Unimpaired And Unattended Attention

The Stroop effect is demonstrated by the reaction time to determine a color when the color is printed in a different color’s name. Participants respond slower or make more errors when the meaning of the word is incongruent with the color of the word. Despite knowing the meaning of the word, participants showed incapability of ignoring the stimulus attribute. This reflects a clear instance of semantic interference and an unfathomed failure of selective attention (Stroop, 1935).

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,

The type of information that lower thresholds according to Treisman’s attenuation theory words that have subjective importance and words that signal danger can still be recognized even at low volumes. Also the context of certain words could lower thresholds of someone’s attention in an unattended ear.

Abrupt appearance of an object within peripheral visual fields are sudden onset distractors (SOD) and they can have effects on attention and reaction times. Attentional capture occurs when a distractor stimulus appears in a field of vision and pulls focus away from the task at hand. This has the effect of increasing reaction times as it diverts a subject’s attention while the brain registers and processes the new information. When the brain is focussed upon a specific task the distractor captures attention and thus can increase reaction time through this visual processing mechanism. This demonstrates automaticity, a reflex which is both not inhibited by increasing cognitive load (load-insensitivity criterion) and not voluntarily controlled (intentionality criterion). The attentional

Another visual condition that has intrigued the neurologist for over a century is a condition called visual neglect. After having a stroke in her parietal lobes in her brain, Peggy Palmer had normal vision, which should allow her to draw a copy an image without difficulty. When Peggy was asked to draw a copy of a daisy, they found that she only would draw the right half of the daisies image. She didn’t realize this until the it was told to her, then she could see that she in fact was missing the entire left half of the daisy. Dr. Ramachandran explains that as we see an object, the visual input will split into two different pathways. One is the “how?” and the other is the “what?”. The “how” deals with the area of the brain that mainly controls

In my life, people thought that I disregarded my education. Over time, it became frustrating to see people give up on me. Since, people were unaware that I am enthusiastic in regards to my education, it wasn’t until recent success that people became aware.

Another patient of Dr. Ramachandran is Gram Young, who at the age of 8 lost his sight in a road accident that caused brain damage to main visual center which takes up half of the large region in the back of the brain. Gram explained that he would walk into things as big as pillars much like those at a train station because he couldn’t see them, but he can still see. It’s a very rare paradoxical condition referred to as blind sight. This condition allows the patient to detect a thing, but isn’t aware of what it is. Gram can see to the left, but is blind to everything on the right in both eyes. To test this Collin Blakemore an Oxford scientist, used a panel divided by line down the middle, the left side white, while the right side a light blue, of which Gram couldn’t see. When placing something in Gram’s field of vision on the left he can see it if

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.,

Technology has become an inseparable part of modern life, enhancing the speed of every action and increasing the pressure on human brain. It might appear that with innovations in every aspect of daily routine people should be able to have more free time and perform their tasks one by one without any hurry. On the other hand, they also could have become used to the necessity of being involved with more than one issue at the same time, and thus should be able to be constantly busy. However, it is not that simple. All of the aspects of modern life are not exclusively beneficial or solely harmful for human beings, because this impact is multifaceted and complex.

Mark’s diagnosis is Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. According to the DSM-V criteria, Mark has expressed at least five symptoms of hyperactivity and inattention which has been present prior to him being 12. His symptoms were also present in two or more setting (home and school) and it also interferes with his academic function. Additionally, his symptoms are not better explained by another mental disorder.

I had been driving an 18-wheeler for many years and attention is a big deal after putting in a few hours behind the wheel. The early selection models of attention speak of having an idea of the information before deciding on what to filter and the late selection models say that the person has selections in mind before filtering (Goldstein, 2015). What I am getting from this that applies to my incidents in driving is that I knew a car was there before making a selection to avoid it, or I did not know the car was there until I made a selection to avoid it.

Eight years ago, in 2007, Cynthia Stafford was a 53-year-old software account executive living in California. She had a good life, but she imagined it could be so much better.

Compare and contrast early vs late selection models of attention. How well do they explain how we selectively attend to information?

When reading the textbook of Chapter 11, the concept selective attention interests me. My understanding on this concept is a child's ability to select which tasks should be focused right now. I am not pretty sure if I am on the right track of thinking this, but selective attention reminds me of children with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder. Both of the disorders are referred to children with problems on focusing a task and also be able to ignoring other tasks. Nevertheless, ADHD is relatively broader than selective attention. Besides that they are not able to focus, children with ADHD are also tend to be overly active. Also, boys are more likely to get ADHD than girls. I used to be sure that I got ADHD, but then my professor told

We are replicating J.R. Stroop’s original experiment The Stroop Effect (Stroop, 1935). The aim of the study was to understand how automatic processing interferes with attempts to attend to sensory information. The independent variable of our experiment was the three conditions, the congruent words, the incongruent words, and the colored squares, and the dependent variable was the time that it took participants to state the ink color of the list of words in each condition. We used repeated measures for the experiment in order to avoid influence of extraneous variables. The participants were 16-17 years of age from Garland High School. The participants will be timed on how long it takes them to say the color of the squares and the color of the words. The research was conducted in the Math Studies class. The participants were aged 16-17 and were students at Garland High School. The results showed that participants took the most time with the incongruent words.