ATTENTION

5th meeting – cognitive psychology

Ursa Majorsy
 The first basic phenomenon is limited capacity for
processing information. At any given time only a small
amount of the information available on the retina can be
processed and used
Desimone and Duncan (1995) - visual attention

a state in which cognitive resources are focused on

certain aspects of the environment rather than on
others and the central nervous system is in a state of
readiness to respond to stimuli
(American Psychological Association)

the means by which we actively process a limited amount of

information from the enormous amount of information available
through our senses, our stored memories, and our other cognitive
processes, it includes both conscious and unconscious processes
De Weerd (2003) and Rao (2003)
 a cognitive process that selects out important information from the world
around us (through all of our five senses) so that our brain does not get
overloaded with an overwhelming amount of information
(Solso, MacLin and MacLin, 2014)

The concentration of mental effort on

select sensory or mental events; also part of the
AWARENESS model
(Solso, MacLin and MacLin, 2014)

how we actively process specific information in

our environment
(Cherry and Gans, 2019)

Result of a limited-capacity information-processing system

(Broadbent, 1958)
 It’s cold in the car
Driving You think about your new study You notice a child running across You brake
a car assignment the street in front of you
You watch the street

Eventually, this leads to

At any point in Through attentional processes (which can be our taking action on
time, we perceive a automatic or controlled), we filter out the
the basis of the
lot of sensory information that is relevant to us and that we
information. want to attend to.
information we
attended to
 Attention allows us to use our
limited mental resources
judiciously

By dimming the lights on many

stimuli from outside (sensations)
and inside (thoughts and
memories), we can highlight the
stimuli that interest us
 Some of the characteristics of a stimulus which determine whether
or not we will pay attention to it are the following:

1. Intensity 5. Suddenness or novelty

A bright colour will attract us
more than a dull one
2. Size
A large thing is more likely to seize
our attention than something small
6. Contrasting stimuli
3. Duration or repetition
a fleeting stimulus will not catch our
attention as easily as one which
persists or is repeated
A sudden or unexpected stimulus
is likely to catch our attention
more easily than one we have been
expecting or that we have
encountered before
Contrasting stimuli will attract
attention more readily than those
which are similar to each other

4. Emotional content 7. Something which moves

a stimulus which carries emotional Something which moves is more
overtones for us will attract us likely to attract attention than
more than a neutral one something stationary
 At one time, psychologists believed that attention was the
same thing as consciousness. Now, however, they
acknowledge that some active attentional processing of
sensory and of remembered information proceeds without our
conscious awareness
(Bahrami et al., 2008; Shear, 1997)
 the process of directing our
awareness to relevant stimuli
while ignoring irrelevant
stimuli in the environment

Selective
Attention
 Human beings are constantly bombarded by stimuli from the world in which they live, but can only
take in and use a very small portion of this material. There exist, therefore, mechanisms which
enable them to select and process stimuli which are valuable, or of interest and to allow the rest
to pass them by

In varying degrees of efficiency, we have

developed the ability to focus

This is an important process This limited capacity for

as there is a limit to how paying attention has been
much information can be conceptualized as a
processed at a given time, bottleneck, which restricts
and selective attention the flow of information. The
allows us to tune out narrower the bottleneck, the
insignificant details and lower the rate of flow.on
focus on what is important what is important while
blocking out the rest
 One of the first attentional phenomena
to be studied by Colin Cherry (1953)

Thus, as well as being able to maintain attention to

a single source of stimulation, a complete account
must also explain the ability to switch attention to The Cocktail
something else
Party
Phenomenon
the ability of normal people to attend to a single
conversation against a background of numerous
conversations taking place in parallel, whilst
retaining the ability to switch attention to another
person upon hearing one’s own name spoken
 The cocktail party situation can be modelled
experimentally by means of the technique of dichotic
listening, which entails asking subjects to listen to
two competing sources of auditory stimulation, each
coming simultaneously via headphones to different
ears

This enables both the study of:

▪ Divided attention
(processing two or more competing inputs)

▪ Focused attention
(maintaining attention to one particular source)
1. Early Selective Attention,
‘Filter theory’ (Broadbent,
1958)

2. Attenuation Theory Theories of

(Treisman, 1960)
Selective
Attention
Donald Broadbent (1926–1992)

Anne Treisman
 1. Early Selective Attention (Broadbent, 1958)

In order to do this, human

Broadbent
utilize a filter to determine which
suggested that our
information to attend to
capacity to process
information is limited
All stimuli are first processed
in terms of capacity,
based upon physical properties
and our selection of
that include color, loudness,
information to
direction, and pitch.
process takes place
early on in the
Our selective filters then allow
perceptual process
for certain stimuli to pass
through for further processing
while other stimuli are rejected
…..Broadbent……

Filter is bottleneck that prevents One of the ways Broadbent achieved

system exceeding capacity by blocking this was by simultaneously sending one
some input message to a person's right ear and a
different message to their left ear.

