Cognitive Psychology by K. Gilhooly, F. Lyddy, and F. Pollick (first edition) - Book summary
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Attention is a limited resource that is deployed to facilitate the processing of critical information. One basic taxonomy of attention states that there are two types of attention:
Posner stated that there is an attention system, that exists of three different systems:
The cocktail party problem refers to focusing on one speaker in a background of noise and other conversations. There are several theories of attention. There are filter theories, that describe when we process the incoming information:
The resource theory of attention uses the metaphor of the spotlight. This refers to the ‘spotlight of attention’ that illuminates locations of interest. The zoom lens theory uses this metaphor. The size of the spotlight depends on the size of the object that requires our attention. Evidence that attention is a resource comes from experiments by Egly, that show that attention can be bound to an object, instead of a spatial area. An explanation for this could be that the spatial location of objects changes constantly, so it would be more useful to focus our attention on the object, instead of the spatial location of the object. To test whether tasks compete for resources (such as attention), the dual-task paradigm can be used, where two tasks are measured both independently and dependently. Our ability to do multiple tasks simultaneously depends on how far apart they are on the relevant dimensions (e.g: speaking and listening tasks will be more difficult simultaneously than seeing and speaking tasks).
When an individual sees a stimulus, the first component of activity is known as feedforward sweep, which describes how incoming sensory information travels across the brain. Once an area is activated it can interact with both higher and lower brain areas in a mode of recurrent processing. This is processing within a network, that involves computations that occur in a cyclic fashion. The receptive field of a neuron indicates the physical space that stimulates the neuron. The normalization model of attention states that attention increases the neural response to a stimulus in the visual cortex. This model focusses on two functions of attention:
The stimulus drive is the presented image. The suppressive drive is the perception using attention to decrease the impact of a part of the image and the population response is what the individual sees. Taking attention away from a location in working memory causes a decrease in the memory performance.
The feature integration theory states that recognition of a target was modelled to be determined by two processes:
The non-selective pathway uses distributed attention. This is reminiscent of preattentive vision and allows rapid statistical analysis of the entire scene. If attention is attracted to an event in the visual field there will be a facilitation of processing around this location. After attention moves away, this location suffers from delayed responding to events. This is called the inhibition of return. The function of this is to make sure that searchers don’t return to the place they’ve just searched right away.
If people are looking at a rapid moving sequence and they are trying to detect two things that are close to each other, the second thing is not detected. This is called the attentional blink.
There are several failures of attention:
An afterimage occurs when the vision of an object remains after the presentation has ceased (e.g: looking in bright light). Continuity editing describes a filmmaking technique to produce a smooth continuous experience across changes in camera shot.
Consciousness is being aware of one’s existence evidenced by thoughts and perceptions. Subliminal perception is perception where the stimulus is presented under a certain threshold (e.g: the stimulus is too dim or presented too quickly, but the effects on behaviour can still be measured. There are two distinct views on the functions of consciousness:
Volition is our ability to make conscious choices. This includes a free will. There seems to be a causal relationship between our actions and our conscious thoughts, but Libet’s experiment seemed to provide evidence against this view. Our readiness potential, which indicates brain activity reflecting the initiation of preparing a movement, precedes our conscious awareness of a movement.
Another theory of consciousness states that the function of consciousness is to provide us with an executive summary of our current situation. The global workspace theory states that consciousness facilitates flexible, context-driven behaviour and that consciousness requires interactions between a broad range of brain areas (e.g: consciousness is needed to determine the mental state of others and this is highly context-driven).
Attention and consciousness share the property of involving the selection of particular information above other information. In attention, the selected information receives deeper processing and in consciousness, the selected information receives privileged access to the stage of our mental life. There are different types of consciousness:
The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for language. People with a split-brain cannot talk about what they see in their left visual field, but they will be able to use their hand to point at the object. They will not know the reason for this, as language is produced in the left hemisphere. Blindsight is a condition in which people have damage to the primary visual cortex which has the effect that people cannot see anymore, although their eyes are functioning properly. Although they cannot consciously report seeing anything, they do respond in various ways to stimuli presented in this damaged visual field.
The neural correlates of consciousness are used to differentiate the empirical approach of studying consciousness with the philosophical approach. Binocular rivalry arises when different images are presented simultaneously to the two eyes and results in experiencing seeing one image and then the other alternatively. The visible image dominates the invisible one in consciousness.
This bundle contains everything you need to know for the third interim exam of Introduction to Psychology for the University of Amsterdam. It uses the book "Cognitive Psychology by K. Gilhooly, F. Lyddy, and F. Pollick (first edition)". The bundle contains the following chapters:
- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
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This bundle describes a summary of the book "Cognitive Psychology by K. Gilhooly, F. Lyddy, and F. Pollick (first edition)". The following chapters are used:
- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
This bundle contains everything you need to know for the third interim exam of Introduction to Psychology for the University of Amsterdam. It uses the book "Cognitive Psychology by K. Gilhooly, F. Lyddy, and F. Pollick (first edition)". The bundle contains the
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