PSYC 323
Week 3.1 – Selective Attention
Attention:
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Information reduction tool (filters noise that aren’t relevant to our current goals)
Transfers sensory mem into WM
Early Researchers
Titchener
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“Attention increases clarity”
Being able to make fuzzy info more clear by paying attention
Behaviourist Years
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Attention was largely ignored by behaviourists
They thought attention was a bi-product of behaviour, not smth you could control
Gestalt psychologists thought attention was was an emergent property that led to some
items getting processed more than others
Can Humans Selectively Attend?
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Yes, sometimes
Ex: Red and green text (you won’t remember the green words or what the red words said)
Lateralized Attention Task
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Switching what side you’re attending to
Proves you can pay attention to a specific spot and which brain regions are involved
Dichotic Listening Task
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Focus attention on one ear’s message and repeat it
Filter out info going into other ear
Ppl can select attention! They have little memory for non-attended ear
Some words leaked though (hearing their name, it caught their attention)
Semantic info was’t remembered
Broadbent
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Early filter model
1. Physical characteristics
2. Semantic analysis (meaning)
3. Awareness, encoded into memory and responses
All processing of physical features is done in parallel and involuntarily
The, attention kicks in and is required for semantic processing
Treisman
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Participants hear diff info in each ear, and they still payed attention to the unattended ear
The meaning of the unattended ear were processed (goes against Broadbent)
Stroop Effect
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Task: Identify colour of text, when they don’t spell their colour (incongruent)
Try ignoring the meaning of word
Most people accidentally read the words
It’s being processed at the semantic level
Late Selection Theory
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New theory
Attentional selection is not required to identify objects to the semantic level
All the stimuli enter and get processed up to the semantic level
Semantic representations of everything
Attention impacts our conscious awareness and attentional capacity to identify which
items will be stored in memory, brought to awareness and which ones will be responded
on
Parallel
The Stroop Effect – Macleod Reading
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Words are read faster than colours can be named
Interference happens when the task is to name the colour and ignore the word
Many researchers use the Stroop Task study to explore key aspects of attention, leaening,
memory, language, reading and other cognitive skills.
The test can be easily replicated and has shown reliable effects (MacLeod re-did the task
50 yrs later)
ACC and DPFC function
Research Unit 1
Purpose of the study: To examine whether interference occurs
Trial 1:
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Trial 2:
Distractor: Word
Target: Colour (filling the block)
Having to say what colour the box is without reading the word in the middle
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Distractor: word written outside the box (diff locations)
Target: Colour
(different condition, incongruent)
Trial 3:
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“Blue” and word in same box
Experimental Design
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IV:
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1. Stroop congruency (2 levels – congruent, incongruent)
2. Relative spatial location (2 levels – same location, different location)
DV: Response Time (ms)
2x2 withing subjects (everyone does every level)
5 blocks or 64 trials