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Introduction to selective attention
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Cognitive Psychology: Attention · Learning · Memory · Motivation · Perception · Thinking
Selective attention . A type of attention which involves focusing on a specific aspect of a scene while ignoring other aspects. Selective attention can be conscious (as when one chooses to attend to an interesting object, like a tv, instead of a less interesting one, like a coffee table) or unconscious (as in a scene of a green field with a single red tulip - the tulip will receive attention initially). Often, we think we have taken in an entire scene when, in reality, we have processed only the area we are attending to and only have a general "gist" of the rest of the scene (see links for examples, where you can watch this happen to you).
Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in a room (the cocktail party effect) or listening to a cell phone conversation while driving a car.[1]. Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
- Watch this clip made for an experiment conducted by Becklen and Cervone(1983)
William James, in his textbook Principles of Psychology, remarked:
| “ | Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German.[2] | ” |
Some effects of selective attention are:
see links for demos.
Contents |
Mechanisms of selection
Edit
History of the study of attentionEdit
1850s to 1900sEdit
In James' time, the method more commonly used to study attention was introspection. However, as early as 1858, Franciscus Donders used mental chronometry to study attention and it was considered a major field of intellectual inquiry by such diverse authors as Sigmund Freud. One major debate in this period was whether it was possible to attend to two things at once (split attention). Walter Benjamin described this experience as "reception in a state of distraction." This disagreement could only be resolved through experimentation.
1950s to presentEdit
In the 1950s, research psychologists renewed their interest in attention when the dominant epistemology shifted from positivism (i.e., behaviorism) to realism during what has come to be known as the "cognitive revolution" [3] The cognitive revolution admitted unobservable cognitive processes like attention as legitimate objects of scientific study.
Colin Cherry and Donald Broadbent, among others, performed experiments on dichotic listening. In a typical experiment, subjects would use a set of headphones to listen to two streams of words in different ears and selectively attend to one stream. After the task, the experimenter would question the subjects about the content of the unattended stream.[How to reference and link to summary or text]
During this period, the major debate was between early-selection models and late-selection models. In the early selection models (first proposed by Donald Broadbent and Anne Treisman), attention shuts down or attenuates processing in the unattended ear before the mind can analyze its semantic content. In the late selection models (first proposed by J. Anthony Deutsch and Diana Deutsch), the content in both ears is analyzed semantically, but the words in the unattended ear cannot access consciousness.[4] This debate has still not been resolved.Template:Nonspecific
Anne Treisman developed the highly influential feature integration theory[5]. According to this model, attention binds different features of an object (e.g., color and shape) into consciously experienced wholes. Although this model has received much criticism, it is still widely accepted or held up with modifications as in Jeremy Wolfe's Guided Search Theory.[6]
In the 1960s, Robert Wurtz at the National Institutes of Health began recording electrical signals from the brains of macaques who were trained to perform attentional tasks. These experiments showed for the first time that there was a direct neural correlate of a mental process (namely, enhanced firing in the superior colliculus).[How to reference and link to summary or text]
In the 1990s, psychologists began using PET and later fMRI to image the brain in attentive tasks. Because of the highly expensive equipment that was generally only available in hospitals, psychologists sought for cooperation with neurologists. Pioneers of brain imaging studies of selective attention are psychologist Michael I. Posner (then already renown for his seminal work on visual selective attention) and neurologist Marcus Raichle.[How to reference and link to summary or text] Their results soon sparked interest from the entire neuroscience community in these psychological studies, which had until then focused on monkey brains. With the development of these technological innovations neuroscientists became interested in this type of research that combines sophisticated experimental paradigms from cognitive psychology with these new brain imaging techniques. Although the older technique of EEG had long been used to study the brain activity underlying selective attention by cognitive psychophysiologists, the ability of the newer techniques to actually measure precisely localized activity inside the brain generated renewed interest by a wider community of researchers. The results of these experiments have shown a broad agreement with the psychological, psychophysiological and the experiments performed on monkeys.[How to reference and link to summary or text]
See also Edit
- Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
- Attention span
- Attention Restoration Theory
- Attention versus memory in prefrontal cortex
- Binding problem
- Change blindness
- Concentration
- Cognitive control
- Distraction
- Divided attention
- Dot-probe paradigm
- Emotion and memory
- Feature integration theory
- Focusing
- Monitoring
- Inattentional blindness
- Neural mechanisms behind shifts of attention
- Sensory gating
- Split attention effect
- Vigilance
- Visual search
ReferencesEdit
<references/<
Further readingEdit
Key textsEdit
BooksEdit
PapersEdit
Additional materialEdit
BooksEdit
PapersEdit
- Elahipanah, A., Christensen, B. K., & Reingold, E. M. (2008). Visual selective attention among persons with schizophrenia: The distractor ratio effect. Schizophrenia Research, 105, 61-67. Full text
External linksEdit
- DJ Simons' real-life examples of change & inattentional blindness
- Demonstrations of change & inattentional blindness
- Anne Treisman's home page
- Kyle Cave's home page
| This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors). |
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