Lecture 6
Aiming the spotlight:
Selective attention, absorption, and the construction of reality.
Readings for this week: Baars, Theater, Chapter 4. (We are going back to Chapter 4 to
pick up some important ideas.
The spotlight of selective attention versus the conscious contents of the bright spot.
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Selective attention corresponds to the selective role of the
spotlight, scanning the world and ourselves from moment to
moment. It’s a metaphor, of course --- but useful, as long as we are
careful with it.
Notice the difference in the theater metaphor between
conscious contents --- Mickey Mouse performing in the bright spot
on stage --- and selective attention, which controls where the
spotlight is aimed. The spotlight makes selections, based on goal
priorities and salient inputs --- alarms and opportunities. But
Mickey Mouse doing his act represent the contents of
consciousness --- the things that are selected by the spotlight. It’s
a fairly subtle but important distinction.
If you have a pet, you can easily see them responding to
alarms and opportunities. And you know pretty well what their
ongoing goals are --- they include food, comfort, companionship,
the opportunity to play, sex, and protection of their territories. So
it’s easy to see them orienting their eyes, ears and nose to
opportunities, jumping at alarming events and then orienting to
them, and pursuing their ongoing goals.
We can’t see directly what they are conscious of, but we can
identify with what the food looks and smells like in our own
consciousness. (Just pretend you have a really good sense of smell,
and no color vision).
In certain states of mind, we have pretty good voluntary
control over our selective attention ---- so we can guide pretty well
where our consciousness is going. That’s presumbly the case for
you now!
In other states, like drowsy states, or when we feel tired, we
have less voluntary control over selective attention, and our
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attention wanders hither and thither.
Both of these kinds of states are very interesting. In the
“directed” state, we can do effortful thinking, step-by-step
reasoning, and deal with difficult topics. The ability to directe
effortful attention bears a close relationship to the biological
component of intelligence (the so-called “g” factor).
In the “undirected states” all kinds of nonvoluntary and
quasi-conscious and unconscious influences move our
consciousness in unexpected directions. That tells us a lot about
those less-than-completely-conscious states and what they allow to
emerge when we are relatively unguarded, and more willing
express who we are… We are less alert to manage our social
appearances.
William James.
In perhaps the most famous quotation from William James’
great Principles of Psychology of 1890, both the “directed” and
“undirected” attentional states are discussed.
First, the more “directed state” where we select conscious
contents deliberately:
“Every one knows what attention is. It is the taking
possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what
seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.
Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It
implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively
with others …”
Second, the more “undirected state,” where conscious
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contents seem to happen to us:
“ (The directed state) has a real opposite in the confused,
dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction…”
“We all know this latter state …
“Most people probably fall several times a day into a fit of
something like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of
the world melt into confused unity, the attention is dispersed so
that the whole body is felt, as it were, at once, and the foreground
of consciousness is filled, if by anything, by a sort of solemn sense
of surrender to the empty passing of time. In the dim background
of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing:
getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has
spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But
somehow we cannot start; the [thoughts in back of the mind] fail to
pierce the shell of lethargy that wraps our state about. Every
moment we expect the spell to break, for we know no reason why
it should continue. But it does continue, pulse after pulse, and we
float with it, until - also without reason that we can discover - an
energy is given, something - we know not what - enables us to
gather ourselves together, we wink our eyes, we shake our heads,
the background-ideas become effective, and the wheels of life go
round again.”
“This curious state … can for a few moments be produced at
will by fixing the eyes on vacancy. Some persons can voluntarily
empty their minds and 'think of nothing. … Fatigue, monotonous
mechanical occupations that end by being automatically carried on,
tend to reproduce it in men. It is not sleep; and yet when aroused
from such a state, a person will often hardly be able to say what he
has been thinking about. Subjects of the hypnotic trance seem to
lapse into it when left to themselves; asked what they are thinking
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of, they reply, 'of nothing particular'.”
This James quote captures the basic points of this Lecture,
including the fact that hypnotic states --- more suggestible states of
mind --- may have this quality of being somewhat undirected, or
effort-free. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of guiding
influences in dreams, daydreams, and effort-free states. It just
means we don’t have a sense of effort, of “pushing” our attention
toward one particular goal.
Effort-free states.
In *absorbed states,* sometimes called *the experience of
Flow* we feel alert, but our conscious contents are deeply
involved in making music, dancing, running, or playing. Creative
activities often take place in such a "Flow" state. In Flow states we
usually do not feel conflicts about our goals, or whether to pay
attention to this or that. We do not worry about things that are not
relevant to our current experiences. We are capable of more
"imaginative involvement," in the words of Jerome Singer, one of
the pioneers in this area. Absorption has a small but reliable
correlation with suggestibility, which can be considered to be a
state in which we don't bother to judge ourselves --- so we are not
constantly evaluating our own conscious experiences.
Meditation-related states can have this quality of being
absorbing. So do dreams and daydreams. “Twilight states”
between waking and sleeping are a natural place to explore a
spontaneous flow of experiences. (See our P-Lab for this week).
