Exam 4

Front 1

Attention

Back 1

Limited capacity cognitive processes devoted to the monitoring of internal (e.g., memory retrieval) and external (e.g., sensory stimulus)

Front 2

Input attention

Back 2

Types of attention that occur early in the stream of processing and share 3 properties:

1. Either involuntary (in response to a stimulus) or automatic (in anticipation of a stimulus)

2. Low-level information content

3. Rapid

- Alertness and sustained attention

- Orienting reflex and attention capture

- Spotlight attention and visual search

Front 3

Input Attention: Involuntary Attention Capture

Back 3

- Masks fade to reveal either 1 or 3 letters and just as letters are revealed, another letter appears in the new location

- When the target in the old location has a smaller display size, the reaction time decreased

- When target changed location in a larger display size, the reaction time increased

Front 4

Input Attention: Voluntary Spotlight attention

Back 4

The spatial cuing task:

- on each trial

1. fixate on + for whole trial

2. Arrow appears

3. Arrow disappears, target appears

4. Press button when target is detected

- There were valid trials (arrow points to correct target), Invalid (arrow points opposite), Neutral (arrow points in both directions)

- Less time for valid time

Front 5

Input Attention: Visual Search

Back 5

Feature Search: The object is obvious in a grouped cluster of objects (pop-out effect)

Conjunctive search: Combination of features (try to find the green T; x's are green, T's are brown)

- Pop-out effect is said to be automatic

- Takes more time for conjunctive searches since there are more distractors

- Conjunction searches are more serial, and require more conscious awareness (deliberate act)

HUMAN AND ANIMAL FACE SEARCH

- human face present = no difference between 16 and 64 elements

- Human face absent = about 1,100 ms difference

- Animal face present = about 1,100 ms difference between elements

- Animal face absent = 2,800 ms difference

Front 6

Inhibition of return

Back 6

Recently checked locations are marked by attention as places that the search would not return to.

*Think of when locations are inhibited or kept out of the search task (i.e., scanning faces in an airport, when trying to find a specific friend)*

Front 7

Controlled attention

Back 7

Types of attention that occur later in the stream of processing

- Selective attention

- Mental resources and conscious processing

- Supervisory attention (working memory)

Front 8

Controlled vs. input attention

Back 8

Input = fast automatic processing

Controlled = slower, turn in the moment

Front 9

Selective attention

Back 9

Choosing one environmental stimulus for further processing out of many possible stimuli

Unattended inputs receiving processing:

(i.e., "cocktail-party phenomenon" where, when you hear your name mentioned in another conversation that you weren't paying attention to, your attention is instantly captured)

- Even though you weren't attending to it, you must have been processing that other convo at some level

- Selective visual attention is like a spotlight on objects

Front 10

Selective auditory attention as a gateway

Back 10

Shadowing (dichotic listening) task: each earpiece plays a different message, and subjects must repeat one of the messages out loud ("shadow") while ignoring the other message (ignored vs. attended inputs)- For efficient shadowing, there needs to be a clear physical difference (i.e., different ears, male vs. female speaker) between messages- Do people attend at all to the "ignored" message?

Front 11

Selective Auditory Attention: Early Selection Theory

Back 11

Early selection theory: attention acts as a selective filter between sensory memory and short-term memory

L Ear --> Sensory memory--> ST mem. -->Resp.

(attended)

R Ear --> Sensory memory (stop)-->STM-->Resp.

(unattended)

- Unattended stimuli are processed only in terms of physical characteristics (sensory memory) not in terns of meaning (STM)

- Predicts that in a shadowing task, you could report whether the speaker of the message in the unattended ear was male or female but not whether the message was in english

- Unattended stimuli are processed

Front 12

Selective Auditory Attention: Late Selection Theory

Back 12

Late selection theory indicates that all incoming stimuli receive at least some meaningful processing and some are selected for further processing

- This time, there was no stop at the unattended right ear when processing info into short term memory (people routinely switched to this ear to process sentence; did not shadow this ear for long)

- Predicts that in a shadowing task, you could report if your name or some other meaningful info was mentioned in attended ear

Front 13

Early vs. Late Selection Theory

Back 13

Study phase: All subjects heard and verbally repeated a series of word pairs

- Two target words of the same semantic category (dog, cow) were followed by a mild shock to the leg

- Two target words (arm, leg) of another semantic category were not followed by shock

Test phase: Shadowing task, with a series of different words presented to each ear, while measuring "palm sweat)

(G1 target words = attended ear, G2 = unattended)

Results: When target words were paired with shock in the attended ear, the response would be greater, compared to group 2 who's results remained the same regardless of target and shock pairings.

