The Relationship Between Temporal Attention And Implicit Learning

Attention is thought to be selective-focused on one subject at a time. Traditionally, it has been assumed that automatic processing is involuntary, it does not require attention, and is relatively fast; whereas, controlled processing is voluntary, does require attention, and is relatively slow. We can conclude from this that the more we repeat a certain material or tasks the more it becomes automatic and effortless to us.

The research assessed in this article discusses the Stroop effect. The Stroop effect occurs when our selective attention fails and we are unable to attend to some information and ignore the rest. This study tests the Stroop effect by presenting the participant with a congruent or incongruent word and the participant is asked to type the color of the word or the actual word in a series of trials. In this research, it has been found that participants had faster reaction times for congruent items and slower reaction times for incongruent items. In addition, participants had faster reaction times when

Overall what the study shows is that as the time between cue and target increases people's performance tends to shift inversely. This is displayed as shorter instances (100ms) found individuals responding faster, relative to when they were longer (500ms) to which individuals would respond slower if they appeared on the same side, with only a minor increase when they appeared on the opposite. Another interesting finding from the study was that trail validity had no statistically significant effect on response times, essentially meaning that how likely a target was to appear had no real effect on how well individuals performed in the study.

We often tend to live our everyday lives without paying much attention to the factors that contribute to our every movement and function. Have you ever wondered what triggers your brain to complete simple tasks, such as reading road signs, or knowing how to follow a guided set of instructions? John Ridley Stroop became specifically interested in the part of the brain that measures selective attention [1]. Oftentimes, in order to maintain balance, the brain will carry out the action that is most common and easy and will stop the action that will take more work and effort. The process explained in the previous sentence is known as inhibition, and it regularly occurs in our minds [2]. Stroop gave participants a list of colors, such as green,

Early studies have widely researched attention with selective processing (Driver, 2001). Broadbent (1958) filter theory of attention states that certain information does not require focal attention. It is based on certain stimulus attributes such as colour and shape (Friedenberg, 2012). A previous study carried out by Treisman and Schmidt (1982) proposes that when attention is diverted from a display of several figures, the participants incorrectly combine the features of colour and shape therefore increases the illusory conjunctions portrayed by the participants (Tsal, 1989). Another study by Shaw (1978) found that reaction time of participant to identify targets varied with the probability that a target would appear in a particular display location. These results indicate that different amounts of attention towards the targets are distributed to different positions in the visual field. However, Houck and Hoffman (1986) found that the feature integration of colour and orientation can sometimes be accomplished without attention (James et al.,

Second Article that we chose is “The Mind and Brain of Short-Term Memory”. It is from the annual reviews.org which is a reliable source to get information about psychology research. This article covers all areas of short-term memory and is very organized with sub headings.

Attention process training (APT) is a computerized training program that provides practice in five types of attention: focused, sustained, selective, alternating and divided (Park, Proulx & Towers, 1999). Several research studies have concluded that specific components of attention need specific training and that with sufficient training it is possible to improve aspects of attention and other cognitive functions (Park et al, 1999; Sohlberg, McLaughlin, Pavese, Heidrich & Posner, 2000). Before each task is completed, the requirements are briefly explained and usually take between 2-3 minutes to complete. A low level evidence … by Park et al (1999) concluded that the APT program improved the functioning of specific cognitive processes underlying attention but not general cognitive functioning. The APT program was designed to last for 40 hours with an average of 20 sessions. If the participant were to make three or more errors these tasks were repeated

We simply cannot process and respond to all the information in the environment that may be relevant to our current task. We can’t even completely inhibit distracting information” (Scalf, Torralbo, Tapia, & Beck, 2013). The older we get the more we are prone to thinking about our attention span seriously. Back when we were still children and in school being told by our parents to pay attention more in school some tend to think they may have some kind of learning disorder when in fact it normal. Yes, there are children and adults around the world that suffer from learning or attention disorders but they are not always the answer. As we become older, we learn who we are and what we enjoy so we tend to go places or surround ourselves with people who interest us or have similarities with. The law of limited attention is when a person can pay attention to only two, or at the most, three things at one time. When we try and multi task on let’s say more than three things at once we are already stretching our attention too thin. If we try to add a fourth task to focus on that will become the most important while the other get put on the back burner. Some psychological research indicates some can pay attention to seven things at once. This does not contradict the principle; it only changes the numbers. Many people tend to confuse limited and

