BEHL 3002: Cognitive

Psychology

Lecture 4: Attention
Today:
• What is attention?

• How do we do attention?

• Why do we need to attend to some tasks and not others?

• Can we divide our attention? Can we focus it?

What is attention?

“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the

taking possession by the mind, in a clear and
vivid form, of one out of what seem several
simultaneously possible objects or trains of
thought. Focalization, concentration, of
consciousness are of its essence”.
Or, in less pretty language…
• Mental effort or concentration

• Cognitive resource
• Limited capacity
• Greater demands placed on attention by complex and novel tasks

• Allocate attention
• Important for complex, skilled performance
• Differences between laypeople and experts
• Experts showed heightened ability in:
• Multiple object tracking
• Visual short-term memory
• Task switching
• Mental rotation

• But this could not be trained:

• Group differences?
• >20 hours needed
 Read the bold print

Autumn Among is the a most beautiful

spectacular time cognitive in abilities the is
Adelaide the Hills. ability The to leaves select on
one the message many from European another.
trees We turn do gold this and by orange focusing
and our red attention in on a certain spectacular
cues array such of as colour type and style. form.
What did you just do?
• Allocated attentional resources based on a set of rules

• Therefore, an important part of attention is to attend to salient

environmental stimuli
• Benefits to processing
• Role of learning
• Most profitable strategy

• Note that the sentences are very confusing if we don’t use attention to
divide them up
The history of modern attention
research
World War 2

• Modern life rarely pushes us beyond comfortable limits

• Conflict allowed researchers to gain data in extreme situations

• Military technology
• Air traffic and vigilance (Amount of data, exposure)
• Pilot error (ergonomics and limits of attention)
• Accidents due to mismatch between human capabilities and demands
of using technologies
Selective attention
Can’t attend to all sensory information

• Therefore, we must be able to select which information

to attend to
• Sensory systems
• Automatic data reduction

• Conscious selective attention

• Cocktail party effect
Dichotic listening and Cherries
I’m a little teapot

Attended ear Unattended ear

I’m a little Twinkle

teapot twinkle little
star
Cherry (1953) dichotic listening
studies
• Present 2 messages
• Shadow task
• Attend one message
• Repeat it
• Found that people could direct attention to source from one ear
• For the attended message, subjects demonstrated:
• Semantic knowledge
• Details about speaker (male, female, etc.)
• Unattended message could be blocked out
• No semantic (maybe the last few words in WM)
• Physical changes (speaker, human, qualities)
Broadbent : Sensory Filter Theory
• Dichotic listening may result from an early, hard filter or bottleneck for attentional allocation
• Information passes through filter based on physical properties of stimulus
• I.e., pitch, nature of voice, which ear sound is coming through, etc.

• Attention is therefore what breaks through filter

• This is the information of which we are consciously aware
• I.e., attended vs. unattended ear in dichotic listening

• However;
• Can’t explain the cocktail party effect
• Can’t explain meaning based channel switching
• Can’t explain multi modality processing
 Jack and Jill went
up the hill
Attended ear Unattended ear

Twinkle
Jack and twinkle
Jill little star went up the
hill
Triesman: Attenuation Theory
• There is some processing of unattended information
• We have an early or middle, soft attentional bottleneck
• Unattended information is attenuated
• Selection may be based on
• Physical properties
• Salience (cocktail party effect)
• Dictionary analysis filter (context reduces thresholds)
• However;
• Why don’t we remember unattended things?
• Implies that we process huge amounts of information
Deutsch and Deutsch: Late
Selection Theory
• We have a late filter
• Everything processed for meaning unconsciously, but gets in

• Selection is based on importance

• Only attended information reaches conscious awareness

• However:
• We often have no knowledge of unattended stimuli
• Huge data requirements
 Broadbent
Conscious
sensory attention
input senses register selective Short
filter Term
Memory

Treisman

Conscious
sensory dictionary attention
attenuation
input senses register analysis Short
filter Term
filter
Memory

