PAMANTASAN NG LUNGSOD NG MAYNILA (University of the City of Manila) Gen. Luna cor. Muralla St., Intramuros, Manila College of Science DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY Written Report for the Subject: COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Topic: ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS (Chapter 4) Submitted to: Prof. Precious Gail Santos Submitted by: Beltran, Danielle Delica, Julia Ysabel Lopez, Gwyneth Chloe Soriano, Trinity Rose BS PSY 2-1 April 2022 1 Topic Outline I. Nature of Attention and Consciousness II. Attention A. Attending to signals over long and short terms B. Search: Actively Looking C. Attention: Selective Attention D. Divided Attention E. Factors that Influence our Ability to Pay Attention F. Neuroscience and Attention: A Network Model G. Intelligence and Attention III. When our Attention Fails Us A. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) B. Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness C. Spatial Neglect–One Half of the World Goes Amiss IV. Dealing with an Overwhelming World—Habituation and Adaptation V. VI. Automatic and Controlled Processes in Attention A. Automatic and Controlled Processes B. How Does Automatization Occur? C. Automatization in Everyday Life D. Mistakes We Make in Automatic Processes Consciousness A. The Consciousness of Mental Processes B. Preconscious Processing 1. Studying the Preconscious—Priming 2. What’s That Word Again? The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon 3. When Blind People Can See 2 ● I. Nature of Attention and Consciousness - Delica - Attention - active processing of the limited information amidst the numerous information readily available from the senses, memory, and other cognitive processes and this includes both conscious and unconscious processes. - Understanding the conscious processes are easier to study as we are aware of what we are observing while the unconscious process is more challenging to understand - We are bombarded with information everyday but attention makes us limit the taking in of information so that we are able to focus and react accordingly to what is more interesting. - - How does Attention work? Amidst all the sensory information, we filter out the information that is relevant to us and take action depending on the information we focus on. In memory processes, we tend to remember the things we paid attention to rather than those ignored. Consciousness - feeling and content of awareness which may be under attention Conscious Attention’s three Purposes in Playing a Causal Role in Cognition 1. Monitor interactions in environment - this would maintain our awareness as to how well are we adapting to the environment we are in 2. Linking past (memories) to present (sensations) - gives us a sense of continuity of experience which can also be a basis of self identity 3. Planning and controlling future actions - we could use our past and present as to what do we want to do in the future ● II. Attention A. Attending to Signals Over Long and Short Terms - Delica ■ Signal detection: Finding Important Stimuli in a Crowd Signal Detection Theory (SDT) - Ability of people to choose the relevant stimuli in a vast number of distracting and irrelevant stimuli. Target Stimulus - signal Four Possible Outcomes a. “Hits” or “true positives” - correctly identifies what is present b. “False alarms” or “false positives” - identified incorrectly what is absent c. “Misses” or false negatives” - fails to identify what is present 3 d. “Correct rejections” or “ true negatives” - correctly identifies absence ■ Vigilance: Waiting to Detect a Signal Vigilance - paying attention for a long period of time to detect the stimulus of interest; waiting for the signal to be detected; anticipating a stimulus. Neuroscience and Vigilance Increased vigilance when there is emotional stimuli like threatening stimulus Amygdala and thalamus plays an important role in recognizing the emotional stimuli in order to increase vigilance Two Specific Activation States in Thalamus Burst - relative hyperpolarization of resting membrane potential Tonic - relative depolarization Less vigilance = low frequency activity and smaller event related potentials detected in EEG B. Search: Actively Looking - Soriano We often engage in an active search for par-ticular stimuli., for example, when we are looking for our lost cell phone on an autumn leaf-filled hiking path. 1. Feature-Integration Theory - Which was developed in 1980 by Anne Triesman and Garry Gillette. According to this theory, we use focused attention & some other time distributed attention to capture the scene. 2. Similarity Theory - Which was developed by Duncan and Humphreys.The identity of two mental representations is referred to as similarity. It is essential to human cognition since it forms the foundation for categorizing phenomena into types and for a variety of other cognitive processes. 