Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8e
Outline Chapter 3
Page 1 of 9
CHAPTER 3
Perceptual Processes II: Attention and
Consciousness
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
Trying to attend to everything at once is more than the cognitive
processes can handle.
attention—concentration of mental activity
top-down and bottom-up processing
attention and visual phenomena
SEVERAL KINDS OF ATTENTION PROCESSES
Divided Attention
divided-attention task
 trying to pay attention to two or more simultaneous messages
 respond appropriately to each message
 speed and accuracy suffer
multitasking
 walking and talking
 reading and IM
 People may believe that they can multitask, but the research does
not support this illusion.
 People perform faster and more accurately if they work on one task
at a time.
©2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8e
Outline Chapter 3
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Divided Attention (continued)
driving studies
Collet and coauthors (2011)
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handheld cell phone while driving
reaction times during driving are 20% slower than without the cell phone
Strayer and colleagues (2003)
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hands-free cell phones, traffic
slower to brake
inattentional blindness
passenger conversations
task switching
Selective Attention Overview
 pay attention to certain kinds of information, while ignoring
other ongoing information
 simplifies our lives
 People notice little about the irrelevant tasks.
Selective attention tasks discussed in Chapter 3:
 Dichotic listening
 The Stroop Effect/Task
 Visual search
 Saccadic eye movements during reading
©2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8e
Outline Chapter 3
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Dichotic Listening
 a selective-attention task
 one message presented to left ear and a different message
presented to right ear
 shadow one of the messages
 People notice very little about the unattended message.
In general, people can process only one message at a time. However,
people may process the unattended message when:
1. both messages are presented slowly
2. the task is not challenging
3. the meaning of the unattended message is immediately relevant
cocktail party effect
working memory capacity
The Stroop Effect
a selective-attention task
Demonstration 3.1: The Stroop Effect
 naming the ink color of words
 incongruent words vs. colored patches
 People take a long time to name the ink color when that color is
used in printing an incongruent word; in contrast, they can quickly
name that same ink color when it appears as a solid patch of color.
explanations in terms of PDP and practice
reading as automatic process
emotional Stroop task
 naming the ink color of words with strong emotional significance
 trouble ignoring emotional reactions
 phobic disorder—slower on anxiety-arousing words than on
control words
©2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8e
Outline Chapter 3
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The Stroop Effect (continued)
attentional bias
 suicide
 depression
 addiction
 eating disorders
Individual Differences: Eating Disorders and the Stroop Effect
Pringle and coauthors (2010)
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online questionnaire, female dieters
emotionally relevant words related to body shape, weight, eating; neutral
words
Stroop task; Eating Attitudes Test
When women took much longer to read words related to shape (as opposed to
the control words), they were especially likely to have high scores on the
Eating Attitudes Test (risk for developing eating disorders.
cognitive-behavioral approach
Visual Search
 a selective-attention task
 find a target in a visual display with numerous distractors
Variables Influencing Visual Search
more accurate if the target appears frequently
Treisman studies
1. The isolated-feature/combined-feature effect.
Demonstration 3.2: Treisman and Gelade (1980)
searching for blue Xs
If the target differed from the irrelevant items in the display with respect to a
simple feature such as color, observers could quickly detect the target.
When the irrelevant items force you to search for a combination of features
(both blue and X), visual search takes longer.
2. The feature-present/feature-absent effect.
Demonstration 3.3: Treisman and Souther (1985)
searching for "circle with the line" or "circle without the line"
People can typically locate a feature that is present more quickly than a
feature that is absent.
©2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8e
Outline Chapter 3
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Visual Search (continued)
Royden and colleagues (2001)
People can quickly locate one moving target when it appears in a group of
stationary distractors.
In contrast, they take much longer to locate one stationary target when it
appears in a group of moving distractors.
It’s easier to spot a movement-present object than a movement-absent object.
