In this paper we will again talk about “attention” and also discuss some philosophical questions like the concept of psychological time.

When we talk of sensory memory, the high level processes are not involved in it.

Vision – Iconic Memory – Decays in less than a second

Hearing – Echoic Memory – decays in less than 5 seconds

Why is attention Important?

Let’s see why it is important to study attention and why attention is important.

- Attention is an area which is perfect example of cognitive psychology

- It highlights the various interests people have about cognitive psychology

 - “Attention” is a subjects which combines the philosophers and scientists again as philosophers and scientific experimenters unite again to unravel attention.

- Philosophers theorize and scientists experiment to reach the same goal

With their experiments, scientists check the theories which philosophers present.

Cognitive Science and Computer Science

*- Cognitive psychologists work with computer scientists for making simulations, although this is not their primary job.

Computer scientists can help the cognitive experimenters with simulation. For example, a simulation of an eye would be a camera attached to a computer

Attention

Let’s again switch our attention to the topic of attention.

Attention selects some information from the perceived stimuli for further processing.

However, attention is able to select a very small amount if visual information that we have.

Attention selects some information from the perceived stimuli for further processing.

It is to be noted that attention plays a crucial role in the stage of selection of information after it is in sensory store before decay.

Attention from the viewpoint of a Philosopher

Here we will discuss the philosophical view to understand attention .

There are various metaphors used to understand attention. Some compare attention to a spotlight, some to a filter, some to a bottleneck.

Let’s see them one by one.

- Is it a spotlight? e.g. a beam? (On Stage)

When someone is standing on the stage, we darken the rest of the stage and throw a spotlight on t he speaker.

Let’s assume from a philosophical point of view that attention is a spot light. Spotlight has a capacity, stage, area.

Attention by its very nature, if we accept the spot light metaphor, is very limited thing and can only focus on one thing.

Is it a filter? E.g. a sieve(dirt is thrown out, flour remains)

Some people compare attention to a filter. Just like a sieve. In a sieve the dirt is thrown out and the flour remains. So attention is compared to a sieve used for filtering.

Is it a bottleneck? e.g. A narrow lane?

Some people compare attention to a bottleneck or a narrow lane. If we move from a 3-way lane to 1-way lane, there is some narrowing that constitutes attention.

As we see in the bottleneck example, various sensory inputs go in the bottle and the attended information is filtered,

 Is it a limited resource?

Some people compare attention to a limited resource like petrol, manpower, etc. Thus, attention can also be viewed as a limited resource and there is limit on how it is spend.

Let’s examine the limited resource analogy of attention.

We can say that workplace is a limited resource.  If we want to employ 100 employees and a very small room to start the company with, then we cannot employ 100 employees. Then we have to narrow down to 3-4 employees. This narrowing down is an example of attention.

All the questions above are philosophical. It again shows that cognitive psychology very much touches philosophy.

From all the above examples we learn that there is a sense of single-mindedness in attention.

An objection was made to “single-mindedness” arguing that what about when we were walking and talking at the same time.

This made cognitive psychologists change the idea a little. The idea was narrowed down to:

We have capacity to perform only one demanding task at a time.

We cannot perform two demanding tasks simultaneously.

Also, we quickly lose information if we don’t attend to it for a limited amount of time.

Limitations in sensory tasks

-         

      Attention appears to be the real  reason for the whole report performance( limited recall)

-          Limitations of icon and echo are actually limitations of attention

-          Sensory information needs to be stored in a form that can be retained.

-          Selection of this transformation happens only to attended items.

-          More information is lost because attention has limited capacity

Dichotic Listening Tasks:

- Cherry(1953); Moray(1959)

Dichotic Listening:

Through the headphone, one ear is presented with one message, the other ear with another message.

Subjects pay attention to (shadow) one message only.

Let’s look at the shadowing paradigm now.

Shadowing Paradigm:

Let’s see this all information is given to the left and right ear

Left ear: ran, house, Ox, Cat

Right Ear: Tea, Job, books, look

And the subject is told to attend to the left ear.

These experiments led to several models as shown below.

Early Selection Model

Information is selected early, soon after sensory store; the higher level processing is not done.

The meaning of the words does not have an impact at this stage in this model.

Thus, attention must be a low level process. Attention must be a low level process because it comes into play just after we have received the information through our senses.

Information is coming from both the ears. There is a nexus of both the ears which comes a lot before reaching the brain.

The information that goes through auditory nerves. First of all, there is a sensory register like the icon or the echo. First the information comes to it. After that there is a filter.

This filter is attention. After that there is pattern recognition.

                                            

Attention and Meaning

- Undergraduates at Oxford

- Gray and Wedderburn(1960)

- Shadow meaningful messages

- Left Ear: John Eleven books

- Right Ear: Eight writes twenty

The subjects reported: John writes books.

Thus attention has to do with meaning.

References:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU7eJHnvkNc&feature=related