PSYB51H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Visual Search, Electroencephalography, Spatial Frequency
Document Summary
Selective attention is a cognitive brain mechanism that enables one to process relevant inputs, thoughts, or actions while ignoring others that are less important, irrelevant or distracting. Why we need attention: bottlenecks: it is impossible to process everything at once, these bottlenecks exist on levels of: sensory cognitive motor. Where does attention play a role: attention to vision, attention to audition / touch / smell, attention across modalities compare vision and touch for example, attention to thoughts, attention to motor tasks. Attention in time: the physiological correlates of attention, scene perception. How can we measure attention: reaction times: a measure of the time from the onset of a stimulus to a response. the speed to which he responds, perception: Perceptual thresholds jnd and absolute thresholds; they improve when pay attention. Perceptual biases: motor accuracy, eye movements: overt shifts of attention but not covert shits of attention, brain activity measuring physiological changes on e. g. fmri.
