COGNITIVE INTRODUCTION

Attention
“attention is taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form , of one out of what seem
several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts…….. it implies withdrawal from
some things in order to deal effectively with others
- - William james, principles of
psychology
Attention is the means by which we actively process a limited amount of information from the
enormous amount of information available through our senses, our stored memories, and our other
cognitive processes (De Weerd , 2003a; Rao, 2003). It includes both conscious and unconscious
processes. In many cases, conscious processes are relatively easy to study. Unconscious processes
are harder to study, simply because you are not conscious of them (Jacoby, Lindsay, & Toth, 1992;
Merikle, 2000). For example, you always have a wealth of information available to you that you are
not even aware of until you retrieve that information from your memory or shift your attention
toward it. You probably can remember where you slept when you were ten years old or where you
ate your breakfasts when you were 12.

Attention allows us to use our limited mental resources judiciously. By dimming the lights on many
stimuli from outside (sensations) and inside (thoughts and memories), we can highlight the stimuli
that interest us. This heightened focus increases the likelihood that we can respond speedily and
accurately to interesting stimuli. Heightened attention also paves the way for memory processes.
We are more likely to remember information to which we paid attention than information we
ignored

Function of attention
1. Signal detection and vigilance: We try to detect the appearance of a particular stimulus. Air
traffic controllers, for example, keep an eye on all traffic near and over the airport
2. Search: We try to find a signal amidst distracters, for example, when we are looking for our
lost cell phone on an autumn leaf-filled hiking path.
3. Selective attention: We choose to attend to some stimuli and ignore others, as when we are
involved in a conversation at a party.
4. Divided attention: We prudently allocate our available attentional resources to coordinate
our performance of more than one task at a time, as when we are cooking and engaged in a
phone conversation at the same time

Types of Attention
1) Selective attention - The term selective attention refers to the fact that we usually
focus our attention on one or a few tasks or events rather than on many. To say we mentally
focus our resources implies that we shut out (or at least process less information from)
 other, competing tasks. As attention researcher Hal Pashler (1998) puts it, “At any given
moment, [people’s] awareness encompasses only a tiny proportion of the stimuli
impinging on their sensory systems”

Cognitive psychologists use dichotic listening task to study what information people process
about things to which they are not paying attention.

It works like this: A person listens to an audiotape over a set of headphones. On the tape are
different messages, recorded so as to be heard simultaneously in opposite ears. Participants
in a dichotic listening task typically are played two or more different messages (often texts
borrowed from literature, newspaper stories, or speeches) and asked to “shadow”—that is,
to repeat aloud—one of them. Information is typically presented at a rapid rate (150 words
per minute), so the shadowing task is demanding. At the end of the task, participants are
asked what information they remember from either message—the attended message or the
unattended message. (Sometimes the tapes are recorded so that both messages are heard
in both ears—called binaural presentation—and some researchers have used it in addition
to dichotic listening tasks.)
The logic of this experimental setup is as follows: The person must concentrate on the
message to be shadowed. Because the rate of presentation of information is so fast, the
shadowing task is difficult and requires a great deal of mental resources. Therefore, fewer
resources are available to process information from the nonshadowed , nonattended
message

2) Divided Attention - If attention is a flexible system for allocating resources, and if

tasks differ in the amount of attention they require, then people should be able to learn to
perform two tasks at once. Parents of teenagers, for example, often marvel over how their
children seem able to listen to music, talk on the phone to their friends, and study all at the
same time. :-
Dual-Task Performance - Spelke, Hirst, and Neisser (1976) examined this question in
a clever and demanding laboratory study. Two Cornell University students were recruited as
participants. Five days a week, for 17 weeks, working in 1-hour sessions, these students
learned to write words dictated while they read short stories. Their reading comprehension
was periodically tested. After 6 weeks of practice, their reading rates approached their
normal speeds. Investigation revealed that participants could also categorize the dictated
words by meaning and could discover relations among the words without sacrificing reading
speed or comprehension
1) One hypothesis is that participants alternated their attention between the two tasks,
attending first to the story, then to the dictation, then back to the story, and so on.

