Psyc 317: Cognitive Psychology

Lecture 4: Attention

Todays agenda
Selective attention
Different theories: early-selection, attenuation, late-selection, perceptual load

Divided attention
Effect of: practice, task difficulty, task type

Attention & visual processing

Overt & covert attention
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What is attention?
Everyone knows what attention is.
William James, 1890

No one knows what attention is.

Harold Pashler, 1998

Attention is a well-studied phenomenon, but hard to define

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What is attention?
The ability to focus mental resources on something Attention is limited
Think of attention as a pool of resources

To attend to something: To pay attention to it

Attended ear - Paying attention to words in that ear
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Focusing on just one thing

Cocktail party metaphor: You are talking to someone at a party with a lot of other people making noise. You are able to filter out other noise and focus just on the person youre talking to. How do you do that?

Four theories of attentional selection

Early-selection theories
Broadbents Filter Model Triesmans Attenuation Model

Late-selection theory Perceptual load theory

Thats a lot of theories!

In a way, they are all competing The theories were developed chronologically
One theory proposed, had problems, led to a new theory

The development of these theories tell a story - keep that in mind!

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Cherrys Dichotic Listening

Colin Cherry (1953) - Dichotic Listening
Present different messages to each ear Subjects paid attention (attended) to one ear and ignored the other Repeat the attended message out loud shadowing

Dichotic Listening Results

Participants shadowed the attended message easily When asked about the unattended message, they could only report sex of voice
No content was remembered, even when the unattended stream was the same word presented 35 times!
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Broadbents Filter Model

An early-selection model - filtering occurs before incoming stimuli are analyzed to the semantic level

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Parts of the filter model

Sensory store - Holds incoming information for a short period of time

Filter - Analyzes messages based on physical characteristics like tone of voice, pitch, location of stimulus (which ear) Detector - Information is processed to determine meaning
Short-term memory - Holds information for general processing

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Auditory Channels
Each ear is thought to be a different channel that information can come in from It is difficult to switch attention from one channel to another

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Broadbents Split-Scan Study

Present letters at the same time to each ear
:-) H M

:-)

:-)

P
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Broadbents Split-Scan Study

Two conditions:
1.) Repeat back all letters in any order 2.) Repeat back letters in the order they were presented
:-) H M S Condition 1 (Any Order): H, R, W, M, S, P Condition 2 (In Order): H, M P?
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:-)

R W

:-)

Split-Scan Results
Condition 1 (repeat back in any order)
65% correct letter report Would report all letters presented to one ear first

Condition 2 (repeat back in presented order)

20% correct letter report

Harder to switch channels to report back letters

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The filter model explains

How we can pay attention to one ear and ignore stimuli coming into the other ear
Why we prefer to process stimuli that come in to one ear all at once as opposed to switching channels
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Problems with filter model

Back at the cocktail party. Youre talking to your friend and ignoring all the other conversations Until someone across the room says your name. Then you turn your head. But you were supposed to be ignoring other conversations - what happened? 17

Other evidence against

Moray (1959) Subjects heard their name in the unattended stream Gray & Weddeburn (1960) - Shown:
Response should have been Dear 7 Jane But subjects said Dear Aunt Jane
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Triesmans attenuation model

Still an early-selection theory Instead of a filter, an attenuator analyzes incoming messages
Physical characteristics Language - Groups of syllables/words

Attended messages are given more priority

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Attenuation: Box & arrow

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Attenuation: The Dictionary Unit

The message gets passed on to the dictionary unit
Threshold = Smallest signal strength that can just be detected
Easily detected
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Attenuation explains
Hearing your own name when that stream is supposed to be ignored Switching channels in order to make a complete sentence
But a specific dictionary unit? That seems like a cop-out.
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Problems with early selection

MacKay (1973) Ambiguous sentences: They were throwing stones at the bank
Bank = Financial institution or side of a river?

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MacKay Method & Results

Dichotic listening
Attended stream: Ambiguous sentence
They were throwing stones at the bank.

Unattended stream: Biasing word

River or Money

The biasing word had an effect!