3. Guided Search Theory - Which was developed in 1990 by Cave & Wolfe. According to guided search theory, we process a huge field of data simultaneously for several basic properties such as color, shape, and motion. Then, in a smaller area of the visual field, we look for one specific element or combination of basic traits at a time. 4. Neuroscience: Aging and Visual Search - 4 C. Selective Attention - Soriano We are continuously making decisions about which stimuli we will pay attention to and which stimuli we will disregard. We highlight particularly important inputs by disregarding or at least deemphasizing some stimuli. The ability to utilize informational stimuli for other cognitive processes, such as verbal understanding or problem solving, is enhanced by concentrating our attention on specific informational inputs. (Colin Cherry, 1953) Shadowing - Observing people while they are performing a shadowing activity is one technique to examine selective attention. For example, you're wearing headphones in this activity, but different information is flowing in through each ear piece. Dichotic Presentation - It simply refers to a circumstance in which an individual receives two messages at the same time, one in each ear. The individual is asked to repeat back or "shadow" one of the messages as he hears it in order to control which message he attends to. - - Some researchers have noted that those who hear their name in the unattended message tend to have limited working-memory capacity. As a result, they are easily distracted (Conway, Cowan,& Bunting, 2001). Infants will also shift their attention to one of two messages if their name is said (Newman, 2005). Recent psychophysical studies have found, however, that spatial cues are less impor-tant than factors like how harmonious and rhythmic the target sounds (Darwin,2008; Muente et al., 2010). THEORIES OF SELECTIVE ATTENTION 1. Broadbent’s Model - Broadbent (1958) proposed that physical features of messages are used to pick one for further processing and the rest are lost. The information from all of the stimuli delivered at any given time is fed into a sensory buffer with an infinite capacity. 2. Selective Filter Model - The evidence began to point to Broadbent's paradigm being incorrect. Even when participants ignore most other high-level (e.g., semantic) features of an unattended message, Moray 5 discovered that individuals frequently recognize their own names in an unattended ear. 3. Attenuation Model - Attenuation is the process of lowering the loudness of a sound source. For example, if there are four sources of sound in a room (TV, radio, people chatting, and a baby screaming), you can turn down or attenuate three of them to focus on the fourth. This means that individuals can still understand the significance of the message they have received. 4. Late-filter Model - Within sensory boundaries, all stimuli—both attended and unattended—are processed to the same deep level of analysis until stimulus identification occurs; only the most significant stimuli are then selected for further processing, according to late-selection theory. 5. A Synthesis of Late-Filter and Early Model a. Preattentive process: b. Attentive, controlled process: D. Divided Attention - Beltran ● Divided Attention - Occurs when one focuses on two or more things simultaneously ● Investigating Divided Attention in the Lab 1. Neisser and Becklen (1975) - Participants were asked to watch a videotape with a basketball game superimposed on the display of a hand-slapping game. - Practicing would cause improvements in their performance - The ability to perform multiple tasks depended on the skills obtained from practicing and is not based on cognitive mechanisms. 2. Spelke, Hirst, & Neisser (1976) - Participants were asked to perform two activities at the same time: reading short stories while writing down words that were dictated. - After repeated practice, reading speed and accuracy and word recognition got better. 6 - Two individual controlled tasks can be automatized as one functional unit, but they do not become fully automatic. 3. Pashler (1994) - When simple tasks that require fast responses are to be performed simultaneously, responses for one or both of the tasks come in at a slower speed. The speed of the performance decreases when the second task starts after the first one does. - Attentional blink (Psychological Refractory Period/PRP) - The decrease in speed in performing simultaneous tasks - Performing tasks that both require cognitive tasks that need them to either choose a response, retrieve information from memory, etc. would result in one or both of the tasks demonstrating the PRP effect. 