1. Cognitive Psychology Winter 2004 -Discussion Section-

2. Attention

3. Cognitive functions Perception Memory Attention Decision-making Reasoning, problem-solving Imagery Language Emotion Motivation Action Attention

4. Theoretically extremely complex Speaking of „Attention“ in the singular is potentially misleading. Poorly defined More than one process.

5. Yes, but: Needs to be explained itself. Why Selection? Why not take in everything? Purpose is to facilitate goal-directed or relevant action. Heuristic: Attention = Selection?

6. The problem A lot IS taken in. The problem is, that to act in a coordinated fashion, our brain needs to act only on a subset of information.

7. Interference: Stroop Green Yellow Red Blue Purple

8. Reason is Perception  Action chains in the brain. Some neurons need to be silenced in order to optimize performance. Why? Neuroscientific perspective helps.

9. Tuning curves

10. Treue

11. Desimone

12. Possibly. Sidenote: Philosophical implications? Notion of singular self?

13. Change blindness Demos

14. Change blindness The way to do it? They confuse demo and study...

15. Logothetis

16. Theoretically even more convoluted... Popout

17. Some stimuli need attention to process, others don´t. The ones that do not need attention in visual search „pop out“. They are building blocks of perception, basic features. Idea These supposedly have a representation in an early brain area.

18. Demos 6, 11

19. There are all kinds of slopes for different stimulus configurations. Reality Sometimes, complex stimuli also pop out. For example, faces. Basic features? Not really. Not in early brain area, either. To date, Popout doesn´t explain anything. Needs to be explained itself. No a priori prediction of popout possible.

20. Demos 62 ff 23 ff

21. Ability to deploy attention in space can be impaired, by Right Posterior Parietal brain damage. Attentional Scanner has a measurable speed. Other issues Automaticity, Flexibility tradeoff... Further Reading upon request.

22. Indispensible for coordinated and goal-directed action. Hard to study, theoretically complex. Summary Many models have been proposed, all of them are questionable. No learning, memory without some degree of attention.

23. Mary Potter Looks innocent, but raises many issues. -task

24. Eye movements

25. Saccadic suppression Assignment: Look in the mirror and follow your eyes as they move around.

26. Retina