PSYC20007 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Visual Space, Frontal Lobe, Temporal Lobe
10 May 2018
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Lecture 9
- What Does Attention Act Upon?
- Spotlight theory, FIT etc assume attention acts on a region of space - enhances processing in
that region
- Alternative: attention acts on objects in space, not space itself: object based theories
- What is the evidence and is it possible to distinguish?
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- Rock and Gutman (1981):
- Overlapping figures: attend to one and rate aesthetic appeal; ignore other
- People were told which figure to attend to and to ignore the other → then given
surprise memory test [were given examples of figures without colour] → asked
whether that figure was studied
- Memory test: good memory for attended figure, none for unattended figure (cf. Cherry,
1953)
- Objects occupy same region of space, not consistent with spotlight attention idea
- Maybe the object of attention is the object, not the space it occupies
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- What Happens to the Unattended Shape?
- Mae it’s ot peeied o ot full peeied
- Mae people uikl foget the stiulus the’e ot attedig to? - inattentional amnesia
[thigs ou do’t attend to, you forget quickly]
- Cf. early vs late selection
- Tipper (1985, etc)
- Pairs of red-green figures: trumpet-kite, anchor-trumpet etc
- People were presented with a sequence of frames
- Negative priming:
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- Ignore green name red (e.g. ignore trumpet, name kite)
- What happens when trumpet must be names?
- RT to name trumpet is slower if ignored on previous trial
- Negatie piig egula piig podues speed up
- Means ignored shape must have been perceived [to level of recognition ]to produce effect
on subsequent trial (cf. late selection)
- Implications of Rock & Guttman, Negative Priming:
- → Possible to attend to one object and ignore another when both occupy same region
of space - how?
- → Maybe attention operates on the object, not the space…
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- Evidence for Object-Based Attention:
- Duncan (1984): stimuli differing on four attributes: box size, gap side, line slant, dotted or
dashed line
- Flash [shown] briefly, ask to report two of the attributes (e.g., line slant, gap side)
- People were more accurate if the two attributes belonged to the same object than different
objects
- → same: box size and gap side or line slant and line style (dotted/dashed)
- → different: box size and line slant, etc
- When asked to report 2 attributes of an object → only have to form a short term
memory representation of object, can ignore other one
- When have to report both objects and form representations for both → additional
memory costs to forming both representations
- Stimuli occupy same region of space
- Evidence that attention operates on whole objects
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- Cuing Object-Based Attention: (Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994)
- Miscued locations in same object or different object - same distance from cued location
- Space-based theories say miscuing costs should be the same [because control spatial
distance to be the same, takes same amount of time]
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- Same object advantage: Mean RTs faster to miscued stimuli if in same object
- Evidence that cuing effect spreads to encompass cued objects [not just space, directing
attention to objects within space]
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Document Summary
Spotlight theory, fit etc assume attention acts on a region of space - enhances processing in that region. Alternative: attention acts on objects in space, not space itself: object based theories. Overlapping figures: attend to one and rate aesthetic appeal; ignore other. People were told which figure to attend to and to ignore the other then given surprise memory test [were given examples of figures without colour] asked whether that figure was studied. Memory test: good memory for attended figure, none for unattended figure (cf. Objects occupy same region of space, not consistent with spotlight attention idea. Maybe the object of attention is the object, not the space it occupies. Ma(cid:455)(cid:271)e it"s (cid:374)ot pe(cid:396)(cid:272)ei(cid:448)ed o(cid:396) (cid:374)ot full(cid:455) pe(cid:396)(cid:272)ei(cid:448)ed. [thi(cid:374)gs (cid:455)ou do(cid:374)"t attend to, you forget quickly] People were presented with a sequence of frames. Ignore green name red (e. g. ignore trumpet, name kite)
