1. Attention

2. Properties of Attention
LIMITED
Allocate attention, switch among tasks;
SELECTIVE
Direct search
Evaluate what is not currently in attention

3. Today. . .limited What can we say about how attention is allocated?
What mechanisms do you use to protect the limited resource of attention?
How do you solve the problem that attention is limited?

4. Allocation Sperling & Melchner: Arrays flash by one at a time, 240
ms each: subjects are to name the location and identification of the two digits on each trial
Subjects do better if told whether the digits will be in the
inner or outer circle of characters.

5. Question:
Is attention always allocated the way that you want?

6. What happens that prevents you from allocating attention?
Of course not!
What happens that prevents you from allocating attention?
In general we could say that there is distraction from without and distraction from within.

7. Allocation: distraction from without
Sudden, high intensity stimuli in the periphery
Certain types of stimuli (that aren’t sudden or high intensity) naturally draw attention (examples?)

8. Question: what strategies do you employ to avoid distraction?

9. Demonstration
Ask them “How many windows are in your house or apartment?”
When they answer, note whether they look off into the distance, or keep their gaze on you.

10. Gatekeeper
Strategy 1: Avoid distracting stimuli. Faces are socially important, & it’s hard not to attend to them.

11. Strategy 2: Habituate
With continued exposure, distracting stimuli no longer demand attention.
This is more effective for stimuli that don’t change much; e.g., harder to habituate to music than a refrigerator hum.
BUT complexity is not so important

12. If this painting were behind me as we were having a conversation, you would habituate, because it’s static.

13. Even this simple scene would be distracting because of the motion

14. Strategy 3: admit some stuff, not others
Next class we’ll talk in more detail about how much the gatekeeper can really evaluate about the stimulus
What is the most distracting auditory stimulus?

15. Allocation: distraction from within

16. Wegner demo

17. Wegner theory
Operating process: seeks mental contents consistent with what you want to think about (no white bear)
Monitoring process: searches for mental contents that you are NOT supposed to think about (white bear)—this is a warning system that mental control is about to fail.
Operating process demands attention, but monitoring doesn’t; thus if you’re distracted, or tired, operating can’t work, but monitoring can.

18. Allocation summary
In order to allocate attention as you desire, you must maintain its focus.
Distractions may come from outside (stimuli in environment) or inside (your own thoughts).
The cognitive system has strategies to maintain allocation to the desired targets.

19. Limited attention: problem 2
Problem 1 was distraction—your desired allocation gets messed up.
Problem 2 is the very fact that attention is limited—you can’t do everything you want to do.
How does your system deal with that problem?

20. When can you go on “auto-pilot?”

21. Reduction in demands w/ practice
Automatic
Little or no attentional cost
With or without intention
Not affected by motivation
Can happen w/o awareness
Controlled
Attentional cost
Occurs only with intention
Affected by motivation
Only with awareness

22. Training to automaticity: Shiffrin & Schneider (1977)
What effect will # of figures on each card have on errors?

23. Results: Early in training Errors 1 2 3 4
Number of figures on each card

24. Results:
Early in training
Errors
After 2100 trials 1 2 3 4
Number of figures on each card

25. Spelke, Hirst, & Neisser Sought automaticity for more complex tasks
Subjects read stories while they took dictation
Initially,huge interference
An hour-long session , 5 days/ week, for six weeks
Developed automaticity.

26. Example of automatic process: reading
Name the ink colors.
Example: “Lion” say “red”

27. LION BEAR TIGER LION
LION LION BEAR BEAR
TIGER BEAR TIGER LION
TIGER LION BEAR TIGER
LION BEAR LION LION
BEAR LION TIGER BEAR
TIGER LION TIGER LION

28. GREEN RED RED GREEN
LION GREEN BLUE BLUE
RED RED GREEN BLUE
GREEN RED GREEN RED
BLUE GREEN RED BLUE
BLUE RED BLUE GREEN
BLUE GREEN RED GREEN

29. THE POINT
Reading is automatic and therefore happens without intention: even when you don’t want it to happen, it does.
This phenomenon is limited by context: e.g, stoplight.
cf interference in sports. . .

30. Summary Attention is limited
To deal with this limitation, we allocate it, and we make frequently practiced tasks automatic
In trying to allocate attention, there are potential distractions, both internal and external
We have strategies for dealing with these