Hirst, Spelke, Reaves, Caharack, and Neisser (1980) found evidence against this
alternation hypothesis. Their participants were trained in ways similar to those used by
Spelke et al. (1976). All participants copied dictated words while reading. Some
participants read short stories. Other participants read encyclopedia articles. After they
reached normal reading speeds and reading comprehension during dictation, the
participants’ tasks were switched: Those who had been reading short stories were now
given encyclopedia articles, and those trained using encyclopedia articles now read short
stories. Six of the seven participants performed comparably with the new reading
material, indicating that the participants were probably not alternating their attention
 between the two tasks. If they were, then learning to take dictation while reading short
stories should not transfer well to doing so while reading encyclopedia articles.

2) A second possible explanation was according to Posner and Snyder’s (1979). Hirst et al.
(1980) also offered evidence against the possibility that one task becomes automatized.

Participants trained to copy complete sentences while reading were able to comprehend
and recall those sentences, suggesting that the participants had processed the dictation
task for meaning. This in turn suggests they paid at least some attention to the dictation
task, given that most psychologists believe automatic processing occurs without
comprehension.
3) A third explanation for how participants were able to perform two tasks at once, which
Hirst et al. (1980) favored, is that the participants learned to combine two separate
tasks: reading and taking dictation.
That is, practice with these two specific tasks caused the participants to perform the
tasks differently from the way they did them at first. This implies that if either one of
these tasks were combined with a third (such as shadowing prose), additional practice
would be needed before the two tasks could be done together efficiently.
Practice thus appears to play an enormous role in performance and is one important
determinant of how much attention any task requires. Studies such as those by Hirst et
al. are not without critics (see Shiffrin, 1988).

4) Sustained Attention - Sustained attention is the ability to focus on an activity or

stimulus over a long period of time.. It is what makes it possible to concentrate on an
activity for as long as it takes to finish, even if there are other distracting stimuli present.
Sustained attention is usually divided into vigilance (detecting the appearance of a stimulus)
and concentration (focusing on the stimulus or activity). This important cognitive skill helps
us efficiently and successfully carry out tasks and activities in our daily lives, especially those
that take a long time to complete.
Vigilance- Vigilance refers to the ability to concentrate on or attend to a situation for
an extended period of time. The goal is usually the detection of “something”—or, in
more technical terms, a sensory event or signal. During extended search sessions,
however, the ability to consistently detect a signal decreases dramatically due to a
depletion of resources (Mackworth, 1948). This is known as the vigilance decrement.
Concentration- "concentration" refers to the mental and cognitive ability to focus
one's attention on a particular task, activity, or stimulus while ignoring or minimizing
distractions. Concentration is a fundamental aspect of cognitive functioning and is
critical for various daily activities, including studying, working, problem-solving, and even
leisure activities. The ability to concentrate effectively can have a significant impact on
an individual's productivity, performance, and overall well-being.

Theories of selective Attention

Broadbent’s filter theory - Broadbent (1958) proposed a filter theory of

attention, which states that there are limits on how much information a person can attended
to at any given time. Therefore, if the amount of information available at any given time
exceeds capacity, the person uses an attentional filter to let some information through and
block the rest. The filter is based on some physical (in this particular example, basic acoustic)
aspect of the attended message: the location of its source or its typical pitch or loudness, for
instance. Only material that gets past the filter can be analysed later for meaning.
Broadbent’s filter theory maintains that the attentional filter is set to make a selection of
what message to process early in the processing, typically before the meaning of the
message is identified (Pashler, 1998). What is limited is the amount of information we can
process at any given time. Two messages that contain little information, or that present
information slowly, can be processed simultaneously.

