attention

• selection


  act of attending to an object to select it apart from unattended objects
• selection example


  feeling of wearing clothes fades throughout the day until something triggers attention to it
• attention


  an active process (actively selecting where to focus attention)
• automatic processes

  • involuntary capture via external event
  • fast, efficient, obligatory manner
• controlled processes

  • guide attention voluntarily/consciously
  • slow, effortful due to more cognitive effort
  • difficult to multitask due to resources for control processes being limited
• types of automatic processes

  1. salient information
  2. autopilot
• salient information

  • naturally pops out at oneself
  • more noticeable and leads to stronger/quicker association when paired with events
• autopilot


  a once conscious/effortful task becomes automatic via practice
• spotlight model

  • object is within spotlight
  • faster reaction time, higher accuracy
  • cueing paradigms test auto processes of selection
  • attentional spotlight becomes automatically attracted cues
• early selection theory can't explain how memory is influenced by unattended information
• filter models

  • use auditory cues to filter target sounds from background noise
  • cues compared to filter sifts distractions and allows only important information through
• filter model examples


  speaker gender, direction/pitch/sound of speech
• filter model compared to spotlight model

  • suppresses distraction/noise
  • applied to auditory attention
• spotlight model compared to filter model

  • enhances stimulus
  • applies to visual attention
• 1st filter model was a single filter by Donald Broadbent in 1958
• 1st filter model


  based on physical characteristics (pitch, tone, volume) of stimulus and only attended information is filtered for deeper processing
• VonWright has evidence against Broadbent's assumption of no processing of unattended signals, seen in Dichotic Listening Paradigm
• Dichotic Listening Paradigm


  subject listened to a different sound/conversation in each ear and was told to focus on only one
• 2nd challenge to Broadbent (breakthrough in dichotic listening paradigm)


  participants remembered unattended information, especially when highly relevant
• Treason's Dual Filter Model

  1. information passes through the physical filter and evaluated based on physical cues
  2. information passes through the semantic filter and is evaluated based on meaning and chooses which information to attend to
  3. the rest of the information is discarded
• stroop task (1935)

  • participants shown word spelling color names and told to state the color the word is
  • demonstrates attention as facilitated by stimulus relevance
• congruent words (stroop task)


  color of word matches
• incongruent (stroop task)


  color of word doesn't match
• proportion congruent manipulation

  • change the ratio of congruent to incongruent trials
  • measure the conscious control over stroop influence
• when more congruent trials to incongruent trials

  increased stroop effect
• when more incongruent trials to congruent trials

  decreased stroop effect
• stroop task allows measuring the influence of automatic/control processes
• automatic processes compared to control processes

  • can be consciously controlled
  • evidence: word reading influences performance even when the word is ignored
  • word reading is an automatic process that occurs in an absence of voluntary intention
• control processes compared to automatic processes

  evidence: people can adopt conscious controlled word reading strategies (automatic processes) that modulate stroop effect
• set size


  number of items to search through
• set size effect


  as set size increases difficulty increases
• single feature search task

  only have to look for 1 feature to identify target ; relatively easy
• pop-out effect


  object of visual search is easily found, regardless of set size ; easily induced by color
• conjunction searches

  at least 2 features create a more difficult search
• context cues


  improve reaction time and gets attention