- This shows that it's important for the shock to be in the attended ear, so the response rate will be higher

Front 14

Selective visual attention: Spotlight attention on objects, not locations

Back 14

Previous work has shown that viewing faces activates one region of the temporal lobes (inferior temporal) and viewing houses activates a different region (medial temporal)

- Subjects required to compare successive faces or houses and say whether they were the same or different, while undergoing an fMRI (both presented in same spatial location, one was moving slightly)

- Attending to face = high activity (face brain area)

- Attending to house = high activity (house brain area)

- Supports the idea that when selective visual attention focuses on objects, people tend to attend to one or the other

Front 15

Controlled attention: Mental resources and Conscious Processing

Back 15

Attentional blink: Brief period of time after the detection of a stimulus during which another stimulus cannot be detected

- Subjects heard rapid presentation of letters, one at a time, and also saw a rapid presentation of different letters, one at a time

Auditory: BOMU2DJS....

Visual: KTAYLZXC

- Control task: monitor visual stimuli for a probe letter (X)

- Experimental task: primary task = monitor auditori stimuli for a target number (2); secondary = monitory visual stimuli for a probe letter

- Results showed that if probe comes after a number, less likely to be detected; before would be a greater likelihood of detecting

Front 16

Controlled Attention: Mental Resources and Conscious Processing

Back 16

Psychological Refractory Period: Brief period of time after one response is selected, during which a second cannot be selected

- On each trial, subjects heard either a low-pitched or high-pitched tone (indicated foot response) and then saw an L or R on the screen (indicated hand response

LPT--> press L pedal w/ L foot

HPT--> press R pedal w/ R foot

(followed 50, 200, or 500 ms later):

L on screen-->press L key w/ L index finger

R on screen-->press R key w/ R index finger

- Results showed that participants were much slower with second response (response 2 mattered)

- We tend to miss things in our environment with rapid selection

Front 17

Automaticity

Back 17

The tendency for cognitive processes to occur non-intentionally, unconsciously, and with little effort

Automatic processing involves:

- Process occurs without a conscious decision

- Not accessible to conscious awareness

- Consumes little or no attention

- Operates very rapidly

Controlled processing involves:

- Process occurs with a conscious decision

- Accessible to conscious awareness

- Consumes attention

- Operates more slowly

Front 18

Automaticity: Increased Speed Theory

Back 18

Increased Speed theory (Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977)

- Practicing a task over-and-over leads to:

1. Component processes used to carry out task becoming faster and faster

2. Component processes used to carry out task go from being done serially (one-at-a-time) to being done in parallel (all-at-once)

(e.g., practicing mental arithmetic)

1. Component processes of multiplication (i.e., multiply the 1's, carry over 10's, multiply 10's) get faster

2. Component processes of multiplication transition from being done one-at-a-time to being done at same time

Visual Search Task

- Consistent mapping = no overlap between target set (#'s) and distractor set (letters)

(i.e., target set = 4781, shown a set of MS8D)

- Varied mapping = overlap between target set (letters) and distractor set (letters)

- Results showed that when the display or target size increased, the varied task would take longer for the reaction time; consistent stayed the same)

- Shows that when a target letter is in a set of letters, it would be harder to pick out

Front 19

Automaticity: Instance-Based Theory

Back 19

Instance theory (Logan, 1988)

Practicing a task over and over:

1. Each encounter with the task leads to a new memory trace (instance)

2. Transition from effortful, slow memory search to effortless, rapid memory retrieval

(e.g., mental arithmetic)

1. Each time a particular multiplication problem is encountered, a memory traces that problem is stored

2. Particular must. problems serve as retrieval cues for memory (instance) of the solution

3. The more encounters with a particular problem, the more memory traces

Alphabet Arithmetic Task

- Subjects were given alphabet addition problems and asked to decide as fast as they could whether each was true (e.g., E+3 = H) or false statement (e.g., A+2=D)

- The higher the digit addend (e.g., +3 vs. +2) the longer it would take to verify the statement as T/F

- Time it took per addend decreased over 12 sessions of doing the same problems over and over, but increased when new problems were given in session 13

- Results showed that when new sets were added, the time for answering increased, thus causing a lower percentage of remembered reports

Front 20

Salience and Associability

Back 20

Salience is the degree that a stimulus commands attention

-Salient stimuli command more attention

- Physical intensity (e.g., loud noise v. quiet)

- Type of stimuli (e.g., human v. animal face)

Associability describes how quickly or easily learning occurs about a stimulus

- Learning is often more rapid to more salient stimuli

Front 21

Conditioned Suppression Procedure

Back 21

1st. phase = trained rats to press lever for food

2nd phase = tone-shock pairings; strong, medium, and weak tone groups

- What they did was measure suppression conditioned to the tone

- Results showed that on the 5th acquisition day, there was no suppression

Front 22

Attention "tunes in" to relevant predictors of significant events

Back 22

- Blue and yellow shapes (color relevant and shape irrelevant)

- When blue came up on screen, peck for pellet

- They had a intradimensional and extra dimensional shift

- Paid more attention to something that was a good reinforcer

Front 23

Intradimensional v. Extradimensional

Back 23

- Intra: Subject learns that GEK=Green; then without warning, the experimenter changes the rule to GEK=Red. The way in which it's used has been changed.