Some researchers believe that this unguided, spontaneous
flow of consciousness goes along with low activity in parts of the
frontal lobes (frontal hypometabolism). That happens in drowsy
states, but also in alert states where we just are not trying hard to
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make something happen, or to avoid something. When we are
focused in an effortful way, there is good evidence that parts of the
frontal lobes are very active. (Particularly the "anterior cingulate
cortex," which we'll show in a brain figure.) When we are not
trying to guide our attention and consciousness in one way or
another, there is some evidence that the frontal lobes are less busy.
In REM dreams (with rapid eye movements) we usually
follow an inner movie --- a narrative flow of visual and meaningful
but surreal events. In other sleep states there are now believed to
be other kinds of mentation, including a kind of very literal flow of
inner speech. During “lucid dreaming” we experience both an
inner movie and also maintain the knowledge that we are
dreaming. So that is a kind of “metacognition during dreaming,”
implying more frontal lobe activity.
Phenomenology Lab.
The P-Lab for this week explores “twilight states” --- the
state between sleep and waking. There are some interesting things
we would like you to explore about your own twilight experiences.
All of us experience some twilight states at least twice a day,
when we are waking up and going to sleep. Sometimes we may
have them more often, when we feel sleepy during the day, or
when we are near waking at night. It is a very normal and frequent
state, but we rarely pay much attention to it.
Different people have different attentional styles. One
interesting aspect is the question of absorption, and the
interestingly related one of suggestibility.
Two psychometric scales have been used extensively to
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study Absorption and Suggestibility (a better word than hypnosis).
They are both available on the web. You might want to have a
good look at the specific items on those scales, which were chosen
because work statistically to predict some behavior.
1. Absorption:
Absorption is being fully conscious of one stream of events,
like a movie or a book you are reading. It is easy to notice when
you have a sense of “time loss.” This is a sense of surprise that it is
later than you thought! The psychometric scale that is used most
often is the Tellegen Absorption Scale: http://istsocrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/TAS.htm Tellegen & Atkinson
(1974) define Absorption as … "full commitment of available
perceptual, motoric, imaginative, and ideational resources to a
unified representation of the attentional object" (p. 274). Meaning,
whatever we are conscious of!
There is a consistent finding of about 30 percent correlation
between the tendency toward Absorption and the tendency to be
Suggesible. Not huge, but consistent. So…
2. Suggestibility:
While there is still ongoing controversy over hypnosis, there
has been some solid progress in understanding. One clear finding
is that about one-quarter of the normal population is highly
suggestible, as measured by standard scales. So Suggestibility is an
“individual differences” variable, more than it is the result of any
specific hypnotic induction. A lot of this work was done at
Stanford University by Ernest R. Hilgard and coworkers. You can
see the Stanford Hypnotizability Scale at stsocrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/
PDFfiles/Hypnotizability/SHSSC%20Script.pdf
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Again, we recommend that you take a look at the items on
the scale. Suggestibility is assessed by doing a traditional series of
suggestions about relaxation, looking at a point on the ceiling,
closing the eyes, and so on. Then there is a series of tests --suggestions to do things that are increasingly improbable. Most
people will allow their arms to float upward upon suggestion, for
example, but only a quarter of the population might be suggested
into hearing a buzzing fly.
A tiny percentage of people can be suggested into a “divided
consciousness” state, an apparent dissociative state. More about
this later on.
3. One selective attention system in the brain.
Professor Tutis Villis: A brain circuit involved in the control
of eye movement.
http://www.med.uwo.ca/physiology/courses/sensesweb/
Click on Prof. Villis’ Lecture 11, Eye movements, for an
excellent graphics show of some basic ways in which your brain
moves your eyes. There are many attentional systems in the brain,
if we define “attention” as the selection of conscious contents. Eye
movement control can be considered as one basic example.
4. There are some interesting current hypotheses about brain
differences between highly suggestible and low-suggestible
people. Helen J. Crawford’s laboratory site at the University of
Vermont shows articles claiming that the front part of the corpus
callosum --- the great bridge of neurons that runs between the two
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hemispheres --- is thicker in people who show high suggestibility.
That may mean that there is a denser population of neurons in the
front of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, involved in voluntary
control of attention. See http://www.psyc.vt.edu/?p=faculty&f=hjc
5. Finally, there is good description of classical studies of the
remarkable tenacity of our belief systems --- the basic conceptual
world in which we live and act. Leon Festinger’s book When
Prophecies Fail studied some spectacular examples among flying
saucer devotees and “end of the world” cults. In both kinds of
groups, falsification of their predictions did not change most of
their beliefs. See When Prophecies Fail:
http://www.freeminds.org/psych/propfail.htm
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Other aspects of selective attention: Aiming the spotlight.
As we have noted, it is useful to define "attention" as the
SELECTION of conscious contents. In the theater metaphor it is
whatever it is that guides the spotlight that casts the bright spot of
consciousness on stage.
