HPS203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Binding Problem, The Cocktail Party, Hemispatial Neglect
Topic 2: Attention
→ Paying Attention
Selective Attention
- The skill through which one focuses on one input or one task while ignoring other stimuli
- Dichotic listening: different information presented to earphones in each year
- Unattended channel: attention paid to information presented in one ear and ignoring the
other
- Exceptions to pieces of information noticed even in unattended channel: being a persons
own name
- Effects of attention can be so strong that we fail to see stimuli directly in front of our eyes
- Intentional Blindness: look at a fixation target while attending another part of screen, fail to
notice changes in shape to the fixation target
- Change blindness: the inability of observers to detect changes in scenes they are looking
act. Ex. Detecting differences between pairs of pictures, can occur when continuity errors
are not noticed in films
Early Studies
- Focused on the perceiver selects the desired input
- Early-selection hypothesis: the unattended input receives little – no analysis
- Late-selection hypothesis: all input receives analysis but only the attended input reaches
consciousness or is remembered
- Attention can be primed: detectors being ready to fire
- 2 types of priming: stimulus-based and expectation-based
- Stimulus based: faster, no cost for incorrect prime
- Expectation based: slower, cost for incorrect expectation
Spatial Attention
- Ability to focus on a particular position in space
- Better prepared for any stimulus that appears
- Spotlight metaphor
- Can move spotlight in space, as well as adjust the size of the beam
- Unilateral neglect syndrome: provides evidence for attending to positions in space or to
objects, caused by damage to the right parietal lobe, supports space-based view as
individuals cannot attend to the left side of space
Space or object based attention?
- Unilateral-neglect patients attended to the red circle, initially presented on the right, even
after it rotated to the left side of the object
- Healthy participants also show a mixture of spatial and object based attention
Selective attention summary:
- Involve facilitating the processing of desired input & inhibiting the processing of unwanted
input
- Attention can be directed to both what the object is as well as where it is in space
- There is some flexibility in when the effects of attention will take place (early or late)
- What we think of as attention is not a single process or a particular mechanism
Document Summary
The skill through which one focuses on one input or one task while ignoring other stimuli. Dichotic listening: different information presented to earphones in each year. Unattended channel: attention paid to information presented in one ear and ignoring the other. Exceptions to pieces of information noticed even in unattended channel: being a persons own name. Effects of attention can be so strong that we fail to see stimuli directly in front of our eyes. Intentional blindness: look at a fixation target while attending another part of screen, fail to notice changes in shape to the fixation target. Change blindness: the inability of observers to detect changes in scenes they are looking act. Detecting differences between pairs of pictures, can occur when continuity errors are not noticed in films. Focused on the perceiver selects the desired input. Early-selection hypothesis: the unattended input receives little no analysis.