Moray (1959) cocktail party effect contradicted this theory, Shadowing performance is
disrupted when one’s own name is embedded in either the attended or the unattended
message. Moreover, the person hears and remembers hearing his name. The cocktail party
effect shows that people sometimes do hear their own name in an unattended message or
conversation, and hearing their name will cause them to switch their attention to the
previously unattended message. Moray concluded that only “important” material can
penetrate the filter set up to block unattended messages. Presumably, messages such as
those containing a person’s name are important enough to get through the filter and be
analysed for meaning. Participants did not always hear their name in the unattended
channel: When not cued in advance to be vigilant, only 33% of the participants ever noticed
their names (Pashler, 1998).

Attenuation Model - To explore why some unattended messages pass through the
filter, Anne Treisman conducted some experiments. She had participants shadowing
coherent messages, and at some point switched the remainder of the coherent message
from the attended to the unattended ear. Participants picked up the first few words of the
message they had been shadowing in the unattended ear (Treisman, 1960), so they must
have been somehow processing the content of the unattended message. Moreover, if the
unattended message was identical to the attended one, all participants noticed it. They
noticed even if one of the messages was slightly out of temporal synchronization with the
other (Treisman, 1964a, 1964b).
Treisman also observed that some fluently bilingual participants noticed the identity of
messages if the unattended message was a translated version of the attended one. Moray’s
modification of Broadbent’s filtering mechanism was clearly not sufficient to explain
Treisman’s (1960, 1964a, 1964b) findings. Her findings suggested that at least some
information about unattended signals is being analysed.
Treisman proposed a theory of selective attention that involves a later filtering mechanism
(Figure 4.9). Instead of blocking stimuli out, the filter merely weakens (attenuates) the
strength of stimuli other than the target stimulus. So when the stimuli reach us, we analyze
them at a low level for target properties like loudness and pitch. In a next step, we
perceptually analyse the meaning of the stimuli and their relevance to us, so that even a
message from the unattended ear that is supposedly irrelevant can come into consciousness
and influence our subsequent actions if it has some meaning for us.

Late-Filter Model - Deutsch and Deutsch (1963; Norman, 1968) developed a model
in which the location of the filter is even later (Figure 4.10). They suggested that stimuli are
 filtered out only after they have been analysed for both their physical properties and their
meaning. This later filtering would allow people to recognize information entering the
unattended ear.
For example, they might recognize the sound of their own names or a translation of
attended input (for bilinguals). Note that proponents of both the early and the late-filtering
mechanisms propose that there is an attentional bottleneck through which only a single
source of information can pass. The two models differ only in terms of where they
hypothesize the bottleneck to be positioned.
A message’s “importance” depends on many factors, including its context and the personal
significance of certain kinds of content (such as your name). Also relevant is the observer’s
level of alertness: At low levels of alertness (such as when we are asleep), only very
important messages (such as the sound of our newborn’s cry) capture attention. At higher
levels of alertness, less important messages (such as the sound of a television program) can
be processed.

Schema theory - Ulric Neisser (1976) offered a completely different

conceptualization of attention, called schema theory. He argued that we don’t filter,
attenuate, or forget unwanted material. Instead, we never acquire it in the first place.
Neisser compared attention to apple picking. The material we attend to is like apples we pick
off a tree—we grasp it. Unattended material is analogous to the apples we don’t pick. To
assume the unpicked apples were “filtered out” of our grasp would be ridiculous; a better
description is that they simply were left on the tree.
Neisser and Becklen (1975) performed a relevant study of visual attention. They created a
“selective looking” task by having participants watch one of two visually superimposed films.
Figure 4-6 shows an example of what participants in this study saw. One film showed a
“hand game,” two pairs of hands playing a familiar hand-slapping game many of us played as
children. The second film showed three people passing or bouncing a basketball, or both.
Participants in the study were asked to “shadow” (attend to) one of the films and to press a
key whenever a target event (such as a hand slap in the first film or a pass in the second film)
occurred.
Neisser and Becklen (1975) found, first, that participants could follow the correct film rather
easily, even when the target event occurred at a rate of 40 per minute in the attended film.
Participants ignored occurrences of the target event in the unattended film. Participants also
failed to notice unexpected events in the unattended film.
Participants also failed to notice unexpected events in the unattended film. For example,
participants monitoring the ballgame failed to notice that in the hand game film, one of the
players stopped hand slapping and began to throw a ball to the other player. Neisser (1976)
believed that skilled perceiving rather than filtered attention explains this pattern of
performance. Neisser and Becklen (1975, pp. 491–492) argued that once picked up, the
continuous and coherent motions of the ballgame (or of the hand game) guide further
pickup.