Deutsch and Deutsch

Conscious
sensory unconscious attention
input senses register semantic Short
analysis Term
Memory

top down processes

relevance, expectation etc
That said…
• Note that models can all be applied in different situations
• Sometimes we need to block out information completely

• The brain may be able to flexibly switch between processing

commensurate with all three models

• Note that processes like automaticity may interact with task demands
to explain real world human behaviour
The sensory store
• Theoretical brain mechanism which holds information while we process it

• Modality specific, short term store

• Iconic memory
• Visual
• ~400ms
• Echoic memory
• Auditory
• A few seconds
• Haptic memory
• Touch

• We allocate attention to the data in these stores, not to the object in the world
 So what can we do
with that?
• Miller noted that the human capacity for items to be held in
working memory is 7 ± 2
• i.e., once able to legitimately research cognitive processes,
Figure 9: Miller (top left), Sperling (top people started to quickly quantify cognition and the limits
right) and Broadbent (Bot left) – all
cognitive psychologists are highly thereof
attractive individuals

• Sperling demonstrated that we can hold huge amounts of low-

level visual information for a very brief time (colour, orientation,
movement, luminance)
• i.e., 7 ± 2 results from attentional bottlenecks, and not from
limitations on sensory information processing

• Broadbent created a model to explain this

• We pick inputs based on physical characteristics of the object
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_262395&
feature=iv&src_vid=voAntzB7EwE&v=v3iPrBrGSJM
Awareness requires attention
• We process only a limited amount of visual information
• Through controlling our attention, we control what we process
• We processed the visual information, but did not pay attention to changes

• Video is arguably representative of a divided attention task

• Only attended information is subsequently noted

• But maybe I’m lying to you

• Maybe that was just an example of good photography
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh_9XFzbWV8
Change blindness
• Motion is a strong cue for the allocation of attentional resources
• By flicking between two still images, we do not allow information regarding
motion into the system
• Changes tend not to be noticed

• Consider looking at your phone

• But remember the gorilla

• Change blindness can also occur in situations with motion
• N of distractors, visual noise, etc. may be important factors here
Coglab change detection task
• 2 conditions: flicker v. no flicker
• Responses: accuracy and RT

Condition Percent Correct RT (ms)

Flicker 57% 9230

No Flicker 89% 5543

• Note that the removal of ability to perceive motion dramatically reduces

accuracy and increases reaction times
Divided attention
• Attention is biased towards environmental salience, but we are also
able to divide our attention

• Divided attention has marked effects of performance

• Task difficulty reduces capacity for secondary task
• Experience increases automaticity and facilitates division of attention

• Resource competition
• Ability to divide attention is modulated by task demands
• Harder if stimulus and response are in the same modality
Controlled v. automatic processes
(Shiffrin & Schneider)
• Controlled processes
• Require conscious focus and sustained attention, but can be altered online
• Serial processing of stimuli

• Automatic processes
• Unconscious, requiring no attention and therefore unlimited capacity
• Cannot be modified online
• Parallel processing of stimuli

• Automaticity is the shift from controlled to automatic processing

• Frees up attentional capacity for other things
• Although we can divide attention, etc.,
sometimes we have greater or lesser
capacity for attention
• Arousal effects can explain this

• Yerkes-Dodson law: performance varies

as a function of arousal
• If arousal is too low, performance
suffers
• If arousal is too high, performance
suffers
• Optimal arousal results in best
performance
• Be afraid; be moderately afraid
Central capacity theory
(Kahnemann)
• Attention results from a central processor which is limited in capacity and modulated by arousal

• Tasks differ in demands

• Automatic tasks are much easier than controlled, novel or complex tasks
• Task demands can change

• We seek to allocate attention in order to maximise performance

• Intention
• Dispositions (salience, context, values, expertise)
• Multiple tasks can be accomplished if they are within capacity

