Weeks 1-3 ULOc

30 Aug 2022
Cognitive Psychology
Seventh Edition
Chapter 4
Attention and
Consciousness
•Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Some Questions of Interest
• Can we actively process information, even if we are

not aware of doing so? If so, what do we process
and how?
• What are some of the functions of attention?
• What are some theories cognitive psychologists
have developed to explain attentional processes?
• What have cognitive psychologists learned about
attention by studying the human brain?
Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
The Nature of Attention and Consciousness

• Attention
– The means by which we actively process a limited amount
of information
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30 Aug 2022
Attention
• Four main functions of attention

– Signal detection and vigilance
– Search
– Selective attention
– Divided attention
TABLE 4.2 Signal Detection: Finding Important

Stimuli in a Crowd
Signal-Detection Matrix Used in signal-Detection Theory Signal-
detection theory was one of the first theories to suggest an interaction
between the physical sensation of a stimulus and cognitive processes
such as decision making. Think about the work of airport screeners.
They need to be capable of perceiving objects such as box cutter in
hand-carried luggage.
Signal Detect a Signal Do Not Detect a Signal

Present Hit: The screener recognizes a box Miss: The screener fails to see
cutter in the luggage. the box cutter in the luggage.
Absent False alarm: The screener thinks Correct rejection: The screener
there is a box cutter in the luggage recognizes that there is no box
when there is none. cutter in the luggage, and indeed,
there is none.
Vigilance: Waiting to Detect a Signal
• Vigilance is attending to a set of stimuli over a

length of time in order to detect a target signal
• Vigilance decreases rapidly over time (fatigue),
thus misses and false alarms increase
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Display Size
• Which panel is easier?
Search: Actively Looking
• Actively searching for a target

• Number of targets and distracters influence accuracy
• Feature search versus conjunctive search
Feature-Integration Theory (FIT)
• Individual feature processing is done in parallel

– Simultaneous processing is done on the whole display
and if feature is present, we detect it
• Conjunctive searching requires attention to the
integration or combination of the features
– Attention to particular combination of features must be
done sequentially to detect presence of a certain
combination
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Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory

• Stage 1:
• Feature search
• Analyze features (color, size, shape, orientation etc.)
▪ Can be done in parallel (all at once)
▪ Occurs at preattentive stage
▪ No display size effect
Stage 2:
• Conjunction search
• Combine features into object
▪ Must be done sequentially (one object at a time)
▪ Requires attentional resources
▪ Display size effect present
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Feature Search (1 of 2)
• Is there a red T in the display?
• Target is defined by a single feature
• According to feature integration theory, the target should “pop
out”
• No attention required
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Feature Search (2 of 2)
• Is there a red T in the display?
• Target is defined by two features: shape and color
• According to FIT, the features must be combined and so
attention is required
• Need to examine one by one
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Similarity Theory
• Similarity between targets and distracters is

important, not number of features to be combined
– More shared features = more difficult to detect a target
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Neuroscience: Aging and Visual Search
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Selective Attention (1 of 2)
• Cocktail party phenomenon (Cherry, 1953)
– How are we able to follow one conversation in the
presence of other conversations?
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Selective Attention (2 of 2)
• Cherry’s results
– Noticed in unattended ear
▪ Change in gender
▪ Change to a tone
– Did not notice in unattended ear
▪ Changed language
▪ Changed topic, same speaker
▪ If speech was played backwards
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Theories of Selective Attention (1 of 6)
• The models differ in two ways:

– (1) whether or not they have a distinct filter for
incoming information
– (2) if the filter occurs early or late in the processing of
information
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• Early filter model (Broadbent):

– We filter information right after we notice it at the
sensory level
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• Selective filter model

– Moray found
▪ Participants still recognize names in unattended ear
▪ Messages of high importance may break filter of selective
attention
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• Treisman’s Attenuation Model

– Instead of blocking stimuli out, the filter weakens the
strength of stimuli other than the target stimulus
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• Late-Filter Model (Deutsch & Deutsch, 1963)
– All stimuli is processed to the level of meaning
– Relevance determines further processing and action
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• Neisser’s Synthesis
– Preattentive processes
▪ Parallel
▪ Note physical characteristics
– Attentive processes
▪ Controlled processes occur serially
▪ Occur in working memory
• Neuroscience and selective attention
– ERPs and detecting auditory and visual target
stimuli
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Divided Attention
• How many tasks can you do at once?

