ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Cognitive Psychology
BSPSY2B | Finals
The Nature of Attention and Consciousness
● Attention is the taking possession of the mind,
in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem
several simultaneously possible objects or trains
of thoughts. It implies withdrawal from some
things in order to deal effectively with others.
(William James)
● Attention is the means by which we actively
process a limited amount of information from the
enormous amount of information available
through our senses, our stored memories, and
our other cognitive processes
● it includes both conscious and unconscious
process
How does attention work?
● Consciousness includes both the feeling of
awareness and the content of awareness, some
of which may be under the focus of attention
Three purposes of conscious attention:
1. It helps in monitoring our interactions with the
environment.
2. It assists us in linking our past (memories) and
our present (sensations) to give us a sense of
continuity of experience.
3. It helps us in controlling and planning for our
future actions
Four Main Functions of Attention
1. Signal Detection and Vigilance
- we try to detect the appearance of a
particular stimulus
- (a) Signal Detection - Luggage
screeners learn techniques to enable
them to maximize “hits” and “correct
rejections” and to minimize “false
alarms” and “misses.”
- (b) Vigilance - For air traffic controllers,
vigilance is a matter of life and death
- (c) Search - these trained police dogs
are actively seeking out a target, such
as bombs or drugs
● Signal-detection theory (SDT)
- framework to explain how people pick
out the few important stimuli when they
are embedded in a wealth of irrelevant,
distracting stimuli.
Four possible outcomes to detect a target stimulus
(signal)
● Hits (Also called “True Positives”)
- the lifeguard correctly identifies the
presence of a target
- there is a signal and the signal was
detected
● False Alarms (also called “False Positives”)
- he or she incorrectly identifies the
presence of a target that is actually
absent
- There is a wrong identification of a
presence of a signal that is actually not
there
● Misses (also called “False Negative”)
- the lifeguard fails to observe the
presence of a target
- the signal was not recognized
● Correct Rejections (also called “True Negatives”)
- the lifeguard correctly identifies the
absence of a target
- The absence of signal was identified
Signal-detection theory in the context of attention,
perception, or memory:
→ Attention - paying enough attention to perceive
objects that are there
→ Perception - perceiving faint signals that may or may
not be beyond your perceptual range
→ Memory - indicating whether you have/have not been
exposed to a stimulus before
● Vigilance: Waiting to Detect a Signal
Vigilance - refer to a person’s ability to attend to a field
of stimulation over a prolonged period, during which the
person seeks to detect the appearance of a particular
target stimulus of interest.
Vigilance is important during…
- scans at airports
- interpreting results like MRI scans or X-Rays
Neuroscience and Vigilance
● The amygdala plays a pivotal role in the
recognition of emotional stimuli.
● The thalamus is also involved in vigilance as
well.
2. Search: Actively Looking
- we often engage in an active search for
particular stimuli
- involves actively and often skillfully
seeking out a target
- refers to a scan of the environment for
particular features – actively looking for
something when you are not sure where
it will appear
- Distracters - non target stimuli that
divert our attention away from the target
stimulus.
● Display Size
- the number of items in a given visual
array
- does not refer to the size of the items or
even the size of the field on which the
array is displayed
- the display size effect is the degree to
which the number of items in a display
hinders (slows downs) the search
process.
● Feature Search
- we scan the environment for a feature
Three Theories that try to explain the search process
> Feature-Integration Theory
- For each possible feature of a stimulus, each of
us has a mental map for representing the given
feature across the visual field
> Similarity Theory
- targets that are highly similar to distracters are
relatively hard to detect
- targets that are highly disparate from distracters
are relatively easy to detect.
> Guided Search Theory
- all searches, whether feature searches or
conjunction searches, involve two consecutive
stages
→ Parallel Stage - the individual simultaneously
activates a mental representation of all the
potential targets.
→ Subsequent Serial Stage - the individual
sequentially evaluates each of the activated
elements, according to the degree of activation.
Then, the person chooses the true targets from
the activated elements.
