3 attention and perf

• Neuropsych evi – patients w brain damage in pri visual cortex
• Behaviour shows that they can see smth altho not consciously aware
• Learning objectives


  1. How auditory and visual attention operate

  2. What distracts us

  3. How do we search for visual targets

  4. Multitasking

  5. Controlled vs automatic processing

  6. Links btw consciousness, attention, freewill
• What is attention


  Ability to focus on one aspect (limited capacity) and ignore other aspects
• Types of attention


  • Active
  • Passive
• Active attention


  Purposely focusing on something and ignore others
• Passive attention


  Involuntarily attention
• Auditory attention


  1. Cocktail party effect

  2. Shadoring paradigm
• Early vs late selection

  1. Broadbent’s theory (early selection)

  2. Treisman’s Attenuation Theory (middle, partial)

  3. Deutsch & Deutsch (late selection)
• Early selection


  • Input can be selected by physical characteristics (gender of speaker, ear etc)
  • Both stimuli processed but only attended input passes through filter
• Middle selection


  • Info has to be attention capturing to reach meaning/analysis stage
  • Filtering attenuates, reducing rather than completely blocking unattended info
• Late selection


  • Top-down processing
  • Bottom-up processing
  • All input/stimuli analysed but only relevant info enters STM, influencing response by the most important, relevant info
• Visual attention


  • Attention as spotlight (Posner, 1980)
  • Attention as telescope and camera (Eriksen & St. James, 1986)
  • Attention as donut
• Spotlight lights up a small area (limited capacity), little seen outside lit
• Phenomena is explained by a combination of BOTH top-down & bottom-up visual attention
• Posner, 1980: 'Attention as a flashlight'
• Eriksen & St. James, 1986: 'Attention as a telescope and camera'
• Doughnut


  Attention used to attend to visual stimuli, more of the brain used to process visual info
• Spotlight


  1. Lights up small area (limited capacity)

  2. Little seen outside lit area (can only look at one point)

  3. Can move around to focus on other objects

  4. Need to disengage from one point to move to another

  5. Can be active (purposely) / passive (visual attention moved involuntarily)
• Zoom lens


  1. Willingly, deliberately increase or decrease region of focal attention

  2. Zoom in to focus on one thing

  3. Zoom out, wider angle to focus on more things
• Zoom lens example


  • Cueing Task (Muller et al., 2003)
• Doughnut


  1. Attention can move more flexibly (vs telescope and camera)

  2. Split attention over 2 regions that are not physically adjacent
• Unattended visual stimuli


  • Neglect
  • Extinction
• Disorders of visual attention

  1. Neglect caused by stroke damage to right hemisphere

  2. Extinction less severe than neglect
• Distraction effects


  1. Perceptual load theory (Forster & Lavie, 2008)

  2. Unattended stimuli can receive partial processing leading to distractions
• Factors making it easier to be distracted by irrelevant stimuli

  • High in novelty
  • High in emotional valence
  • High in task relevance
  • Less demanding load of current task
• Perceptual load theory


  1. Assumes limited attentional capacity

  2. Attentional capacity primarily allocated to attended info

  3. Residual capacity allocated to unattended info

  4. Demanding tasks = HIGH perceptual load → less residual capacity for unattended stimuli
• Combi: Cross-modal effects


  1. Participants search for letter in circle, placed randomly

  2. Low-load condition vs high-load condition

  3. Cartoon character as distracter
• Letter search task


  Participants search for a letter in a circle, placed randomly
• Independent Variable conditions


  • Low-load condition (with target letters X, N)
  • High-load condition (with non-target letters H, K, M, Z, W, V)
• Results show that the cartoon character is distracting ONLY under the LOW LOAD condition
• Cross-modal effects


  Integration of auditory and visual processing
• Picture sound study


  Participants indicate whether the target picture was present or not
• Results show that items are found faster when accompanied by congruent sound
• Visual search


  • Searching for a visual target in a sea of visual information is time-consuming
• Guided Search Theory


  • Attention is used to select items in an intelligent order (bottom-up, top-down)
• Important real-world implications of visual search

  • Finding objects in a room
  • Searching for friends in crowded spaces
  • Detecting illegal/dangerous items during airport luggage screening
• Guided Search Model


  • Attention is guided by 5 sources of information: Bottom-up feature guidance, Top-down feature guidance, Prior history, Reward, Scene info
• Attention is required when trying to do several tasks at the same time, known as multitasking
• Results from a multitasking study show that students who claim to be good at multitasking did not perform well for divided attention tasks