– e.g., driving and talking, radio, phone...
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Investigating Divided Attention in the Lab
• Dual-task paradigm
– Task 1 may require a verbal response to an auditory
stimulus
– Task 2 may require a participant to push a button in
response to a visual stimulus
– Results indicate that responses to the second task are
delayed
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The Attentional Resources Theory
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Divided Attention in Everyday Life
• Driving and:
– Cell phones
– Adjusting music
– Watching the scenery
• Almost 80% of crashes and 65% of near-crashes
involved some form of driver inattention within
three seconds of the event
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Dual-Task Performance during Driving
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Factors that Influence Our Ability to Pay

Attention
• Anxiety
• Arousal
• Task difficulty
• Skills
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Neuroscience and Attention: A Network

Model (1 of 3)
• Three subfunctions of attention
– Alerting
▪ Being prepared to attend to some incoming event and
maintaining this attention
▪ Involves right frontal and parietal cortexes as well as the
locus coeruleus
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Model (2 of 3)
– Orienting
▪ The selection of stimuli to attend to
▪ Needed when we perform a visual search
▪ Involves the superior parietal lobe, the temporal
parietal junction, the frontal eye fields, and the
superior colliculus
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Model (3 of 3)
– Executive attention
▪ Processes for monitoring and resolving conflicts that arise
among internal processes
▪ Involves the anterior cingulate, lateral ventral, and
prefrontal cortex as well as the basal ganglia
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When Our Attention Fails Us
• ADHD
• Change blindness and inattentional blindness
• Spatial neglect
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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
• Symptoms
– Inattention
– Hyperactivity
– Impulsivity
– Not everyone who is overly hyperactive, inattentive, or
impulsive has ADHD
– Behavior must be demonstrated to a degree that is
inappropriate for the person’s age
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Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness
• Change blindness
– An inability to detect changes in objects or scenes that
are being viewed
• Inattentional blindness
– People are not able to see things that are actually there
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Spatial Neglect—One Half of the World Goes

Amiss
• Lesion on one side of brain causes person to
ignore half of their visual field
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Automatic and Controlled Processes
• Automatic processing
– Requires no conscious control
• Controlled processing
– Requires conscious control
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Is Typing Automatic or Controlled for You?
• Do you type without thinking where your fingers

are? Are you a search-and-peck typer?
• If you do type without using attention, what
happens when you think about the letters as you
are typing them?
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TABLE 4.3 Controlled versus Automatic

Processes (1 of 2)
• There is probably a continuum of cognitive processes, from fully
controlled processes to fully automatic ones; these features
characterize the polar extremes of each.
Characteristics Controlled Automatic Processes
Processes
Amount of Require intentional Require little or no intention or effort (and
intentional effort effort intentional effort may even be required to avoid
automatic behaviors)
Degree of conscious Require full Generally occur outside of conscious awareness,

awareness conscious although some automatic processes may be
awareness available to consciousness Consume
Use of attentional Consume many consume negligible attentional resources
resources attentional resources
Type of processing Performed serially Performed by parallel processing (i.e., with many
(one step at a time) operations occurring simultaneously or at least in
no particular sequential order)
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TABLE 4.3 Controlled versus Automatic

Processes (2 of 2)
Characteristics Controlled Processes Automatic Processes
Speed of processing Relatively time-consuming execution, relatively fast
as compared with automatic
processes
Relative novelty of tasks Novel and unpracticed tasks or tasks Familiar and highly practiced
with many variable features tasks, with largely stable task
characteristics
Level of processing Relatively high levels of cognitive Relatively low levels of cognitive
processing (requiring analysis or processing (minimal analysis or
synthesis) synthesis)
Difficulty of tasks Usually difficult tasks Usually relatively easy tasks, but
even relatively complex tasks may
be automatized, given sufficient
practice
Characteristics
Process of acquisition: With practice, many routine and stable procedures
may become automatized, such that highly controlled processes may become
partly or even wholly automatic; the amount of practice needed for
automatization increases for highly complex tasks
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How Does Automatization Occur? (1 of 2)
• Integrated components theory: Anderson