4. Hunt & Lansman (1982) - Intelligence affects how well a person is able to divide their attention. More intelligent people are better at dividing their attention for two tasks while also being able to perform both well. - Theories of Divided Attention ● People have a fixed amount of attention which they can choose to divide according to what a task requires ● Attentional resources may involve: ○ One single pool of attentional resources that can be divided freely 7 ■ An oversimplification because people are better at dividing attention for tasks that are different in modality (listening to music while writing is easier compared to listening to the news while writing). ○ Multiple sources of modality-specific pools ● Attentional-resources theory was criticized because of its vagueness and broadness, and it cannot explain all aspects of attention alone. However, it can support filter theories of attention. ● Filter and bottleneck theories of attention are better models for tasks that are attentionally conflicting, like selective-attention tasks and simpler divided-attention tasks. ● For more complex tasks involving divided attention, the resource theory is able to explain it better. - Divided Attention in Our Everyday Lives ● Driving Simulation ○ Participants were asked to do a tracking task which was to keep the cursor on a moving target on a screen through a joystick. A target could flash green, which should be ignored, or red, in which participants should push the brake button on the joystick ○ The next condition involved a dual-task situation that required them to do the tracking task while either listening to the radio or talking to someone over the phone. ○ Compared to listening to the radio, being engaged in a conversation over the phone caused the participants to miss the red signal much more, and their reaction times were slower. This suggests that using the phone while driving is more dangerous. ● Main factors that resulted in accidents from a study of 2700 in Virginia between June-November 2002: ○ rubbernecking (viewing accidents that have already occurred), 16%; ○ driver fatigue, 12%; ○ looking at scenery or landmarks, 10%; ○ distractions caused by passengers or children, 9%; ○ adjusting a radio, tape, or CD player, 7%; and ○ cell phone use, 5% ● Talking on the phone while driving can be as dangerous as drunk driving ● During frustrating situations, people talking on the phone while driving tend to display anger much more compared to those who are not on the phone 8 ● High levels of aggression is linked to higher chances of accidents, so people on the phone are more prone to accidents E. Factors that Influence our Ability to Pay Attention - Beltran ■ Anxiety: can be by nature (trait-based anxiety), or by situation (state-based anxiety) ■ Arousal: tiredness, drowsiness, drug-intake, excitedness ■ Task difficulty: more difficult tasks require more attentional resources ■ Skills: more attention is enhanced with higher skill and more practice F. Neuroscience and Attention: A Network Model - Lopez - Alerting - Defined as being prepared to attend to some incoming event, and maintaining this attention and also includes the process of getting to this state of preparedness. - This function involves the use of the right frontal and parietal cortices, as well as the locus coeruleus, along with the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. - Orienting - Defined as the selection of stimuli to attend to, and is a kind of attention needed when performing a visual search. This network develops during the first life. - This function involves the use of the superior parietal lobe, the temporal parietal junction, the frontal eye fields, and the superior colliculus, and the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. - Executive Attention - Includes processes for monitoring and resolving conflicts that arise among internal processes, such as thoughts, feelings, and responses. - These functions involve the use of the anterior cingulate, lateral ventral, and prefrontal cortex as well as the basal ganglia, and the neurotransmitter dopamine. G. Intelligence and Attention - Lopez - Attention and intelligence are interconnected, and there are various ways in which this is taken into account. One of these involves the Planning, Attention, and Simultaneous–Successive Process Model of Human Cognition (PASS). - PASS - Intelligence consists of an assortment of functional units that are the basis for specific actions, and these three distinct processing 9 - units are associated with arousal and attention; simultaneous and successive processing; and planning. Other factors considered to affect intelligence: - Inspection Time: Defined as the amount of time it takes you to inspect items and make a decision about them. - Choice Reaction Time: Defined as the time it takes to select one answer from among several possibilities. ● III. When our Attention Fails Us A. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) - Delica ADHD - People with ADHD are having a hard time focusing to the point that it hinders them from adapting to the environment that they are in First described by y Dr. Heinrich Hoffman in 1845 Possible causes of ADHD - May be partially heritable, maternal smoking and alcohol intake, lead exposure, brain injury, food additives Three Main types of ADHD 1. Hyperactive-impulsive 2. Inattentive 3. combination of hyperactive-impulsive and inattentive behavior Inattentive Type - easily distracted by irrelevant stimuli - Often fail to pay attention to details - Often make careless mistakes - Often fail to read instructions carefully - Susceptible to forgetting or losing things - Jumping from one incomplete task to another - ADHD may first be observable in the early years of school Does not usually end in adulthood Increase of cases of ADHD have increased through the years and some of the hypotheses that aim to explain the increase are popularity of fast-paced television shows and videogames, food additives, increase of unknown toxins ADHD Treatment - Combination of psychotherapy and drugs - Ritalin (methylphenidate) affects dopamine, Metadate (methylphenidate) affects dopamine, and Strattera (atomoxetine) - affects norepinephrine. 