You can think of it this way, if you imagine the spotlight
pointing in different directions, to cast light on different objects:
Attention as “selection of conscious contents” fits our common
sense --- we ask kids in school to "pay attention" to the teacher, on
the assumption that they will therefore become conscious of
whatever the teacher says. In fact, the distinction between selective
attention and the resulting conscious experiences pervades our
language.
But if that's our working definition, there must be MANY
different selective attention mechanisms. For example, eye
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movements result in conscious visual experiences. But most of our
eye movements are not consciously controlled! If you carefully
watch another person reading a book, you will notice that their
eyes don't move smoothly --- they jump from place to place. We
have no experience of that subjectively --- my reading eye
movements appears to be very smooth --- but all of us do it
anyway. It’s easy to see. So eye movements are one set of selective
mechanisms that result in conscious visual experiences, but which
we do not control or track consciously most of the time.
Well, that implies that the "spotlight controller" might be
sitting in the dark unconscious --- a lot of selection of our
conscious contents goes on unconsciously. And so we arrive at an
old Jamesian distinction between "voluntary" and "nonvoluntary"
control of selective attention. When we ask somebody to pay
attention, that is obviously voluntary (i.e. he person is given a
conscious goal to achieve). In humans that requires prefrontal
cortex. When a loud noise startles you, that is one kind of
nonvoluntary attention, controlled by the early stages of the
auditory system, located in the brainstem. These are completely
different brain regions, but they both result in something becoming
conscious!
In the real world, our attentional selection is always a mix of
voluntary and nonvoluntary elements. James talked about
attentional habits, such as the habit of reading that you are
indulging in right now! You may not remember it in any detail,
but at one time in your early life you had to pay voluntary attention
to the differences between letters like “b,” “p,” “d” and “q”. Those
letters are now automatically recognizable, they are habitually
selected to come to consciousness.
One result of these automatic (unconscious) attentional habits
is the famous Stroop Effect. This is a color naming task: As
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quickly as you can, call out the colors you see, not the words you
are reading:
Was it hard? It is for us. We always tend to make the mistake
of calling out the words, rather than the colors of the words. It is
easy to show that this is due to our “attentional habits” of selecting
the sounds and meanings of words, rather than their colors. To
show this, all we need to do is turn the same set of words upside
down so that you can’t read them easily, and try it again. Just call
out the colors as quickly as you can:
Now do you find it easier to name the colors? We do. That is
because our automatic “attentional habits” of reading words are not
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getting in the way. In fact, the Stroop Effect involves a conflict
between voluntary and nonvoluntary selective attention. If you
ever experience a conflict between eating that delicious chocolate
ice cream cone and staying on your diet, you’ll know pretty much
what we mean. Interestingly, conflictual tasks seem to activate the
same part of the brain, regardless of the kind of conflict involved.
(The anterior cingulate cortex).
As James says beautifully (see Week 1), what we experience
consciously over the hours and years of normal life is what we
SELECT. We are not what we eat, but what we read, listen to,
watch on TV and movies, and otherwise allow to enter our
consciousness.
“…what is called our 'experience' is almost entirely
determined by our habits of attention. A thing may be present to a
man a hundred times, but if he persistently fails to notice it, it
cannot be said to enter into his experience. We are all seeing flies,
moths, and beetles by the thousand, but to whom, save an
entomologist, do they say anything distinct? On the other hand, a
thing met only once in a lifetime may leave an indelible experience
in the memory. Let four men make a tour in Europe. One will
bring home only picturesque impressions -- costumes and colors,
parks and views and works of architecture, pictures and statues. To
another all this will be non-existent; and distances and prices,
populations and drainage-arrangements, door- and windowfastenings, and other useful statistics will take their place. A third
will give a rich account of the theatres, restaurants, and public
halls, and naught besides; whilst the fourth will perhaps have been
so wrapped in his own subjective broodings as to be able to tell
little more than a few names of places through which he passed.
Each has selected, out of the same mass of presented objects, those
which suited his private interest and has made his experience
thereby. …”
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(Needless to say, by “men” James meant “people.”)
This is not to say that we can arbitrarily select what we are
going to be conscious of. For example, try crossing a busy
highway without paying attention to oncoming traffic. We’ll bet
it’s impossible. (But don’t try it at home.) Selective attention is
almost always functional, it helps us to survive, seek pleasure and
avoid pain, solve problems and generally find our way through life.
Dreams, fantasies, and imaginative involvement.
REPEATED THEMES:
From Domhoff *** The major unexpected finding from studying
several different lengthy dream series using the Hall and Van de
Castle (1966) coding system is how consistent dream content is
over years and decades for most people, whatever their motives
may be for writing down their dreams (Domhoff, 1996, 2003).
Future courses.
We are pleased with the progress of this WebCourse, and with
the active debates going on in the Discussion threads. Now we are
planning for a more advanced course, Consciousness II: The
WebCourse. It will cover “Emotions, higher states and the brain.”
If you would like to share your thoughts about future courses,
please send an email to Dr. Baars.
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