The cognitive task of the Stroop task is the proof that an interference of a task has a reaction time delay. From the moment I saw the Stroop effect on my textbook and on the power point in lecture class, I grew an interest to this subject. I found it a mentally challenging task; it was tricky and therefore grasped my attention and wanted to further explore this cognitive task. As stated by MacLeod, “The Stroop effect, however, is more than a cognitive curiosity; it continues to play a key role in the understanding of attention” (MacLeod, 1992). The Stroop task shows an interesting effect, but most importantly has served as a tool to further our knowledge on attention and cognition.

The topic our group chose to experiment was “the use of the Stroop task while using both English and German as a foreign language”. The goal of our task is to test the limits of our participants’ selective attention. With our goal in mind, we want to be able to see how well our participants can ignore the stimuli of the words themselves as opposed to the ink they are printed in. We hypothesized that our participants would be able to complete the task in the foreign language faster than completing the task printed in English.

In a recent study, Bertels et al., (2012) found that performance in their proxy for statistical learning could not be accounted for simply by implicit learning. They used an adapted version of the visual statistical learning task (Fischer & Aslin, 2001), which included 12 stimulus items formed into 4 triplets. The transitional probability within triplets was always 1 and between .33. However, the test phase used a so-called direct measure (put forth as a measure of an explicit memory trace in a previous study by Kim et al., 2009) in which participants were presented with a 4AFC completion task. Participants were presented with a triplet that was missing and item and asked to complete the triplet. They were then asked a binary confidence measures were also collected during this phase. Above chance performance on trials in which the participant said they were guessing suggests implicit processing and a correlation between performance and confidence suggests that the participant may be using explicit processing. The test phase also included an indirect measure (also put forth as a measure of implicit learning in a previous study, Kim et al., 2009) the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) test. In this task participants had to detect a shape in a rapid series of visual shapes. If participants were sensitive to the statistical regularities present in the exposure phase and were able to store these regularities,

1.) Visual Search - In this activity I participated in a classic psychological experiment that uses visual search tasks to explore fundamental process of visual perception and attention. In general I learned that selective attention filters enable us to make more automatic decisions about the stimuli around us, including which items to pay attention to during a visual search. Also, since your brain is always active and sees visual sights and sensory information, your mind copes by automatically screening or filtering incoming sensory information to let in only what is most important. Specifically, I learned that the first set of trials I did were the feature search part of the experience and the second set of trials were the conjunction search part of the experience. What I learned about my self after doing this activity is that I had a quick reaction time on the first set of trials as I was asked to find a blue circle amid orange squares and circles. But, on the second set of trials my reaction time was not as quick as it first was. On the second set of trials, I was asked to find the blue circle amid blue squares and orange circles. I believe my reaction time was quicker on the first set of trials due to the fact that I was just looking for the color blue among orange squares and circles, but on the second set of trials I was looking for a blue circle among blue squares and orange squares. Therefore, the blue squares were distractors from the blue circle and I was forced

Attention was described by William James (1890, cited in Eysenck & Keane, 2000, p130) as

Research carried out on attention has mainly been associated with the selective processing of incoming sensory information. It proposes, to some degree, our awareness of the world depends on what we choose to focus on and not simply the stimulation received by our senses. Attention is often linked to a filter that screens out most potential stimuli whilst allowing a select few to pass through into our conscious awareness, however, a great deal of debate has been devoted to where the filter is situated in the information processing chain (Martindale, 1991). Psychologists have made extensive contributions to this subject matter in the past century. Notable examples include Donald Broadbent's filter theory of attention (1958), which set the

Bertels et al., (2012) found that confidence was correlated with overall performance in participants with above-chance performance the completion task suggesting performance in the completion task was at least in part driven by their explicit knowledge of the triplets. In addition, and in line with previous research, they found that implicit knowledge was important for success in the completion task as even when participants claimed they were guessing, they still performed above chance. In addition, while all participants showed learning in the RSVP task (faster RTs for second and third triplets relative to the first) about 30% of participants performed at or below chance. The authors however note that their findings of implicit knowledge are based on controversial measures and pull back their interpretation of the data to suggest that statistical learning cannot be fully characterized by only implicit process.