10 - - More than double the number of boys experience treatment of ADHD than girls but in adulthood, those who are diagnosed with ADHD is almost equal between male and females Theory of Multiple Intelligence - the recognition of the eight different kinds of intelligence individually and concentrate on the students’ abilities B. Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness - Delica - change blindness - an inability to detect changes in objects or scenes that are being viewed - inattentional blindness - a phenomenon in which people are not able to see things that are actually there C. Spatial Neglect– - Lopez - Spatial Neglect or Hemi-Neglect - An attentional dysfunction in which participants ignore the half of their visual field that is contralateral to (on the opposite side of) the hemisphere of the brain that has a lesion. - A result mainly of unilateral lesions in the parietal and frontal lobes, most often in the right hemisphere. - Extinction: - When stimuli are present in both sides of the visual field, people with hemi-neglect suddenly ignore the stimuli that are contralateral to their lesion. - May be due to the fact that patients are not able to disengage their attention from the stimulus in the ipsilateral field (the part of the visual field where the lesion is) in order to shift their attention to the contralateral visual field. - Their attention gets “stuck” on the ipsilateral object so that they cannot shift attention to stimuli that appear on the contralateral side. - There is no full consensus regarding which part of the brain is responsible for the symptoms of neglect, though some recent studies suggest that the posterior superior temporal gyrus, insula, basal ganglia, and the superior longitudinal fasciculus in the parietal lobe may be connected. ● IV. Dealing with an Overwhelming World—Habituation and Adaptation - Beltran ● Habituation 11 ○ Getting used to a stimulus so we notice them less ○ We can consciously control habituation but we usually do not ○ Attentional phenomenon ● Dishabituation ○ Noticing the stimulus again because of a change in the stimulus *Both habituation and dishabituation happen automatically and require no conscious effort. ● Sensory Adaptation ○ Physiological phenomenon, occurs in the sense organ ○ Decrease in attention to a stimulus that cannot be consciously controlled ○ We cannot consciously control sensory adaptation Sensory Adaptation Habituation Not accessible to conscious control Accessible to conscious control Tied closely to stimulus intensity Not tied very closely to stimulus intensity Unrelated to the number, length, and recency of prior exposures Tied very closely to the number, length, and recency of prior exposures Factors that influence habituation ● Internal variability: the amount of change that occurs in a stimulus ● Arousal ○ measure of physiological excitation, responsiveness, and ready for action ○ heart rate, blood pressure, electroencephalograph (EEG) patterns, etc. measure arousal, and these physiological indicators help in telling whether a person notices changes in a stimulus or not ● Having no habituation greatly affects our attentional system: focusing can be hard because of not being able to habituate to surrounding stimuli ● Tinnitus: constant ringing in the ears as a result of complications in habituating to auditory stimuli ● People with ADHD find it hard to habituate to many various stimuli. ● V. Automatic and Controlled Processes in Attention 12 A. Automatic and Controlled Processes - Soriano Automatic Processes are unconscious behaviors that occur without prompting, do not require attention, and are unavoidable. Motor skills, implicit biases, procedural tasks, and priming are all examples of automatic processes. The items on the list can be completed without paying attention to them. People's implicit biases are snap judgments that individuals make without realizing it. Controlled Processes are mental processes that demand a lot of a person's mental resources. Regulated processing works best when there is only one controlled activity at a time. The first time a person drives a car, sending a letter to a friend, and answering interview questions are all examples of controlled processing. We don't have to pay attention to automated processing, and we don't have to make a conscious effort to manage it. CHARACTERISTICS CONTROLLED PROCESSES AUTOMATIC PROCESSES Amount of intentional effort Require