Theories of Visual and Auditory Attention Essay

The human brain is capable of perceiving and interpreting information or stimuli received through the sense organs (i.e., eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin) (Weiten, 1998). This ability to perceive and interpret stimulus allows the human being to make meaningful sense of the world and environment around them. However, even as the human being is able to perceive and interpret stimuli information through all sense organs, stimuli is most often or primarily interpreted using the visual (eyes) and auditory (ears) sense organs (Anderson, 2009). However, for the purpose of this paper, the visual information process will be examined.

The Stroop (1935) effect is the inability to ignore a color word when the task is to report the ink color of that word (i.e., to say "green" to the word RED in green ink). The present study investigated whether object-based processing contributes to the Stroop effect. According to this view, observers are unable to ignore irrelevant features of an attended object (Kahneman & Henik, 1981). In three experiments, participants had to name the color of one of two superimposed rectangles and to ignore words that appeared in the relevant object, in the irrelevant object, or in the background. The words were congruent,

This was achieved by presenting central cues, indicating the position of the target letter thus increasing focus. Through these experiments they found that when a subject is in a diffuse attention state (unfocussed) SOD do cause attentional capture and increase reaction time. However, if the subject was presented with a cue this same increase in reaction time was not observed. This led them to conclude that attentional capture from SOD is not automatic and instead propose a priority based visual attention system. In 2006 Neo and Chua conducted research which built upon Yantis and Jonides’ to further demonstrate effects of attentional capture on reaction time. They investigated whether sporadic use of the SOD increased the effect of attentional capture as well as investigated whether maintaining the same position for the target letter decreased reaction times. They found that SOD attentional capture did affect reaction times and unlike in Yantis and Jonides’ experiment they concluded SOD did trigger an automaticity response when used

This study examined whether participant’s response times to global target were faster than local targets. Participants had to identify global and local shapes and letters as quick as possible and the response times which were recorded to the computer data. The study was a replication of Navon’s (1977), (cited in Ness Smith and Thirkettle, 2014) experiment but differed, as it was a focused attention task whereas this experiment was a divided attention task. This was the same as Yovel (2001), (cited in Ness, Smith and Thirkettle, 2014) mixed attention task study which tested the global to local accounts. The current

Powell (1986) conducted a study in which individuals viewed a photo or slide. Individuals were required to scan images and decide on an image for the entire display (Powell, 1986). Objects were pointed to, and subjects were asked to identify its location (Powell, 1986). The subject was asked to close his or her eyes and were shown another image. The subjects were to decide if the object was in the correct position (Powell, 1986). The subjects would hear one of the objects and was required to focus on the object while keeping the entire image in his or her mind (Powell, 1986). When the next object was identified, the subjects were to move from the first object to the second watching a black dot moving in a straight line (Powell, 1986).

In previous research, it has been claimed that that ordinary perceivers operate under a grand illusion of perception, and illusion that can be unmasked by change blindness and inattentional blindness. Change blindness and inattentional blindness are phenomena relating to the inability to notice particular stimuli within our visual field, a sort of lapse in our visual system. Change blindness is when a person fails to notice a change within their visual scene because the change occurs during a moment when the intake of visual stimuli is disrupted. Similar to change blindness, inattentional blindness is characterized by the failure to notice a fully visible, but unexpected object because attention is engaged in another object, task, or event. Cohen

Attention is a cognitive phenomenon that describes an individual’s ability to focus their awareness on salient external stimuli (Rensink et al., 1997). Automatic attentional capture, i.e.

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.,

The human brain has a limited capacity to deal with the incoming information but yet every moment we encounter a large variety of stimuli like sights, sounds and smells. However, as mentioned above if we encounter stimuli which conflict with our schemas, we reconstruct our memory in order to fit our schemas. The human brain therefore focuses on some aspects of the situation while ignoring the others in order to cope with the sensory barrage. This process of choosing stimuli is called selective attention. Eyewitnesses tend to collect information that relates to their interests and may ignore other vital aspects

The article by Avital-Cohen and Tsal (2016) discussed the flanker task experiment, which asserted that distractor interference happens unconsciously as a result of focused attention toward the target. The results from the original flanker task indicated that participants had slower responses for incongruent trials, since the distractors are inconsistent with the target and would require a different response (Avital-Cohen & Tsal, 2016). However, Avital-Cohen and Tsal (2016) questioned the findings from the flanker task experiment. They decided to challenge the idea that only the target stimuli receives top-down processing, and not the distractors (Avital-Cohen & Tsal, 2016). The first experiment aimed to test whether the distractor interference is purely bottom-up processing as claimed in the flanker task. The experiment manipulated participants’ expectations of the target using the context effect - a type of top-down processing - by changing the distractors to be either letters or digits (Psych 240 lecture, 9/21/16). Then, the researchers conducted a second experiment and eliminated the ambiguity of distractors. They wanted to test whether the result from experiment 1 was caused by an overall bias or the ambiguous distractors. In experiment 2, the researchers predicted that they would obtain similar results to the first experiment only if the results were due to an overall bias effect (Avital-Cohen & Tsal, 2016). This study allows us to deepen our understanding of available

Cherry, a British physiologist, has suggested the cocktail party effect for the first time about 60 years ago. It means that a person can attend to one speaker while ignoring others at the same time, and that is happened just by selective attention[2]. In many studies, it has been showed that during auditory selective attention, amplitude of some of the components of ERPs increase which causes new waves such as Nd and N2 with longer latency. These findings represent the role of higher processing in selecting the auditory stream. Hilyard in 1973 introduced an EEG-based auditory selective attention protocol to investigate the brain`s electrophysiological activity during the auditory attention. It has been demonstrated that N1 amplitude of the

Golemen (2015) defines the “subtle faculty” is defined as the ability of human beings to focus their attention on a particular person, place, or thing, which is a gauge of the success or failure in life. In this manner, the mental focus of human beings is the ability of the individual to succeed at maintaining the longest and most acute form of attention span over time: “”Our very nimbleness in life depends on this subtle faculty” (Goleman 2). Goleman (2015) is expressly arguing that the “focus” is one of the most important mental functions in the human mind. In fact, the ability of an individual to focus is part of a broader relationship with the memory, comprehension skills, and other aspects of daily cognition that are essential for human survival. This aspect of human thought is an underrated and often ignored facet of psychology: “Though it matters enormously for how we navigate life, attention in

This definition emphasises how attention is thought of as a selective process. It seems clear from common sense that we cannot attend to all stimuli at once, so some kind of selection must take place as to what information we attend to and process further, and what is disregarded.

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