This is called a split span experiment

(also known as the dichotic listening
task)

In Broadbent's model the filter is

based solely on sensory analysis of
the physical characteristics of the
stimuli.
 2. Attenuation Theory (Treisman, 1960)

Treisman (1964) agrees with Broadbent’s theory of an early bottleneck filter.

However, the difference is that Treisman's filter attenuates rather than
eliminates the unattended material

The attenuator analyzes

incoming messages by not only
physical characteristis but
also by the language and
meaning of the message, and
the messages are then let
through into the final output,
the dictionary unit
The dictionary unit has stored
words, each of which has a
different threshold for
activation, more important
words have a lower threshold
and can be detected easily
Attenuation is like turning down the volume so
that if you have 4 sources of sound in one room Some aspects of meaning
(TV, radio, people talking, baby crying) (i.e. words that have high subjective
importance) are easily attended
to in attenuated messages
you can turn down or attenuate 3 in order to
attend to the fourth
 Think of the attenuator like a volume control—you can turn down the
volume of other sources of information in order to attend to a single source
of information

The "volume" or intensity of those other stimuli might be low,

but they are still present

In experiments, Treisman demonstrated that participants were still

able to identify the contents of an unattended message, indicating that
they were able to process the meaning of both the attended and
unattended messages

Broadbent's and Treisman's Models of Attention are all

bottleneck models because they predict we cannot
consciously attend to all of our sensory input at the
same time
 Automatic
Processing
 Schneider and Shiffrin (1977) distinguished between
controlled and automatic processing

Controlled processing is serial (one automatic processing is parallel (more

thing is processed after another}
Difficult and unfamiliar tasks require
controlled processing
than one processing operation can
occur at any one time)
simple and familiar tasks can be
processed automatically

Controlled processing requires us to
pay attention and deliberately put in
effort
Controlled processing is intentionally
done while we are consciously aware
of what we are doing
In other words, we actually have to
think about what is going on and make
decisions
We are in 'control' of these processes
Controlled
Processing
example
we first learned how to ride a
bike, we had to pay attention to
what we were doing. We had to
be consciously aware of where
the brakes were, where the
pedals are located, how to stop,
how to steer the bike, etc. We
purposefully paid attention to
all of these things, and we put
forth the effort to learn how to
ride a bike.
Automatic
Processing
Automatic processing does not
require us to pay attention, nor
do we have to deliberately put in
effort to control automatic
processes
Automatic processing occurs
without us giving much thought
to it
If we practice something long
enough, it becomes automatic
example
As an experienced bike rider
you may be able to do many bike-riding
tasks (i.e. shifting the gears of the
bike, braking, and steering)
automatically without giving it much
thought. You can steer, brake, react
to cars on the road, and change
speeds because all of the years of
practice, have made it possible for
you to do these things automatically
without being consciously aware of
what you are doing
 The Stroop Test

John Ridley Stroop who studied reaction times in individuals as

part of his work. In 1929, he created what would later be called
the Stroop Test. This short and simple test could easily show how
John Ridley Stroop
quick someone's reaction time was, and in 1935, he was able to
(an American psychologist)
publish his findings

An experiment by Stroop looked into the relationship between

the automatic and control process and the possible
interference they cause
The Stroop Test (and the resulting Stroop Effect, which is the name given to the experience of
an individual who takes the test) shows that our brains process seemingly conflicting
information differently than they process more straightforward information

when we see the Does that make

word 'red' written sense?
in the color red, we
process the color Essentially,
of the word more
quickly than if the Stroop Effect
the word 'red' studies how
were written in interference can
green affect the way our
and we were brains process
expected to just information and
name the color complete tasks
rather than the word
 Trying The Stroop Effect Yourself

Here is an example of a basic Stroop Test

Take a look at it
Seems easy enough, right?

All you have to do is say color the word is

printed in rather than reading the word itself

Still think the task seems ridiculously easy?

Try it!
 It's a little harder than you thought, isn't it?

That's what Stroop was trying to show, He recognized that processing times slow
down when people take this test because our brains take a little more time to
assimilate the information
 It is doing
Excellence your best
is not being the
best