• However:
• It is descriptive and doesn’t generate actual theories
• Doesn’t account for resource competition within modalities
• Can’t explain how we automatise processes
Focussed visual attention
• We can’t deal with the huge amount of visual information, and we deal
with this in a few main ways

• We selectively process relevant visual information

• Spotlight
• Improves detection within spotlight

• Visual attention can be oriented, in order to deal with processing demands

• Overtly and/or covertly
• Actively and/or passively
Covert Orientation of Attention task
• RT based measure of attentional orientation

• Cues are presented at a central fixation point; subjects maintain gaze on

fixation
• Neutral trials (no information on where stimuli will appear)
• Cued (arrow pointing to where stimuli will appear)
• 80% of trials are valid
• 20% invalid

• Demonstrates how attention can be shifted independently of gaze

• Also highlights the importance of expectations
Valid Cue Neutral Cue Invalid Cue

Valid Cue Neutral Cue Invalid Cue

 360
350

Reaction Time (msecs)

340
330
320
310 Series1
300
290
280
270
260
neutral valid invalid
Cueing Condition

• Compared to neutral (not cued) trials, valid cueing results in a decrease in reaction time
• Compared to neutral trials, invalid cueing results in an increase in reaction time

• There is a processing speed benefit to attention conforming to prior expectations

• There is a processing speed cost to attention not conforming to prior expectations

• Gaze and attention are different

Experts and non-experts
Expert and novices differ on tasks in regards to perception, automaticity and
expectations

• Perception
• Top down processes
• Focus on relevant details
• Automaticity
• More free attentional resources
• Chunking
• Expectations
• Forward planning
Automatic skilled actions

• Develop with practice

• Performed smoothly
• Stimulus driven, not under your control
• Are not affected by other activities
• Best in familiar environments
• No mental effort
• Best unmonitored
Everyday skilled behaviours
Skilled behaviours are composed of:
• Hierarchically organised routines
• Sequences and subroutines
• Motor programs

Behaviour control comes in two flavours

• Closed loop control
• Open loop control

Closed loop control is necessary for critical decision points

But automaticity has costs
• Automaticity underlies many of our basic functions
• Reading
• Driving
• Speech

• But:
• Suppression of automatic responses is difficult
• Loss of flexibility
• Errors
• Transport disasters
• Everyday slips of action
What is the difference between
expertise and automaticity?
• Automaticity tends to refer to behaviours, expertise to perceptions
• In each case, through practice, we have changed the way we perform such that
we facilitate the task through reduced information processing

• However:
• In automatic processing, we improve due to bottom up filters (do not attend to everything)
• In expertise, we improve due to top down control (attend to defining features)

• Errors:
• Are due to failure to suppress a response (automaticity)
• Are due to errors in perception (expertise)
Are you an expert or an automaton?
• Consider the Stroop task:
• Reading is automatised and you don’t control it
• Difficulty in Stroop results from difficult in suppressing automatic response

• Other higher-order tasks may also be automatized

• Simple mathematical equations are performed automatically
• What’s 57x34?

• Dot point: A great deal of higher order human stuff can be explained as
automatic processes
Why does perceptual judgement
improve with practice?
• We can become experts in perception through practice and
automaticity
• Expertise: increased knowledge about the object
• Automaticity: rote learning of responses

• Dobbins (2003) taught people to become shoe box experts

• Question switch allows us to see differences between automation and
expertise
Dot point: automaticity exists even in
purely perceptual tasks. We always
want to reduce the amount of
information we deal with
• Attention is a gateway to conscious awareness and a limited resource

• Flexible allocation of attention

• Actively allocate (focus or divide)
• Attention can be grabbed

• Semantic processing attended better than unattended

• Selection affected by experience and context

• Limited attention capacity

• Capacity affected by arousal
• Task demands on capacity vary
• Demand and capacity interact to determines performance declines
• Secondary task declines first
• More if resource competition

• Automaticity reduces attention demand

• Develops with practice
• Enables skilled performance
• Difficult to modify or suppress