1. Attention …is a process …is a resource
Exogenous and endogenous attention
“Attention as a spotlight” metaphor

2. An example similar to Posner’s study

3. Becklen & Cervone (1983): the spotlight is attentional, not just positional

4. Looking for the ‘primitives’ via exogenous attention processes:
Visual Search Tasks

5. Conjunctive Search

6. Treisman’s FIT
Treisman with Dan Kahneman at a cognition conference

7. Treisman’s FIT 2-stages of processing: 1) Preattentive stage
-primitives identified in the visual array
-independent of one another, and spatial location (if attention prevented)
“…if focused attention is prevented, the features of unattended objects may be free floating spatially, as well as unrelated to one another. Thus we may detect the presence of critical features without knowing exactly where they are located, although we can certainly home in on them rapidly.”
(Treisman, 1980, p.100)
-rapid, parallel processing
2) Focal attention stage
- Gestalt perception requires focal attention on locations
-serves to bind & integrate features
-slow, serial processing

8. Treisman’s FIT
-can account for variations in simple, disjunctive and conjunctive search times
-makes novel predictions that bear out in the lab: illusory conjunctions

9. Controlled/voluntary/endogenous/selective attention
-started with Cherry’s split-span studies

10. Donald Broadbent’s ‘bottleneck’ model
Problems:
-cocktail party effect
-GSR study of conditioned words in unattended ear
-Treisman’s dichotic shadowing studies
-Lackner & Garrett’s (1973) disambiguation studies
-Wood & Cowan’s (1995) error monitoring study

11. Treisman’s ‘later selection’ model of attention (“attenuation theory”)

12. Deutsch & Deutsch’s later selection model:

13. Don Norman’s model

14. Johnson & Heinz’s model

15. Bottlenecks versus capacity models:
-resource allocation determines attentional limits
Suppose you have $100 worth of “attention” to spend. How much does it cost to:
Watch television
eat
Listen to music
Talk on a cell phone
walk
Drive somewhere unfamiliar
Read a book
Drive somewhere familiar
Listen to a lecture
Study for an exam

16. (how much attention you think is required for it)
Kahneman’s model of attention: resource allocation
(task enjoyment level)
(General rules)
I need the car keys NOW!
(how much attention you think is required for it)

17. Is attention necessary for processing?
-NO: dichotic listening, priming
Does attention guarantee processing takes place?
NO: change blindness

18. Does the image have to flicker?

19. Yeah, fine, but that was still just a picture, not real life.

20. So what good is attention?
-selects some information for ‘deep’ processing from the large array available
-visual memory doesn’t have the capacity to retain everything, so sacrifices made
-no real need to retain everything, since the environment usually serves as its own memory
-limitations only apparent when we bring it into the lab

21. Hemineglect