- The activation process of the parallel initial stage
helps to guide the evaluation and selection
process of the serial second stage of the search.
Neuroscience: Aging and Visual Search
- younger adults’ searches were more accurate
and faster
- older participants were slower by approximately
300 milliseconds when doing guided searches
as compared with feature searches
- the most difficult search (conjunction search) led
to activation in the dorsal and ventral visual
pathways as well as the prefrontal cortex in both
young and older adults
- ➢Although there was less activation in the right
occipital cortex in older adults, the activation
was about the same in both age groups in the
prefrontal and superior parietal regions
- the more difficult a search task was, the more
the occipito-temporal cortex was activated in
younger adults but not in older adults
- The older adults seem to have this brain region
activated at a higher level even during easier
search tasks Sternb
3. Selective Attention
- we choose to attend to some stimuli and
ignore others
 ● Cocktail party problem
- the process of tracking one conversation
in the face of the distraction of other
conversations
- In shadowing, you listen to two different
messages. Cherry presented a separate
message to each ear, known as dichotic
presentation.
and influence our subsequent actions if
it has some meaning for us.
● Late Filter Model
- Stimuli are filtered out only after they
have been analyzed for both their
physical properties and their meaning
- This later filtering would allow people to
recognize information entering the
unattended ear

4. Divided Attention
- we often manage to engage in more
than one task at a time, and we shift our
attentional resources to allocate them
prudently, as needed
- Anytime you are engaged in two or
Three factors to selectively attend only to the message
more tasks at the same time, your
of the target speaker:
attention is divided between those tasks.
1. Distinctive sensory characteristics of the target’s
speech
Main factors that resulted in accidents, with the
2. Sound intensity (loudness)
percentage of accidents for which each was responsible
3. Location of the sound source
- rubbernecking (viewing accidents that have
already occurred), 16%
Theories of Selective Attention
- driver fatigue, 12%
● Broadbent’s Model
- looking at scenery or landmarks, 10%
- sensory information sometimes may be
- distractions caused by passengers or children,
noticed by an unattended ear if it does
9%
not have to be processed elaborately
- adjusting a radio, tape, or CD player, 7%
- information requiring higher perceptual
- cell phone use, 5%
processes is not noticed if not attended
to
Factors that Influence our Ability to Pay Attention
● Anxiety
● Selective Filter Model
- Being anxious, either by nature
- the selective filter blocks out most
(trait-based anxiety) or by situation
information at the sensory level
(state-based anxiety), places constraints
- But some personally important
on attention (Eysenck & Byrne, 1992;
messages are so powerful that they
Reinholdt-Dunne et al., 2009)
burst through the filtering mechanism

● Arousal
● Attenuation Model
- Your overall state of arousal affects
- Instead of blocking stimuli out, the filter
attention as well.
merely weakens (attenuates) the
- You may be tired, drowsy, or drugged,
strength of stimuli other than the target
which may limit attention.
stimulus.
- Being excited sometimes enhances
- When the stimuli reach us, we analyze
attention (MacLean et al., 2009).
them at a low level for target properties
like loudness and pitch
● Task Difficulty
- We perceptually analyze the meaning of
- If you are working on a task that is very
the stimuli and their relevance to us, so
difficult or novel for you, you’ll need
that even a message from the
more attentional resources than when
unattended ear that is supposedly
you work on an easy or highly familiar
irrelevant can come into consciousness
task
 ● Skills
- The more practiced and skilled you are
in performing a task, the more your
attention is enhanced (Spelke, Hirst, &
Neisser, 1976)
Neuroscience and Attention: A Network Model
Three Subfunctions of Attention
1. Alerting
- is defined as being prepared to attend to
some incoming event and maintaining
this attention.
2. Orienting
- is defined as the selection of stimuli to
attend to.
3. Executive Attention
- includes processes for monitoring and
resolving conflicts that arise among
internal processes.
- These processes include thoughts,
feelings, and responses.
