Attention and failures of awareness

• Perception is limited due to

  Sensory restrictions
• Inattentional blindness


  Information doesn’t seem to reach consciousness – we seem to perceive only that which receives the focus of our cognitive efforts or in other words, that what receives our attention. Feels counterintuitive.
• More effort to focus on smth specific

  More inattentional blindness
• Sensory restrictions 


  refer to a condition in which an individual experiences a decreased ability to perceive or respond to sensory stimuli, often due to a loss or impairment of one or more sensory modalities (vision, hearing, touch, taste, or smell).
• Flicker paradigm


  two slightly different images are presented in rapid succession with a brief interruption, or flicker, between them
• Change blindness


  People failing to detect significant changes in visual stimuli, even when they are presented side-by-side.
• Levin and Simons experiment

  Continuity errors were deliberately inserted across cuts and viewers were asked after watching the video whether they noticed any
• Inattentional deafness 


  Dichotic listening task

  large difference like male/female voice is noticed
• Cognitive deafness 


  Selective attention
• Attention 


  Preferential processing at the cost of processing other info, awareness, limited resource, TOP-DOWN (not always)
• Types of attention 


  (1) selective

  (2) divided

  (3) sustained

  (4) spatial
• (1) Selective attention task


  Allow us to determine how well individuals can select and attend to a single info source, while intentionally blocking out / ignoring distracting info
• (2)Divided attention tasks

  MULTITASKING- allow us to determine how well ind can attend to multiple sources if info at once
• (3) Sustained/vigilance attention tasks

  Allow to access the ability to focus on ONE SPECIFIC task for a CONTINUOUS amount of time without distraction (secure guards)
• (4) Spatial attention tasks

  How we focus on ONE part of our ENVIRONMENT and how we move our attention to OTHER locations in the visual field (EYE MOVEMENT)
• Broadbent’s Filter model of selective attention: early selection


  Filter between selection and perception: you cant do the meaninf analysis cause the info didnt go through - no info in the working memory
• Problems with early selection models

  (1) cocktail party effect

  (2) shadowing message in one ear

  (3) subliminal perception

  (4) popcorn effect
• (1) Cocktail party effect 


  When at party and a lot of noise and talking to someone you pay attention to the person talking to you. Now strangely enough, when someone calls your name, you change your attention to the person calling your name -> So, there is some meaning analysis!
• (2) Shadowing message in one ear


  People spontaneously follow story even when content shifts to opposite ear - not consistent to the model
• (3) Subliminal perception


  A spider is briefly shown for example, then through your fingers we can detect stress, even if the person does not think they have seen a spider yet.
• (4) Popcorn effect


  refers to the phenomenon where, during a movie in a theater, the smell and sound of popping popcorn can make people suddenly crave popcorn and start buying it. This effect demonstrates how sensory cues, like smell and sound, can influence our desires and behaviors.
• Treisman’s attenuation model


  suggests that instead of completely filtering out unattended information, our brains REDUCE its INTENSITY, allowing important stimuli to be noticed even when we are focused on something else
• Deutsch late selection or response selection model


  processed info on the basis of meaning -> not everything is sent to awareness, but everything is processed; select what is relevant in that SPECIFIC moment
• Criticism Deutsch 


  Conflictive economy: waste of time and resources to process all that info
• Multimode model- flexibility


  Stage at which selection occurs is FLEXIBLE (movable filter) - diff depth of perceptual analysis;

  SEMANTIC (late) selection requires a greater amount of physical selection (late)
• Divided attention note


  If the DEMAND of difference processes does not exceed the TOTAL CAPACITY, multiple processes can be EXECUTED in parallel; if not, one or more processes will suffer
• Automatic processing


  Do not require attentional resources- you can combine one task with another without task interference
• Control processing


  Requires full attention
• Task switching 


  Solution to attention loss: both cognitively demanding and can worsen performance