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Topic outline

 

  • Time: 10 hours
    Level: Advanced

 
 

Introduction

  • Introduction Resource
  • For many of us the concept of attention may have rather negative connotations. At school we were told to pay attention, making us all too aware that it was not possible to listen to the teacher while at...
 

1 Auditory attention

  • 1.1 Introduction Resource
  • To cover some of the concept of attention (we have only a unit, and there are whole books on the subject) I shall follow an approximately historical sequence, showing how generations of psychologists have...
  • 1.2 Disentangling sounds Resource
  • If you are still feeling aggrieved about the shortcomings of evolution, then you might take heart from the remarkable way in which the auditory system has evolved so as to avoid a serious potential problem....
  • 1.3 Attending to sounds Resource
  • From the earlier sections, you will appreciate that the auditory system is able to separate different, superimposed sounds on the basis of their different source directions. This makes it possible to attend...
  • 1.4 Eavesdropping on the unattended message Resource
  • It was not long before researchers devised more complex ways of testing Broadbent's theory of attention, and it soon became clear that it could not be entirely correct. Even in the absence of formal experiments,...
  • 1.5 Summary of Section 1 Resource
  • The auditory system is able to process sounds in such a way that, although several may be present simultaneously, it is possible to focus upon the message of interest. However, in experiments on auditory...
 

2 Visual attention

  • 2.1 Introduction Resource
  • I introduced Section 1 by suggesting that the auditory system had a special problem: unlike the visual system, it needed processes which would permit a listener to attend to a specific set of sounds without...
  • 2.2 Knowing about unseen information Resource
  • An obvious difference between hearing and seeing is that the former is extended in time, while the latter extends over space. So, for example, we can listen to a spoken sentence coming from one place,...
  • 2.3 Towards a theory of parallel processing Resource
  • When people are asked to guess about masked material, they are commonly able to provide some information, but it often lacks detail. For example, if participants in a Sperling-type experiment have recalled...
  • 2.4 Rapid serial visual presentation Resource
  • It has been known for a long time that backward masking can act in one of two ways: integration and interruption (Turvey, 1973). When the SOA between target and mask is very short, integration occurs;...
  • 2.5 Masking and attention Resource
  • Before I summarise the material in this section, and we move on to consider attentional processes with clearly-seen displays, it would be appropriate to consider the relevance of the masking studies to...
  • 2.6 Summary of Section 2 Resource
  • The results of the visual attention experiments we have considered can be interpreted as follows.
 

3 Integrating information in clearly-seen displays

  • 3.1 Introduction Resource
  • The binding of features emerges as being a very significant process when displays are brief, because there is so little time in which to unite them. With normal viewing, such as when you examine the letters...
  • 3.2 Serial and parallel search Resource
  • Examine the three sections of Figure 5 and in each case try to get a feel for how long it takes you to find the ‘odd one out’. The figure is a monochrome version of the usual form of these stimuli you...
  • 3.3 Non-target effects Resource
  • Treisman's feature integration theory has been very influential, but it does not appear to explain all experimental observations, and there have been alternative accounts of the feature-binding process....
  • 3.4 The ‘flanker’ effect Resource
  • A potential problem for the feature integration theory is the fact that the time taken to understand the meaning of a printed word can be influenced by other, nearby words. Of itself, this is not surprising,...
  • 3.5 Summary of Section 3 Resource
  • When consciously perceiving complex material, such as when looking for a particular letter of a particular colour:
 

4 Attention and distraction

  • 4.1 Introduction Resource
  • The above account of having attention taken away from the intended target reminds us that, while it may be advantageous from a survival point of view to have attention captured by novel events, these events...
  • 4.2 The effects of irrelevant speech Resource
  • Imagine watching a computer screen, on which a series of digits is flashed, at a nice easy rate of one per second. After six items you have to report what the digits had been, in the order presented (this...
  • 4.3 Attending across modalities Resource
  • The preceding section raised the issue of attention operating (and to some extent failing) across two sensory modalities. By focusing on distraction we ignored the fact that sight and sound (and other...
  • 4.4 Summary of Section 4 Resource
  • We have seen that attentive processes will ‘work hard’ to unite information into a coherent whole.
 

5 The neurology of attention

  • 5.1 Introduction Resource
  • Modern techniques for revealing where and when different parts of the brain become active have recently provided a window on the processes of attention. For example, one of these brain-scanning techniques,...
  • 5.2 The effects of brain damage Resource
  • Before the advent of ‘brain mapping’, such as by fMRI, it was nevertheless possible to discover something of the part played by different regions of the brain, by observing the problems resulting from...
  • 5.3 Event-related potentials Resource
  • When a sense organ (eye, ear, etc.) receives a stimulus, the event eventually causes neurons to ‘fire’ (i.e. produce electrical discharges) in the receiving area of the brain. The information is sent on...
  • 5.4 Summary of Section 5 Resource
  • Many familiar themes have re-emerged in this section, together with the recognition that attention is involved in the assembly of remembered material as well as of current perceptions.
 

6 Concluding thoughts

  • 6 Concluding thoughts Resource
  • We seem to have come a long way and covered a great deal of ground since I approached this subject by explaining that a mechanism must exist to help us focus on one sound out of many. That clearly is one...
 

Further reading

  • Further reading Resource
  • Styles, E.A. (1997) The Psychology of Attention, Hove, Psychology Press. A very readable textbook, which covers and extends the topics introduced in this unit.
 

References and Acknowledgements

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