Controlled and Automatic processing

Automatic processes like writing your name involve no conscious control (Palmeri, 2003). For the
most part, they are performed without conscious awareness. They demand little or no effort or even
intention. Multiple automatic processes may occur at once, or at least very quickly, and in no
particular sequence. Thus, they are termed parallel processes.

In contrast, controlled processes are accessible to conscious control and even require it. Such
processes are performed serially, for example, when you want to compute the total cost of a trip
you are about to book online. In other words, controlled processes occur sequentially, one step at a
time. They take a relatively long time to execute, at least as compared with automatic processes.

Three attributes characterize automatic processes (Posner & Snyder, 1975).

1) they are concealed from consciousness.

2) they are unintentional.

3) they consume few attentional resources

An alternative view of attention suggests a continuum of processes between fully automatic

processes and fully controlled processes. For one thing, the range of controlled processes is so wide
and diverse that it would be difficult to characterize all the controlled processes in the same way
(Logan, 1988). Also, some automatic processes are easy to retrieve into consciousness and can be
controlled intentionally, whereas others are not accessible to consciousness and/or cannot be
controlled intentionally

Many tasks that start off as controlled processes eventually become automatic ones as a result of
practice (LaBerge, 1975, 1990; Raz, 2007). This process is called automatization (also termed
proceduralization). For example, driving a car is initially a controlled process. Once we master
driving, however, it becomes automatic under normal driving conditions. Such conditions involve
familiar roads, fair weather, and little or no traffic.

According to Sternberg’s theory of triarchic intelligence (1999), relatively novel tasks that have not
been automatized—such as visiting a foreign country, mastering a new subject, or acquiring a
foreign language—make more demands on intelligence than do tasks for which automatic
procedures have been developed. A completely unfamiliar task may demand so much of the person
as to be overwhelming

Stroop Effect
A famous demonstration of the effects of practice on the performance of cognitive tasks was given
by John Ridley Stroop (1935). Stroop presented participants with a series of color bars (red, blue,
green, brown, purple) or color words (red, blue, green, brown, purple) printed in conflicting colors
(the word red, for example, might be printed in green ink). On the inside cover of this book, you can
see an example of stimuli similar to those Stroop used.

Participants were asked to name, as quickly as possible, the ink color of each item in the series.
When shown bars, they did so quickly, with few errors and apparently little effort. Things changed
dramatically, however, when the items consisted of words that named colors other than that of the
ink in which the item was printed. Participants stumbled through these lists, finding it difficult not to
read the word formed by the letters.

According to Stroop (1935), the difficulty stems from the following: Adult, literate participants have
had so much practice reading that the task requires little attention and is performed rapidly. In fact,
according to Stroop, literate adults read so quickly and effortlessly that not reading words is hard.
Thus when confronted with items consisting of words, participants couldn’t help reading them. We
describe this kind of response—one that takes little attention and effort and is hard to inhibit—as
automatic.

The actual task given to participants, to name colors, was one they had practiced much less.
Participants in one of Stroop’s (1935) subsequent experiments, given eight days of practice at the
naming task, in fact showed less interference in performing the so-called Stroop task and became
faster at naming colors with all stimuli. Moreover, a summary of the literature suggests that Stroop
interference begins when children learn to read, peaking at around second or third grade (when
reading skills develop) and then declining over the adult years until about age 60 (MacLeod, 1991).
Virtually everyone who can read fluently shows a robust Stroop effect from an early age.

Neurological basis of stroop effect