– Practice leads to integration; less and less attention is
needed
• Instance theory: Logan
– Retrieve from memory specific answers, skipping the
procedure; thus less attention is needed
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How Does Automatization Occur? (2 of 2)
• Rate of learning slows as amount of learning

increases
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Automatization in Everyday Life: The Stroop

Effect
(a) Read through this list of color names as quickly as possible. Read
from right to left across each line.
(b) Name each of these color patches as quickly as possible. Name

from left to right across each line.
(c) Name as quickly as possible the color of ink in which each word is
printed. Name from left to right across each line.
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Mistakes We Make in Automatic Processing
• In general, slips are most likely to happen when

two circumstances occur
– When we must deviate from a routine and automatic
processes inappropriately override intentional,
controlled processes
– When our automatic processes are interrupted
• In everyday situations, we are less likely to slip
when we receive appropriate feedback from the
environment
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Consciousness
• Preconscious processing
– Information that is available for cognitive processing but that
currently lies outside conscious awareness
▪ Priming
▪ TOT phenomenon
▪ Blindsight
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Studying the Preconscious - Priming

(1 of 3)
• Priming can speed or slow processing
– Facilitative priming
▪ Target stimuli (e.g., BUTTER) are processed faster if
preceded by a related word (e.g., BREAD)
– Negative priming effect
▪ Target stimuli (e.g., PINE) is processed slower if
preceded by a word related to target’s alternate meaning
(PALM relating to hand)
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(2 of 3)
Which one of the previously presented triad of word was
related to this word?
1. Presentation:
– Playing
– credit
– report
2. Presentation:
– Still
– pages
– music
3. Presentation:
– Card
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(3 of 3)
• Bowers et al. (1990) results:
– Even if participants could not generate the 4th word,
they still selected the coherent triad
– Results demonstrate preconscious processing
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What’s That Word Again? The Tip-of-the-Tongue

Experiences
• You know you know the word, but you cannot
fully retrieve the word
• Paradigms used to generate TOT
– Show pictures of famous people or politicians and have
participants name them
– Ask general knowledge questions to generate TOTs
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TOT Demonstration
• What is the name of Dagwood Bumstead’s dog?

• Who wrote Paradise Lost?
• What is a wheeled hospital cart called?
• Do any of these questions put the answer on the
tip of your tongue?
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When Blind People Can See
• Person cannot consciously see a certain portion of

their visual field but still behave in some instances
as if they can see it
• Being aware of doing something is distinguishable
from doing something
• We appear able to sense, perceive, and even
respond to many stimuli that never enter our
conscious awareness (Marcel, 1983a)
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30 Aug 2022

•Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Some Questions of Interest

• Can we actively process information, even if we are

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

The Nature of Attention and Consciousness

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

• Four main functions of attention

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

TABLE 4.2 Signal Detection: Finding Important

Signal Detect a Signal Do Not Detect a Signal

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Vigilance: Waiting to Detect a Signal

• Vigilance is attending to a set of stimuli over a

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Search: Actively Looking

• Actively searching for a target

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Feature-Integration Theory (FIT)

• Individual feature processing is done in parallel

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

• Similarity between targets and distracters is

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Neuroscience: Aging and Visual Search

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Theories of Selective Attention (1 of 6)

• The models differ in two ways:

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Theories of Selective Attention (2 of 6)

• Early filter model (Broadbent):

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Theories of Selective Attention (3 of 6)

• Selective filter model

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Theories of Selective Attention (4 of 6)

• Treisman’s Attenuation Model

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Theories of Selective Attention (5 of 6)

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Theories of Selective Attention (6 of 6)

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

• How many tasks can you do at once?

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Investigating Divided Attention in the Lab

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

The Attentional Resources Theory

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Divided Attention in Everyday Life

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Dual-Task Performance during Driving

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Factors that Influence Our Ability to Pay

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Neuroscience and Attention: A Network

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Neuroscience and Attention: A Network

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.