Cognitive Psychology: LEC 5 – Oct 17th (LEC after 2nd quiz):

ATTENTION MODELS:

Overview:

1. What “attention” is…

2. Bottleneck/Capacity Theories and Models of Attention.

Definition of attention: “the act or power of carefully thinking about, listening to, or watching someone or
something: notice, interest, awareness: special care or treatment.”

William James’ Attention:

1. “Can be divided”
2. Can involve “objects of sense (sensorial attention and saliency)”
3. Can involve “ideal or represented objects (intellectual attention)”
4. Can be “immediate or derived (primary interest or apperceptive)”
5. Can be “passive, reflex-driven, nonvoluntary, effortless”

OR

6. Can be “active or voluntary”

Attention is… “A form of mental activity or energy that can be distributed to different tasks…”

Attention is:

1. Selective
2. Divisible
3. Shiftable
4. Sustainable
 LEC #7 & 8: Cognitive Psychology: Theories and Models of Attention and Memory:

Theories of attention:

1. Bottleneck theories explain the narrowing of attention that enters

conscious awareness.
2. Capacity theories explain how attention is distributed to different
informational sources.

In both cases, these theories subscribe to the idea in Functionalist

Psychology that the mind is dealing with an incoming stream of
cognitive information (maybe consciousness) …

Dichotic listening – both ears receive stimuli in synchrony and participants are asked to attend to only one
ear of channel.

Shadowing – the participant repeats aloud the stimuli presented to the attended channel and ignores the
stimuli presented in the unattended channel.
Broadbent’s two tracks:

 Track one = pre-attentive, pre-conscious, perceptual.

 Track two = attentive, conscious, semantic.

For Broadbent, only filtered/processed content from one input channel gets paid attention to and stored in
short-term memory…

All other information is “tuned out” from conscious awareness and recall…

The Attenuation model, however, allows the mind to oscillate between two channels, and filter
semantically salient content…

Attenuation often represents input by its signal strength…

A perfect example to discuss attenuation models is the cocktail party effect.

The Role for Cognition

Treisman’s model = ‘top-down’ (for early selection), ‘conceptually driven’, ordered by a semantic hierarchy.

Other attenuation models often use more infrastructural hierarchies without a consideration of semantics…

I will now show you a basic example of “distance attenuation” that does not directly consider the mind as
he attenuator…

Early and Late Selection Models:

 Early selection = attention is required for the selection of input.

 Late selection = attention is required for the selection of a response.

COMPARISON: Treisman & Deutsch-Norman Models

 Treisman (early selection) = after receiving initial input information, you decide (or already have
decided) which input stream you wish to tune into for a while via your perception filter.
 Deutsch-Norman (late selection) = after scanning the input streams for semantically salient content,
you would then afterwards select which words/sounds/ sights you wish to receive from (and react
to) then onward via the reaction filter.
Johnson and Heinz’s Multimode Model of Attention:

 Allows for selection to take place early or late.

 The filter is ‘moveable’ and can take place at various stages of processing based on the observer’s
needs.
 Selection can be based on physical or semantic characteristics.

Capacity Model of Attention:

Attention levels vary = state of health, level of energy, work or rest…

 Arousal determines capacity…

 Task demands vary…
 Enduring dispositions…
 Momentary intentions…

Cognitive Science Memory Models:

 There also exists a “Long Short-Term Memory”

 An Al-enabled agent using an Artificial Recurrent Neural Network (ARNN) can…
 “..remember a value for an arbitrary length of time and then determine when the input is significant
enough to remember, when it should continue to remember or forget the value, and when it should
output the value.”
Sensory Memory (VSTM):

 Sensory information is held in a buffer for a very short time before processing…
 Sensory information can be ignored or perceived, and this selection is largely involuntary.

Sensory Memory:

 Iconic memory is a visual sensory store with a short duration of less than one second.
 Echoic memory is an auditory sensory store with a duration from a few seconds to several seconds long.
 Haptic memory is a touch sensory store that is used to determine the necessary forces for gripping and
interaction with physical objects.
 Olfactory memory deals with instances where smell and memory are closely related.

Iconic Memory (VSTM):

 “Immediate Memory” remained as “iconic Memory”

 Visual information comes in raw and unprocessed. It stays long enough (measured in milliseconds)
for selection and pattern recognition processes to take place.
 Sensory memory relies on processes of attention.