Intelligence and Attention
Planning, Attention, and Simultaneous-Successive
Process Model of Human Cognition (PASS)
- There are three distinct processing units and
each is associated with specific areas of the
brain:
1. Arousal and attention
- is primarily attributed to the
brainstem, diencephalon, and
medial cortical regions of the
brain. arousal is an essential
antecedent to selective and
divided attention.
2. Simultaneous and Successive
Processing
3. Planning
● Inspection Time
- the amount of time it takes you to
inspect items and make a decision
about them
● Reaction Time
- a measure of the quickness with which
an organism responds to some sort of
stimulus
When Our Attention Fails Us
● Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- have difficulties in focusing their
attention in ways that enable them to
adapt in optimal ways to their
environment
- was first described by Dr. Heinrich
Hoffman in 1845
- children with ADHD exhibit slower and
more variable reaction times than their
siblings who are not affected by the
disorder
Three Primary Symptoms
- inattention
- hyperactivity
- impulsiveness
Three Main Types of ADHD, depending on which
symptoms are predominant
- hyperactive-impulsive
- inattentive
- a combination of hyperactive-impulsive and
inattentive behavior
Children with the inattentive type of ADHD show
several distinctive symptoms:
- They are easily distracted by irrelevant sights
and sounds.
- They often fail to pay attention to details.
- They are susceptible to making careless
mistakes in their work.
- They often fail to read instructions completely or
carefully.
- They are susceptible to forgetting or losing
things they need for tasks, such as pencils or
books.
- They tend to jump from one incomplete task to
another.
● Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness
→ Change Blindness
- an inability to detect changes in objects or
scenes that are being viewed
→ Inattentional Blindness
- a phenomenon in which people are not able to
see things that are actually there
 ● Spatial Neglect / Hemi-Neglect
- It is an attentional dysfunction in which
participants ignore the half of their visual
field that is contralateral to (on the
opposite side of) the hemisphere of the
brain that has a lesion.
- It is a result mainly of unilateral lesions
in the parietal and frontal lobes, most
often in the right hemisphere
Habituation and Adaptation
● Habituation
- involves our becoming accustomed to a
stimulus so that we gradually pay less
and less attention to it.
- The counterpart is dishabituation (a
change in a familiar stimulus prompts us
to start noticing the stimulus again. Both
processes occur automatically)
● Sensory Adaptation
- lessening of attention to a stimulus that
is not subject to conscious control.
- It occurs directly in the sense organ, not
in the brain
Differences Between Sensory Adaptation and
Habituation
Adaptation Habituation
Not accessible to Accessible to conscious
conscious control control
Tied closely to stimulus Not ties very closely to
intensity stimulus intensity
Unrelated to the number, Tied very closely to the
length, and recency of number, length, and
prior exposures recency of prior
exposures
Automatic and Controlled Processes in Attention
● Automatic Processes
- involve no conscious control
- For the most part, they are performed
without conscious awareness.
● Controlled Processes
- are accessible to conscious control and
even require it.
- Such processes are performed serially,
for example, when you want to compute
the total cost of a trip you are about to
book online.
- occur sequentially, one step at a time.
- They take a relatively long time to
execute
Three Attributes Characterize Automatic Processes
1. They are concealed from consciousness
2. They are unintentional
3. They consume few attentional resources
How does automatization occur?
● Instance Theory
- has been proposed by Logan
- Logan suggested that automatization
occurs because we gradually
accumulate knowledge about specific
responses to specific stimuli
Consciousness
How conscious are we of our complex mental
processes?
- people have quite good access to their complex
mental processes
- people may think they know how they solve
complex problems, but their thoughts are
frequently erroneous
● Preconscious Processing
- information that currently is outside our
conscious awareness still may be
available to consciousness or atleast to
cognitive processes
● Priming
- Participants are presented with a first
stimulus (the prime), followed by a break
that can range from milliseconds to
weeks or months
- the participants are presented with a
second stimulus and make a judgment
(e.g., are both the first and the second
stimulus the same?) to see whether the
presentation of the first stimulus affected
the perception of the second
● The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon
- you try to remember something that is
stored in memory but that cannot readily
be retrieved