In Depth: Saccadic Eye Movements During Reading
 a selective-attention task
 eye movements important in looking, searching, driving, speaking,
and reading
saccadic eye movement
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series of little jumps of the eye
bring the center of the retina (fovea) over the words being read
fixation
perceptual span
patterns—The eye usually moves past blank spaces, short words, and
highly predictable words, but the eye usually pauses for misspellings,
unusual words.
good readers vs. poor readers—size of saccadic movements, regressions,
pauses
©2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8e
Outline Chapter 3
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EXPLANATIONS FOR ATTENTION
Neuroscience Research on Attention
Compare Figure 3.2: Brain Regions Important on Attention Tasks and
Figure 2.1: Brain Regions Important in Object Recognition
The Orienting Attention Network
 selecting information from sensory input
 visual search
 parietal lobe
 brain lesions
 unilateral neglect
 PET scans indicate increased blood flow in the parietal cortex
when people perform visual searches and when they pay attention
to spatial locations.
 develops during first year of life
The Executive Attention Network
 used when task features conflict
 Stroop task
 inhibiting automatic responses to stimuli
 prefrontal cortex
 top-down control of attention
 develops about age 3
 academic skills (e.g., reading)
 meditation
 learning new ideas
©2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8e
Outline Chapter 3
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Theories of Attention
Early Theories of Attention
Bottleneck theories
 narrow passageway
 information either passes through bottleneck or is lost
 too simple; underestimates flexibility
 information not lost at just one phase of the attention process
Feature-Integration Theory (Anne Treisman)
1. The basic elements
distributed attention
register features automatically
parallel processing
identify features simultaneously
low-level processing
focused attention
slower serial processing
identify one object at a time
complex objects
identify which features belong together
2. Research on the theory
 isolated features (distributed attention)
 combined features (focused attention)
 Demonstration 3.2A vs. Demonstration 3.2B
 Distributed attention can operate in a parallel fashion and relatively
automatically; the target seemed to ‘‘pop out’’ in Demonstration 3.2A.
 People need more time to find the target when there are a large number of
distractors in a focused-attention task.
illusory conjunction
 inappropriate combination of features
 occurs when attention is overloaded or distracted
 features processed independently
 binding problem
 illusory conjunctions with printed verbal material
 role of top-down processing
©2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8e
Outline Chapter 3
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Feature-Integration Theory (Anne Treisman) (continued)
3. Current status of the theory
Distributed attention can occasionally resemble focused attention.
Visual system may use distributed attention to quickly gather information
about the general gist of a scene.
CONSCIOUSNESS
consciousness—the awareness people have about the outside world and
about their perceptions, images, thoughts, memories, and feelings
related to attention, but not identical
generally associated with controlled, focused attention that is not
automatic
Three Interrelated Issues
1. our inability to bring certain thoughts into consciousness
2. our inability to let certain thoughts escape from consciousness
3. blindsight
Consciousness of our higher mental processes
 mindless reading
 mind wandering
Nisbett & Wilson (1977)
little direct access to our thought processes
products vs. processes
People have relatively complete access to some thought processes, but
only limited access to other thought processes.
©2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8e
Outline Chapter 3
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Thought Suppression
thought suppression—the attempt to eliminate thoughts, ideas, and
images related to an undesirable stimulus
Demonstration 3.5: Do not think about a white bear!
ironic effects of mental control
Wegner
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Tolstoy's "white bear" task
initial suppression of specific thoughts can produce a rebound effect
Similar effect found for:
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pain suppression
concentration
avoiding movement
trying to fall asleep
Clinical applications
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avoiding depressing topics
post-traumatic stress disorder
generalized anxiety disorder
obsessive-compulsive disorder
Blindsight
vision without awareness
damage to visual cortex
can still identify some visual attributes of stimulus reported as "not seen"
(no conscious awareness of object)
Possible explanations
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A small portion of the information from the retina travels to other locations on
the cerebral cortex, outside the visual cortex
Some characteristics of the visual stimulus may be identified by information
registered in other cortical locations.
Primary visual cortex is necessary for conscious awareness of visual
information.
Perception of the stimulus (without conscious awareness) may be possible.
Research on consciousness demonstrates that "how things seem" is not
necessarily "how things are."
©2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.