Sperling’s Partial Report Study:

 Sperling devised a way of studying how much visual information is available in VSTM (very short term
memory), or the preattentive stage.
 Here we look more deeply into parallel search.
 Whole report – recall all of the letters.
 Partial report – recall the top row or bottom row after the appropriate cue.

You can see more than you can recall:

 Sperling demonstrated that participants could store all of the letters in sensory memory, up to twelve.
 Subsequent research is available to sensory memory.

Decay: the loss of information over time.

 In the in-class activity… why were you able to recall more letters from the partial report test than the
whole report test?
o What does ‘parallel search’ mean in this context?

Attention in the VSTM

o Masking- “when sensory information in the buffer is ‘overwritten’ by material in the ISI”
o Cognitive Blink Suppression: “when blinking interferes with object identify location”
Working Memory (STM) Examples:

 Reading a long sentence.

 Carrying over a number in a mathematical task.
 Remembering a person’s argument long enough to have a turn to debate them. Simultaneous translation.
 Working Memory Overview:
o Working memory is:
 Short term
 Faster access
 Rapid decay
 Limited capacity (‘scratch pad’): 7 +- 2
o We can: chunk, erase, or rehearse information in STM.
 Working Memory Duration:
o Rehearsal = refreshes short term memory, prevents decay.
o Rate of Decay = items that are not rehearsed decay @18 seconds… recall dropped to 5%.
 Chunking can extend STM:
o Subjects were actually compressing items into 4 +- 1 “chunks” (ex: converting individual numbers
into numerical sequences)
o Some people draw from their episodic memory and declarative memory to create chunks from
specific associations and analogies.
 Example: 893 was ’89 point 3 = very old man”
 Example: seeing if chess experts can remember random chess-piece moves (not legal chess
moves)
 Chess masters are experts with real chess positions. They do not have a better
memory in general.
 Expertise allows chunking of salient information to promote memory of good moves.
 Experts organize knowledge differently – reflects a deep understanding.
 Experts have more trouble remembering random chess moves than beginners
because they ALSO have to retain chunks pertaining to legal-moves…
 Learning sequences of random moves is distracting and likely annoying them..
 Beginners do not have this extra cognitive load to contend with.

How is information coded in STM?

 Information can be coded in more than one way (ex: letters can be coded visually and acoustically)
 Proactive interference
 Retroactive interference

WORKING MEMORY OVERVIEW:

 Sometimes also called short-term memory.

 Working memory has a limited duration. Information can decay in seconds.
 Working memory has a limited capacity. Working memory can only hold a small number of items.
 Duration can be increased by repeating items, a process called rehearsal.
 Capacity can be increased by grouping items into meaningful wholes called chunks.
 Limit is to about 7 +- 2 chunks.
Long-Term Memory Examples:

 Remembering your phone number, the way home, your name, and the names of your friends and
family.
 These can be understood as consolidated short-term memories, a process that occurs through
rehearsal and meaningful association.

Memory from Perception to Action:

 Long-term memory is slower, larger.

 Virtually unlimited capacity (we do not know how much)
 Slow access, little decay.
 Complicated operation that depends on recent access.

REVIEW: Implicit and Explicit Knowledge:

Explicit Knowledge/Learning:

 Acquired with conscious awareness.

o Involves problem-solving and is “typically hypothesis driven and fully conscious”
 Acquired without conscious awareness.
o “an individual acquires new information without intending to do so, and in usch a way
that the resulting knowledge is difficult to express.”

REVIEW: Tacit (implicit) Knowledge:

“… knowing more than you can tell”

 (Usually intuitive) implicit knowledge that is in-born or made “second nature” through
practice that is difficult to articulate/communicate to another…
 Example: you just know how to do it without maybe knowing how you know how to do it…

Explicit and Implicit Knowledge…can also be stored as…Explicit and Implicit Memory types.

Semantic Memories:

 Semantic memory is a type of declarative memory.

 Essentially unlimited capacity, recall is the bottleneck…
 Anderson’s associative memory:
o Memories are stored as linked concepts
o More links support faster retrieval – the paradox of the expert.

Memory Models:

1. Modal Memory Model

2. ACT* (aka. ACT-R)
3. Model of Working Memory
The Working Memory Model:

 Working memory requires effort. It may be a process rather than a separate memory representation.
 Central Executive (CE) operations could take place on LTM stores.