Study/lecture notes for first-year psychology on Attention *Please note that the information in the document is not my own knowledge, it belongs to the Unversity of the Witwatersrand and is comprised of notes from lectures and textbooks.
Contents
attention ......................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Change Blindness ........................................................................................................................................................ 4
Inattention Blindness .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Mud Splashes .......................................................................................................................................................... 5
No Flicker ................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Attention – some general concepts ............................................................................................................................ 6
Top down versus bottom-up control of attention .................................................................................................. 6
Mechanisms underlying attention .............................................................................................................................. 8
Broadbent’s filter theory of attention ........................................................................................................................ 8
shadowing............................................................................................................................................................... 9
The dichotic listening task ..................................................................................................................................... 10
bROadbent :filter theory of attention ................................................................................................................... 10
Sensory memory ................................................................................................................................................... 10
The cocktail party effect ....................................................................................................................................... 11
Revised Dichotic listening test .............................................................................................................................. 12
.................................................................................................................................................................................. 12
Treisman & Geffen’s (1967) attenuation theory ....................................................................................................... 13
Treisman’s feature-integration theory .................................................................................................................. 15
Attentional Theories ................................................................................................................................................. 17
.................................................................................................................................................................................. 17
Duncan’s theory of selective visual attention ....................................................................................................... 17
Late Filtering Models ................................................................................................................................................ 18
Early versus Late Filtering ......................................................................................................................................... 18
The evidence ......................................................................................................................................................... 18
The task load proposal .......................................................................................................................................... 19
Flanker-compatibility task..................................................................................................................................... 19
Divided attention .......................................................................................................................................................... 20
Kahneman’s (1973) Capacity Model ......................................................................................................................... 20
Problems with general capacity models ............................................................................................................... 22
Task-specific resource theories (e.g. Navon & Gopher, 1979) .................................................................................. 22
Problems with task-specific resource theories ..................................................................................................... 22
Divided Attention ..\..\public\documents\second year psychology\attention movies\hands free - california safe
driving spoof [www.keepvid.com].mp4 .................................................................................................................... 23
WICKENS’ (1984) MULTIPLE RESOURCE THEORY Three relatively simple dichotomous dimensions .................... 23
Stages: .................................................................................................................................................................. 25
Modalities (perceptual): ....................................................................................................................................... 25
Processing codes: .................................................................................................................................................. 25
1
, ATTENTION
Every day, people are exposed to thousands of sights, sounds and smells. The capacity to select
some for attention while ignoring others is called selective attention and is essential for human
functioning. Attention is involved with many cognitive aspects, including perception, memory
and consciousness.
Attention is the means by which we actively select and process a limited
amount of information from all of the information captured by our senses,
our stored memories, and our other cognitive processes.
Selective attention determines what information moves from sensory memory to short-term memory
Selective attention refers to those processes involved in the orientation
towards, and the selection of, certain stimuli over others.
It is often described as involving a bottleneck.
People are only able to attend to a small proportion of the information available to them. Only
some of the information gets through the bottleneck for subsequent processing.
Process of concentrating on specific features of the environment or on certain thoughts or
activities
▪ Selective: excluding of other features of the environment
▪ Limited: in capacity and timing
▪ Both overt and covert: we can consciously attend to information, but some information
grabs our attention
Spatial attention is sometimes thought of as a “searchlight.”
▪ move this searchlight in space, as well as adjust the size of the “beam”
▪ Direction of light beam marks the region of attentional interest.
▪ Width of the light beam marks the breadth of attentional field.
▪ Moving beam from one point to another would
▪ indicate shifting attention to other tasks/stimuli.
▪ Holding the beam for a sustained period before
▪ getting tired or bored, indicates the attentional span.
2
, PAY ATTENTION!
Choose a card and concentrate hard on it
You must be sure to remember the suit and the type
Change blindness
DO CARD TRICK: ASK FOR A VOLUNTEER. SHE MUST SELECT A CARD FROM THE
FIRST ARRAY AND CONCENTRATE HARD ON IT, REMEMBERING ITS SUIT (CLUBS,
HEARTS ETC) AS WELL AS ITS TYPE (JACK, KING ETC). THEN SAY YOU ARE GOING TO
PERFORM A MAGIC TRICK AND REMOVE THE VOLUNTEER’S CARD. SHOW SECOND
ARRAY. CAN THEN DO WITH WHOLE CLASS.
TRICK USES CHANGE BLINDNESS.
YOU ARE NOT ATTENDING TO ALL CARDS, ONLY OWN,SO WHEN THE ARE
ALLCHANGED (IE SUIT) IN SECOND ARRAY, YOU DO NOT NOTICE.
MAGIC
I have read your mind and removed your card
3
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