If money, the ambiguous sentence was more likely interpreted as financial institution
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What does this mean?

The unattended stream was being processed, and it wasnt a name or another low-threshold word
Not early-selection Not an attenuator

The word was actually being processed to the semantic level (to its meaning)
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Late-selection theories

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So whats right?
Early selection
We can totally ignore an unattended stream

Attenuation
unless its our own name, then it captures our attention

Late selection
or not. Words in the unattended stream can also be processed.
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So whats right?
Theres evidence for EVERYTHING! Thats no good. Lavie (1995) - Where the filtering occurs depends on task load
How much of a persons cognitive resources are used in a task
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Perceptual Load Theory

High-load task: Difficult, requiring most of someones cognitive resources
Only selected items are processed

Low-load task: Easier, cognitive resources are left over

Can process additional information

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Flanker Introduction
Is the center letter an H or S?
Easy/Compatible: H H H H H

Hard/Competing: S S H S S
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Flanker Compatibility Task

Decide whether one of the shapes in the circles is a square or diamond Ignore shapes outside of the circle (flanker)

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Two types of flankers

Compatible: Outside shape is same as target (makes search faster) Competing: Outside shape is different than target (makes search slower)

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Green & Bavelier (2003)

Low load: Only one shape in circle
Compatible Flanker Competing Flanker

Flankers

RT: Which one is faster?

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Green & Bavelier (2003)

High load: Lots of distractor shapes in circles
Compatible Flanker Competing Flanker

Must ignore

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Green & Bavelier: Predictions

Low-load task: Its easy. Lots of cognitive resources left, might as well process extra stuff (the flanker)
High-load task: Its hard. All cognitive resources used in the primary task; none left to process extra stuff (the flanker)
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Green & Bavelier: Results

How much does the competing flanker hurt performance?

Increase in RT for competing flanker

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What does this mean for attentional filtering theories?

High-load task = Attentional resources fully used
No resources left to process extra stimuli Early selection - throw out more stimuli (based on physical characteristics)

Low-load task = Attentional resources left over

Resources are left to process extra stimuli Late selection - process stimuli further (up to the semantic level)
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Attention & Video Gamers

Same study on experienced video gamers
Competing distractor had same effect in both load conditions
This means attention could process more information in both conditions

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Outline
Selective attention
Different theories: early-selection, attenuation, late-selection, perceptual load

Divided attention
Effect of: practice, task difficulty, task type

Visual attention
Visual attention phenomenon The distribution of visual attention Hemispatial neglect
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Divided Attention
Can we pay attention to more than one thing at a time?
Yes! Think about driving, listening to the radio and planning dinner

What factors affect our ability to divide attention?

Practice Task Difficulty Task Type
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The Effect of Practice

Spelke, et. al (1976) Task: Read short stories and take dictation (write words spoken to them) At first, performance was awful After 85 hours of practice, performance was much better
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Schneider & Shiffrin (1977)

The divided attention task well be talking about Give subjects a memory set - up to 4 letters or numbers

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Consistent Mapping Condition

Then, present 20 frames VERY fast
4 possible positions; any/all filled Distractors were from the other category
If memory set was numbers, distractors were letters

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Schneider & Shiffrin Methods

Was an object from the memory set present anywhere in the stream?

When one number/letter was in the memory set, it was never a distractor on the next trial A distractor on the current trial was never in the memory set on the next trial
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Schneider & Shiffrin Results

Beginning: 55% accurate 900 trials: 90% accurate 600 trials: Participants reported automatic processing (no need to try hard to do the task)
Occurs without intention Uses few cognitive resources
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Automatic performance by 600 trials

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Automatic processing outside the lab

Occurs for well-practiced tasks
Examples?

When people starting thinking about things, they make errors

Ever try explaining shoe-tying to a small child?

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Can you reduce automatic processing?

What if you increase the number of characters in the memory set and in each frame?
Little effect on performance - still peak at 90% accuracy at ~ 900 trials So this doesnt seem to increase task load

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What does that mean?

Participants performed tasks in parallel
Required little attention

Could divide attention 4 ways easily

Could deal with all the information

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