli
are called illusory conjunctions
Stimuli for illusory conjunction1
Illusory conjunctions occur because features are
“free floating”, and can therefore be incorrectly
combined if there is more than one object
Automatic and Controlled Processing
Automatic processing occurs without intention and only uses some of a
person’s cognitive resources
Practice enables people to simultaneously do two things that were difficult at
first

Automatic Processes Controlled Processes

unintentional intentional
Sub-consious conscious
effortless effortful
Automatic &
Controlled Processing
Stroop Effect: Color names are printed in
compatible or incompatible ink colors. Task is
to name the ink color. Errors and response
times increase for incompatible (RED printed
in green ink) compared with compatible (RED
printed in red ink).
Supervisory Attentional System
Norman and Shallice developed a model of the control of action called the
Supervisory Attentional System (SAS)
According to this system routine actions run off relatively automatically
Inputs come into the system and it makes contact with stored information and that
information triggers certain responses. These responses eventually result in actions
e.g., navigating roads near your house while driving
Our routine actions are controlled by schema that are activated unconsciously
and is controlled by an automatic system, called the contention scheduler
Once a schema is activated, the component schema associated with a given schema
become activated and other contradictory schema are inhibited
The contention scheduler generates an automatic response
SAS System

For non-routine action, supervisory attentional system comes into play

The SAS was presumed to be located within the pre-frontal cortex and to be
active in the following situations
Planned or willed decisions
Behavioural response is not yet automatic (not well learned) due to unfamiliar or
novel action sequences
Correcting behavioural errors by ‘trouble-shooting’ already well learned behaviours
Situations that require the suppression of a highly habitual but incorrect response
SAS and Stroop Task
The Supervisory Attentional System
(SAS)
When the SAS Fails
Participant often perseverate (repeatedly perform the same
action or mistake with difficulty stopping or changing behavior).
Participant often fail to focus attention, resulting in utilization
behaviors (uninhibitedly making use of whatever cues are afforded
by the environment to guide behavior).
They often fail to monitor behavior (fail to make sure they are
behaving appropriately for the situation) or recognize when their
statements don’t make sense (confabulation).
References

➢ Groome, D. (2013). An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: Processes and

disorders (3rd edition). Psychology Press.
➢ Chapter 3 (Main reading)
• Goldstein, E. B. (2018). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and
Everyday Experience (5th edition). Wadsworth Publishing Co Inc.
➢ Chapter 4 (Major readings)
➢ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94quZngBk1w
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FWVDi4aKC-M