intentional effort Require little or no intention or effort (and intentional effort may even be required to avoid automatic behaviors) Degree of conscious awareness Require full conscious awareness Generally occur outside of conscious awareness, although some automatic processes may be available to consciousness Use of attentional resources Consume many attentional resources Consume negligible attentional resources Type of processing Performed serially (one step at a time) Performed by parallel processing (i.e., withmany operations occurring simultaneously or at least in no particular sequential 13 order) Speed of processing Relatively time-consuming execution, as compared with automatic processes Relatively fast Relative novelty of tasks Novel and unpracticed tasks or tasks withmany variable features Familiar and highly practiced tasks, with largely stable task characteristics Level of processing Relatively high levels of cognitive proces-sing (requiring analysis or synthesis) Relatively low levels of cognitive processing(minimal analysis or synthesis) Difficulty of tasks Usually difficult tasks Usually relatively easy tasks, but even rela-tively complex tasks may be automatized,given sufficient practice B. How Does Automatization Occur? - Delica - Implementation of various steps then integrating it into one whole operation - “Instance theory” proposed by Logan - gradually accumulating knowledge on specific stimuli until the responses become automatic; through repeated process, there becomes little to no conscious effort in doing things - Rate of improvement on practice effects - negative acceleration C. Automatization in Everyday Life - Lopez - Automatization is not guaranteed, and may even be impaired in the case of certain disorders. In some cases, it may even work against an individual, such as the existence of the Stroop Effect. - Named after John Ridley Stroop, this effect demonstrates the psychological difficulty in selectively attending to the color of the ink and trying to ignore the word that is printed with the ink of that color. - The difficulty is due to the automatization of the reading process, and is no longer attributed to your conscious control. 14 - - - Other variations of the Stroop effect include numbers, directions, animals, and even emotions. Another way in which automation can be harmful is by causing “mindlessness”, which may prevent people from paying appropriate attention to their tasks and potentially making lethal mistakes. However, automatization in most cases can be beneficial, making it important to automate safety practices. Especially for those in high-risk occupations. D. Mistakes We Make in Automatic Processes - Beltran Classifications of errors in automatic processing: 1. Mistakes ○ Errors in identifying a purpose or in specifying a method to achieving it ○ Errors in intentional and controlled processes 2. Slips: ○ Errors made while carrying out the intended plan in achieving a goal ○ Errors in automatic processes ○ Most likely to happen if i. There is a deviation from routine ii. When there is an interruption in our automatic processes ○ Happen when we are distracted or interrupted when automatic processes occur ○ Slips are relatively rare events compared to the number of times we engage in automatic processes daily. ○ Feedback helps reduce risks i. Forcing functions: physical limitations that make performing automatic behavior that can lead to slips less possible Slips Associated with Automatic Processes Type of Error Description of Error Example Capture errors We intend to deviate from a routine activity we are implementing in familiar surroundings, but at a point where we should depart from the routine we fail to pay Psychologist William James (1890/1970, cited in Langer, 1989) gave an example in which he automatically followed his usual routine, undressing from his work 15 attention and to regain control of the process; hence, the automatic process captures our behavior, and we fail to deviate from the routine. clothes, then putting on his pajamas and climbing into bed—only to realize that he had intended to remove his work clothes to dress to go out to dinner. Omissions* An interruption of a routine activity may cause us to skip a step or two in implementing the remaining portion of the routine. When going to another room to retrieve something, if a distraction (e.g., a phone call) interrupts you, you may return to the first room without having retrieved the item. Preservations* After an automatic procedure has been completed, one or more steps of the procedure may be repeated. If, after starting a car, you become distracted, you may turn the ignition switch again. Description errors An internal description of the intended behavior leads to performing the correct action on the wrong object. When putting away groceries, you may end up putting the ice cream in the cupboard and a can of soup in the freezer. Data-driven errors Incoming sensory information may end up overriding the intended variables in an automatic action sequence. While intending to dial a