-Extra: relevant dimension is changed (e.g., GEK-Green)

Front 24

Tuning in -- 2

Back 24

Food predicting allergic reactions (e.g., asparagus, sardines, lentils etc.)

"Mr. X" "Mr. Y" "Mr. Y"

(phase 1) (Phase 2) (Test)

AV-->1 AX--> 3 AC

BV-->2 CV-->3 VX

CX-->2 (predict allergy 3)

DX-->1

- A,B,C,D predict a type of allergy, V,X do not

- AC rated as more likely to cause an allergic reaction

Front 25

Pay attention top the good predictors, ignore the bad?

Back 25

Mackintosh (1975)

- We learn to pay attention to CSs that are good predictors of a US and learn to ignore the bad predictors

- How much can be learned about a CS-US relationship depends on the attention we are paying to the CS

Latent inhibition: Preexposure to a CS folled by a CS-US pairings retard the generation of the CR

Phase 1: G1 = L, L, L... G2 = --

Phase 2: G1 = L--> shock G2 L--> shock

- Learning occurred more rapidly when L was associated with shock in G2

- Delays learning in G1

Front 26

Hall-Pearce Negative Transfer

Back 26

- Experiment was conducted to provide support for Mackintosh's attention theory

- L followed by a shock in phase 1

- Learning occurred more slowly in the group that received light-weak shock pairings in phase 1

- Suggests animals weren't paying more attention to the light at the beginning of phase 2

Front 27

Paying Attention to Misunderstood Stimuli

Back 27

Pearce and Hall (1980)

- Attention is wasted on good predictors of a US (processing becomes automatic)

- Rather, pay attention to stimuli whose effects are not well understood

Orienting response: An organism's immediate response to a change in its environment, when the change is not sudden enough to elicit the startle reflex

G1 = nothing: L, L, L, L, L....

G2 = Continuous: L-Food, L-food....

G3: Partial: L-food, L, L-food, L, L-food

- What was found was that the rats were more capable to orienting towards the light when presented with different stimuli

Front 28

Human attending cues that have uncertain meaning

Back 28

Experiment involved visual stimuli paired with a musical tone

- Measured eye-tracking; amount of time actually spent looking at A, B, C

Stimulus AX--> tone 100% of the trials

Stimulus BX--> 50%

Stimulus CX--> 0%

- time looking at B was greater than A and C, since it was only 1/2 exposure time

Front 29

Meaning of Pearce-Hall and Mackintosh

Back 29

Pearce: Pay attention to predictors that are not well understood

Mackintosh: Pay attention to good predictors, ignore the bad

In 2010, models became unified; associability of a CS is determined by a combo of attentional learning mechanisms

- Pearce: describes the type of attention used in controlled processing

- Mackintosh: describes attention to stimuli that are already well understood

Front 30

Mental Representations

Back 30

Mental Rep. : Internal model that is linked to external objects and events and preserves info that is important for the organism

- Visual Imagery = Mental representation of the visual properties of objects

- Spatial Knowledge = mental rep. of spatial relationships are used to navigate the environment

Front 31

Visual Imagery: Mental Rotation

Back 31

- Subjects were presented with 1600 pairs of three-dimensional objects and asked whether they were the same or different

- Showed that a similar linear relationship (between picture plane rotation and depth) exists

Front 32

Visual Imagery: Mental Representation/Pictorial properties

Back 32

Pictorial properties:

Animal 1-Animal 2-Potentiy-dog-corkscrew tail)

(elephant-parrot-beak)

(fly-dog-corkscrew tail)

Experiment 1: Subjects told to construct a mental image of a context animal (elephant or fly) and then of a target animal

- Given a potential prop. of a target animal (T/F; e.g., palm or beak)

Results:

- When elephant was a construct image, more time needed when putting animals next to one another (fly and elephant)

- Regardless if the animal was T/F, size requires mental visualization

Experiment 2: Reverse scale of visualization involving context animals

- Same results

Visual imagery experiment: Subjects asked to visualize one of the colored squares then construct an image of the specified animal to fit in with it

