Selective Attention
9 important questions on Selective Attention
What are the 3 questions we ask when investigating attention?
2. How do we decide which of these signals need to be acted upon, and what action should be taken once the information has been processed?
3. How do we ignore the information that is irrelevant?
This lecture will focus on the idea of attention as a filter used to limit the amount of sensory information that can gain access to higher cognitive processes
What are the theories of attention?
- filter theories = allows relevant information to be processed
- Perceptual Load theory
2. Neurobiology theory
- Posner & Peterson (1990), Corbetta & Shulman (2002)
- 3 attentional abilities: Alerting (concentration), orientating (selecting relevant info for your task) & executive (deciding what to do with this information)
What is the Filter Theory and who was it proposed by?
He proposed that we have an attention filter that stops information from the unattended channel being processed and allows information from the attended channel to be processed in the cognitive system
He argued:
-Two stimuli are presented at the same time to a sensory buffer
-One of the inputs is then allowed through the filter on the basis of its physical characteristics. The other filter remains in the buffer for later processing
-The filter prevents overloading (the cognitive system has limited capacity)
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What are the limitations with Broadbent's Filter Theory?
- there is a "breakthrough" of some information in the unattended ear
- when a word in the unattended ear makes sense in the context of the message in the attended ear
- hearing your name across the room = it forces its way into your cognitive system (you don't choose to process it)
= these do not support Cherry's theory and it is hard to account for them in Broadbent's filter theory
What is the Attenuation Theory and who was it proposed by?
- Filter limits the amount of stimulus information that can be processed. The attended stimuli is analysed in detail
- The processing is attenuated in the unattended channel but not extinguished
- A breakthrough of information in the unattended channel occurs when:
1. the stimuli can be identified using limited information (e.g. a beep in spoken language = unexpected)
2. the stimuli is consistent with ongoing tasks i.e you only need a little bit of info to make sense in the attended channel
3. the stimuli is very easily identified e.g. own name
What are the 2 systems for orientation?
- fast
- involuntary
- transient
- inhibitory after effect
- Inferior Parietal lobe, ventral frontal regions
Endogenous: orient to task in relevant location (e.g. where we expect the target to appear)
- under our control
- slow
- sustained
- Superior Parietal lobe
CROSS-MODAL EFFECTS - What happens in the brain to produce the ventriloquist illusion? Why does vision dominate sound? = we rely on vision to locate events more heavily than with auditory information. This is exogenous spatial attention i.e. involuntary
What are two types of orientating?
Overt orienting attention: Moving the eyes
What is orientating? What are the 3 distinct processes in orientating attention?
Moving attentional spotlight around
1. Disengage attention
2. Shift attention
3. Engage attention
What has neuroscience evidence shown about exogenous and endogenous processing?
Exogenous
- activates ventral network
= re-orientating
= stimulus driven
= reflexive orientating
= bottom-up
Note: This system has a circuit breaking function = it draws visual attention away from its current focus.
Endogenous
- activates dorsal network
= goal directed orienting
= voluntary orientating
= top-down
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