370: Visual Attention

1. Attention (He gave this same lecture in 375. Check it out at http://smartpsych.blogspot.com/2012/02/375attention-pt1.html)
1. Varieties of Attention
1. External: attending to stimuli in the world
2. Internal: attending to one line of thought over another or selecting one response over another
3. Overt: directing a sense organ toward a stimulus, like pointing your eyes or turning your head
4. Covert: attending without giving an outward sign you are doing so
5. Divided: splitting attention between two different stimuli
6. Sustained: continuously monitoring some stimulus
2. Allocation
1. Attention is limited, so it must be allocated.
2. Is attention always allocated the way that you want?
3. Posner's Cuing Paradigm
1. Simple probe detection paradigm
2. Cues can be spatial or symbolic
3. Cues can be valid or invalid
1. Response Times are shorter on valid cue trials
2. Response Times are longer on invalid cue trials
2. Attention as a Spotlight
1. Neural basis of the beam
1. Disengage
1. If you damage the parietal cortex you have difficulty disengaging your attention
1. So what does that mean?
1. If you can't disengage then valid trials (in the posner's cuing test) will work well but invalid trials will make it extremely difficult to disengage your attention from a direction that the invalid cue directed you towards.
2. The beam metaphor works but...
1. Moving attention greater distances doesn't take a longer time
2. Moving attention isn't slowed down by intervening stuff
3. Beam implies attention selects space