- Smallest shape when visualizing animal and object showed the longest reaction times on both true and false statements

Front 33

Allocentric and Egocentric

Back 33

Allocentric representation: Independent of current location and orientation (cognitive map)

- Static (does not change as you move)

- Comprehensive view of space ("birds-eye" view)

- Navigation in a familiar environment based on global representation of spatial environment

Egocentric representation: Dependent on current location and orientation ("snapshots of views")

- Dynamic (continually updated as you move)

- Limited view of space (restricted view)

- Navigation in a familiar environment based on view-dependent representation of landmarks

Front 34

Spatial Knowledge: Allocentric vs. Egocentric

Back 34

Experiment 1

Apparatus: Subjects stood @ center of rectangular room with four distinct objects

Study phase: Subjects allowed to walk around room from all angles

Test (blindfolded):

- Participants turned in random directions and asked to point to either corners of the room, or to the objects when prompted

- Second condition, subjects disoriented by turning themselves for 1 min and asked to point to each corner

Results:

- Allocentric Configuration = similar before and after disorientation

- Egocentric: Configuration error should increase after disorientation

- Config. error better before disorientation in regards to the object and corner

Experiment 2:

Training: Rats learn to swim to a hidden platform in rectangular shaped tub

- Platform was either hidden in A or in C

Test phase: G1 = hidden platform in E (consistent); G2 =Hidden platform in G (inconsistent)

- If rats from an allocentric rep. of the rectangular tub, it won't matter whether platform is in corner E or G of tube

- If rats form an ego rep. it should be easier to transfer searching in corners A and C to a search in E compared to corner G

Front 35

Two ideas of C.C. and Mental Rep.

Back 35

1. S-R through conditioning, CS replaces US, causing CR

2. S-S activates representation of US, causing CR

Front 36

Experiments on Mediated Conditioned Response

Back 36

Experiment 1:

Phase 1 = bell-->cheese; music-->candy

Phase 2 = Candy makes them sick

Phase 3 = Rather tone or music?

- S-R value of US should not affect responding

- S-S value of US should affect responding

- CSs may allow perceptual processing of a US, even when absent

Experiment 2:

- Same setup but tested illness with bell ring

- More likely to choose food that was not associated with the bell

Summaries:

- CSs acquires sensory properties of an absent US

- Exp. 1 = illness paired alone with a food US can weaken responding to a auditory CS that it was previously paired with

- Exp. 2 = Illness paired alone with an auditory CS can produce an aversion to a food US that it was previously paired with

Experiment 3: Mediated extinction

- Both the bell and music made the rats sick

- Phase 3 involved the music associated with no sickness

- Rats more likely to choose the food paired with the music (candy), since extinction made them think they were incapable of getting sick

Conclusions:

- After multiple CS-US pairings, CS presentation activates a representation of the US

- Representation may include sensory components (i.e., smell, taste, texture)

- Presentation of the CS alone engages mental processing of these sensory components of the US

Front 37

Mental Imagery in Humans

Back 37

Learned synesthesia

(bell--> shock, bell = ?)

- Subjects reported "feeling" shock after the tone

(Light--> bell, light = ?)

- Subjects reported "hearing" the tone

Front 38

Actions vs. Habits

Back 38

Actions:

- Goal directed, "thoughtful"

- Depend on relationship between behavior and goal

- Depend on knowledge of the goal's (o's) current value

- Are sensitive to reinforcer devaluation

- Evident after: less practice/repetition & ratio reinforcement schedules

Habits:

- Automatic, mechanical, "mindless"

- Depend on simple S-R association

- Are insensitive to reinforcer devaluation

- Evident after: extensive practice/routine & interval reinforcement schedules

Front 39

Goal directed actions depend on what you actually know about reinforcer

Back 39

- Being hungry does not motivate behavior

- Balleine attempts to see satisfaction and motivation when rats were hungry or not hungry

- Press lever more when hungry and received pellet

- Incentive learning is expressed since they learned how a reinforcer made them feel in a particular motivational state

- Preform an action that leads to a specific outcome & when you currently value that outcome

Front 40

Habit replaces action after lots of repetition or practice

Back 40

Instrumental training: 2 sessions = R-O; 5 = R-O; 20 = R-O

Reinforcer devaluation: O could cause an illness or not

Test: R?

- Behavior becomes less and less sensitive to reinforcer devaluation "thoughtful", "deliberate" goal directed action is replaced by habit

- After 20 sessions, the response becomes habit (don't think about action leading to outcome)

Habit replacing action in humans

- Goal directed action is replaced by an automatic habit with extended repetition, routine, or practice