PSYC1003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Parietal Lobe, Hermann Von Helmholtz, Visual Acuity
Attention
“Attention is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of
what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalisation,
concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some
things in order to deal effectively with others.”
Passive and Active Modes of Attention
oPassive: stimulus-driven attentional control, controlled in a bottom-up way
by external stimuli (e.g. a loud noise)
oActive: goal-driven attentional control, controlled in a top-down fashion (e.g.
the individual’s goals)
Selective (or Focused) Attention
oEarly versus Late Selection
oPerceptual Load Theory
oComponents of Attention
oExamples: Change Blindness (Red Telephone Box, Boarding Airplane and Art
Video)
Test of Every Day Attention
oSelective Attention
oDivided Attention and Dual Task Performance
oAttentional Switching
oSustained Attention
Unilateral Visuospatial Neglect: Neuropsychological Disorder of Attention
Feature Integration Theory and the Binding Problem
Selective Attention
Attention processes some information, at the expense of other information
Selects some information, and inhibits other information
Only selects some information due to limits on processing capacity
oEarly versus Late Selection Theories
of Attention
oCocktail Party Phenomenon (Cherry,
1953)
oPerceptual Load Theory (Lavie, 1995,
2005)
Early versus Late Selection Theories of Attention
Early- because there are some limits on
processing, we chose very early what we
are going to bring in and process
Late- we take in all information until something happens later
Perceptual Load Theory
Low perceptual load= late selection
High perceptual load= early selection
“Perceptual processing has limited capacity but proceeds automatically in an
involuntary, mandatory manner on all information within its capacity”
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In attended tasks involving a large amount of information, capacity is fully exhausted
by the processing of the attended information, resulting in no perception of the
unattended information
In tasks of low perceptual load, because perception cannot be voluntarily stopped,
spare capacity from processing the information in the attended task will inevitably
spill over, resulting in the perception of the task irrelevant information that people
intended to ignore
Components of Attention
Orienting to Sensory Stimuli
oHistory: Overt and Covert Orienting of Attention
Overt orienting of attention- visual orienting and attention working
together to bring objects into the central foveal region of vision where
they can be thoroughly scrutinised e.g. moving your eyes from one
location to a new location takes around 200ms
Covert orienting of attention- attention is most commonly focused
where one is looking, that is, where the eyes are fixated (overt
orienting of attention) but is also possible to focus attention without
eye movements
Hermann von Helmholtz (1867)
First demonstration of covert visual spatial orienting
Treatise on Physiological Optics
Conducted the first empirical investigations on visual spatial
selective attention
He confronted the limitations of visual perception, and
showed that it was possible to control the location of the focus
of spatial attention (awareness) at will and independently of
the location of the eye gaze
“The observer may be gazing steadily at the two pinholes and
holding them in exact coincidence, and yet at the same time
he can concentrate his attention on any part of the dark field
he likes, so that when the spark comes, he will get an
impression about objects in that particular region only. In this
experiment the attention is entirely independent of the
position and accommodation of the eyes, or indeed, of any
known variations in or on the organ of vision. Thus, it is
possible, simply by a conscious and voluntary effort, to focus
the attention on some definite spot in an absolutely dark and
featureless field.”
oEndogenous and Exogenous Orienting of Attention
Michael Posner (1978)
Introduced a ‘spatial orienting task’
To investigate the cognitive (and neural) components of
attentional orienting
And to distinguish between two kinds of attentional orienting:
oEndogenous (voluntary, controlled)
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Attention is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalisation, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. Passive and active modes of attention: passive: stimulus-driven attentional control, controlled in a bottom-up way by external stimuli (e. g. a loud noise, active: goal-driven attentional control, controlled in a top-down fashion (e. g. the individual"s goals) Selective (or focused) attention: early versus late selection, perceptual load theory, components of attention, examples: change blindness (red telephone box, boarding airplane and art. Test of every day attention: selective attention, divided attention and dual task performance, attentional switching, sustained attention. Unilateral visuospatial neglect: neuropsychological disorder of attention. Attention processes some information, at the expense of other information.