familiar phone number, if you overhear someone call out another series of numbers, you may end up dialing some of those numbers instead of the ones you intended to dial. Associative-activation errors Strong associations may trigger the wrong automatic routine. When expecting someone to arrive at the door, if the phone rings, you may call out, “Come in!” Loss-of-activation errors The activation of a routine may be insufficient to carry it through to completion. The feeling of going to another room to do something and getting there only to ask 16 ourselves, “What am I doing here?” Perhaps even worse is the nagging feeling, “I know I should be doing something, but I can’t remember what.” Until something in the environment triggers our recollection, we may feel extremely frustrated. *Omissions and perseverations may be considered examples of errors in the sequencing of automatic processes. Related errors include inappropriately sequencing the steps, as in trying to remove socks before taking off shoes. ○ Habituation and dishabituation appear hours after birth. ● VI. Consciousness A. The Consciousness of Mental Processes - Lopez - Cognitive psychologists have had multiple views of our level of consciousness over complex mental processes. - One view (Ericsson & Simon, 1984) is that people have quite good access to their complex mental processes. Using protocol analysis in analyzing people’s solving of problems, they came to the conclusion that people have conscious access to their complex information processes. - The second view is that people do not have good access to their complex mental processes. In this view, people are believed to have minimal conscious access to their thought processes, though they may be conscious of the products of their thinking. B. Preconscious Processing ■ Studying the Preconscious—Priming - Delica Priming - participants are presented with first stimulus (prime), rest, then second stimulus, then the participants are instructed to make a judgment to see how the first stimulus would affect the second stimulus Example: the word “palm” is shown to the participant and then the second word is “wrist” so they would categorize them as body parts and not the “palm” as the plant. The word “wrist” shows positive priming to the category of body parts while it also inhibits which is also called negative priming, the idea of “palm” as the plant as the wrist is not related to the “palm” plant. 17 ■ What’s That Word Again? The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon - In the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, you cannot think of a word or phrase that is stored in your memory and usually easily accessible. - It is universal as it is seen in people who speak in different languages - Bilingual people experience more of this as compared to monolingual people due to bilinguals using either one of the languages more than the other - Older adults experience more of this phenomenon as compared to younger adults - anterior cingulateprefrontal cortices is the part of the brain that is involved when experiencing tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon ■ When Blind People Can See - Beltran ● Preconscious perception: also observed in patients who have lesioned areas in the visual cortex ● Patients are usually blind in areas of the visual field that correspond to the lesioned areas on the visual cortex. ● Blindsight ○ Indications of visual perceptual ability in blind areas ○ Patients are able to accurately guess about the location or orientation of stimuli that are in the “blind” region. Yet, they are unable to perform voluntary action. ○ D. B. (Weiskrantz, 2009) ■ He was a patient who got blind on his left visual field as a result of an operation. Each eye had a blind spot on the left side of its visual field: he was unaware of objects or events that happened on his left side. ■ However, evidence of vision was found on his left side. Objects would be presented on the left side of his visual field by the investigator, then he was to answer a forced-choice test in which he needed to identify from which of the two objects was presented. ■ The results were better than expected, hence he “saw” even when he was unaware of seeing. ○ Hamm et al., 2003 18 ■ A study was conducted that involved pairing the presentation of visual stimulus with electrical shocks ■ The patient started to feel fear whenever the visual stimulus was presented after multiple pairings. Despite not seeing, the patient was processing visual information. ○ For cortically blind people, information from the retina is brought to the visual cortex which is damaged. A part of the visual information bypasses the visual cortex and goes to other areas of the cortex instead where information is unconsciously accessible. Information processed in the visual cortex seems to be conscious. ○ The examples mentioned demonstrate that there are cognitive functions that occur outside our conscious awareness. References: Sternberg, R. J., & Sternberg, K. (2012). Cognitive Psychology (6th ed.). Cengage Learning. 19
