Post on 02-Jan-2016
Perception: Attention – Module 11
General Psych 1March 1, 2005
Class #11
How important is attention?
1987 Northwest Airlines jet from Detroit crashed moments after take-off 154 passengers and crew, 2 on ground, died
Attention
Close or careful observation or mental concentration. The ability or power to concentrate mentally (Webster’s New Dictionary, 1996). A selective narrowing or focusing of consciousness (Merriam-Webster’s, 2000)
The process of directing and focusing certain psychological resources to enhance perception, performance, and mental experience (Bernstein (2000), p. 164)
Different Aspects of Attention
Selective Attention Visual Auditory
Divided Attention Automatic Processing
Selective Attention
Focusing our awareness on only part of everything we are experiencing Trying to attend to one task over
another…. Difficult to attend to more than one thing
at the same time
The Stroop Test
Selective Attention – Visual
Stroop Test (1935) Participants were significantly slower
naming color when word says a different color
Why does this happen? Reading is an automatic process (effortless) Color naming is a controlled process (effortful) Automatic process of reading interferes with our
ability to selectively attend to ink (crayon) color
My Stroop Experiments: Successful Replications?
Three Rivers CC (2001): Yes Three Rivers CC (2002): Yes Three Rivers CC (2003): Yes Three Rivers CC (2004): ???
Selective Attention – Visual
Neisser et al. (1979) Lets see how our class does… In this
one minute video, there will be two basketball teamsOne team is wearing black shirts, the
other is wearing white shirtsPick either team and count the number of
passes that are made by that particular team
Sights unseen???
Mack and Rock (1998) Research on a phenomenon known as
inattentional blindness suggests that unless we pay close attention, we can miss even the most conspicuous events
Participants were asked to focus on a cross They often failed to notice an unexpected
object, even when it had appeared in the center of their field of vision
Selective Attention (Auditory)
Dichotic listening task (Cherry, 1953) Any task where two streams of auditory
information are presented simultaneously, one to each ear (generally over headphones). Subjects are required to attend to one ear only.
Shadowing task -- Two messages played, one to each ear. One message has to be "shadowed" by the subject (repeated back out loud). This is called the “attended message.
Selective Attention (Auditory)
Shadowing Task
“the Mets will win it all this year...”
“Dr. Weiss is the toughest teacher at Three Rivers ……”
“Dr. Weiss, uh what?”
Cherry (1953) Cherry: Early researcher on selective
attention. Posed question:Q: How can one attend to a single conversation in a room of simultaneous conversations (cocktail party effect)? A: By making use of physical differences - sex of speaker, voice intensity, location of speaker etc. If two messages are presented simultaneously in the same voice, separating the messages is very difficult.
In Shadowing Task…
Listeners seldom noticed the unattended message being in a foreign language or in reversed speech However, they nearly always noticed physical
changes in the unattended message Cherry’s conclusion?
People can shadow accurately but its not easy
Unattended auditory information receives very little processing
Moray (1959)
Dichotic Listening Experiment Affecting the two ears differently in regard to
a conscious aspect or a physical aspect of sound
Let’s try it ourselves… 3 participants and 2 readers please Results???
Treisman (1960)
Experiment 1 Subjects asked to shadow a story being presented to one ear. At some point, the story was switched to the unattended ear. What do you think happened?
Experiment 2 Attended ear: Dear…3…Jane Unattended ear: 7…aunt…10 What do you think happened?
Effects of an Unattended Word
MacKay (1973): Experiment 1 Attended Ear:
“The boy threw a rock at a bank” Unattended Ear:
“Scissor...ladder…money…finger Question:
Where did the boy throw the rock? Answer:
At a financial bank
Effects of an Unattended Word
MacKay (1973): Experiment 2 Attended Ear: “The boy threw a rock at a bank” Unattended Ear: “ Scissor...ladder…river…finger
Question: Where did the boy throw the rock? Answer: At the riverbank
In both MacKay experiments, unattended message influenced interpretation of attended message
Divided Attention
Trying to attend to two stimuli at once and making multiple responses rather than making one response to multiple stimuli
Performing more than one activity at a time. Can be done when at least one task is so automatic
it requires little or no attention Can be very difficult Can also be accomplished on two tasks that require
attentional focus if it taps into different kinds of attentional resources
Automatic Processing
Does not require attention Example: Driving a car & listening to the radio Example: Reading (as in the Stroop task)
Parallel Processing The ability to search for things rapidly and
automatically (effortless) Reber (1967)
Implicit or automatic processes allow us to be experts – more efficient
Some drawbacks???
Once automatic, hard to unlearn… Any examples of when this might be a problem?
Everyday attentional slips Driving down familiar road when you should be
taking the next road… Maybe part of what happened to Northwest
Airlines tragedy in 1987 Can make it difficult to attend when you really
need to…