Psyc2020 Quiz 3

Selectivity (spatial, auditory, timing)
Capacity
Expectation
Switching

Amount of perceptual resources available for a given task (varies with task and individual)

attention is selective in terms of what gets processed and what does not

eye movement

Move attention but not eyes

Auditory attention

Display attention to different properties of same object

Select area for attention before any processing

Selecting area for attention after processing

Even though we are ignoring other auditory inputs (eg ignoring ambient sound at a cocktail party), we still notice broad changes (eg. pitch change, language change) (just not semantic elements)

High attentional bottleneck (just below registration) --> less info getting through for perceptual analysis

Low attentional bottleneck (below perceptual analysis and semantic meaning) leading to more information getting through for higher processing.

Mack and Rock (1998)
What visual features can be processed without visual attention?

Varied length of horizontal lines, object flashes up on screen. Only gross changes go through attentional bottleneck (location > colour > number > shape)

- shifting attention

- spotlight

- zoom lens

Consequences of attending to specific locations in space.
Participants respond to target flashing up on one side of screen. Valid cue = arrow pointing to correct side (80% of arrows). Invalid cue = arrow pointing wrong way. Neutral = no arrow.

Time benefit for valid cue, time cost for invalid
Attended area = increased cognitive processing

- VOLUNTARY
- attention must be voluntarily shifted from the central cue to the cued location

- INVOLUNTARY
- attention is drawn to the location of the cue, usually by flash or movement
- cannot be ignored

- Disengagement (parietal lobe)

- Movement (superior colliculus)
- Engagement (thalamus)

- attention is like a spotlight, illuminating the object in its focus region
- supported by Posner cuing paradigm
- movement = 8ms/degree
- trajectory = illuminates region along its trajectory
- size = 1 degree
- unitary = spotlight cannot be divided in two

- attention is like a zoom lens, but the wider the field the less detail there is

- supported by local/global tasks

- visual processing happens simultaneously over the whole visual field --> loss of fine detail
- parallel processing

- visual 'pop out'

Visual processing performed as a series of 'attentional fixations' each covering a different area of the visual field.

Serial processing

Being so focused on something that you are 'blind' to objects directly in front of you (e.g. pilot so focused on HUD instead of plane on tarmac)

Not being receptive to changes in a scene - parallel processing cannot pick up enough fine detail to discriminate subtle changes

An example of selective attention to properties. Conflicts between semantic identity and colour of word makes it difficult to name.

Shows we have little control over what we selectively attend to. Consistent with late selection.

Attention can modulate neuronal firing rate, but primarily only in higher order visual processing areas (eg V4) relative to lower order areas (V1)

Greater activity in V1 leads to increased likelihood of distinguishing hard-to-see patterns. Attention increases the activity of the cortex (like a volume knob).

people with TBI (particularly parietal lobe damage- involved in disengagement) have trouble focusing attention to the contralateral side

Damage to the right parietal lobe results in worse spatial neglect because the RPL is involved in deploying attention to both the left and right sides, whereas the LPL is only partially involved in deploying attention to the right side.

Person unable to disengage attention from one side to process the other

- physiological (ANS)
- expressive (face, voice, movement)

- cognitive (beliefs, appraisals).

Perceived event --> emotional experience --> physiological and behavioural changes

Perceived even --> physiological and behavioural changes --> emotional experience

Perceived event goes to both physiological and behavioural changes and emotional experience but these two are SEPARATE

physiological arousal causes emotion

physiological arousal IS emotion

Expressing a particular emotion puts us (to some extent) into the same emotional state

Strong = expression can cause inference of emotion
Weak = facial expression modulates emotion

Zygomaticus major and orbicularis oculi

Corruguator muscles

cheeks

Brow and forehead

Physiological states/expressions/behaviour can to some extend modulate emotion --> Cannon-Bard theory does not account for this (physiological response and emotion separate)

Stimulus --> thalamus --> hypothalamus (evaluates information) --> projections to sympathetic nervous system AND cerebral cortex

Pairing a neutral/non-feared stimuli (CS) with a negative or positive (hard-wired) automatic response (US)

Fear acquisition. Important in conditioning to anticipation of threat but it is not necessarily the only region required for experiencing fear.

Thalamus --> cortex (info is evaluated) --> amygdala --> response

(slower, more measured response)

Thalamus --> amygdala --> response

(sympathetic, instinctive, quick)

Presenting the CS+ alone (without US) reduces fear-related behaviour

Reemergence of fear after extinction

emergence of fear in a different context

Emergence of fear in response to US alone

Reacquisition of fear is faster than learning of fear

1) Synaptic weight (pre/postsynaptic neurons having highly correlated output --> connection strength)

2) plasticity: changing the wiring between neurons

Innate fear

Toddlers didn't walk over 'visual cliff'. Infants tend to avoid drops with locomotor experience not automatically. May be due to avoidance rather than fear.

Experience and learning more important than innate factors in shaping response

learned helplessness in dogs. Dogs who were conditioned to believe they always received a shock didn't jump to avoid one when they could have.

Past learning directly influences how a situation is perceived and how this leads to certain emotions

Chronic vs acute

Low self esteem vs normal self esteem

broad vs narrow

Event --> physiological changes --> cognitive labels which leads to both emotional experience AND behaviour

Attributions can determine what emotions are formed (e.g. noticed physiological changes can be misattributed to the wrong emotion)

Linking together convergence and accommodation - as eyes converge and diverge, muscles controlling the shape of the lens contract and relax automatically

Divergence (smaller angle)

Convergence

Difference in image location of an object seen by the left and right eye, used to extract depth information.

The locus of points in space with the same angles of fixation lines/points in space that yield single vision by stimulating the same area of both retinas.

Identical regions of the retina are connected to binocular neurons in the cortex that signal zero depth.

Similar regions of the retina are connected to binocular neurons in the cortex that signal depth

Horizontal plane around the theoretical horoptor, where any point appears single.

One point on the retina may yield single vision with a circular REGION AROUND THE IDENTICAL POINT on the other retina

Colour

Brightness

One wavelength

Many wavelengths

The colour of the light itself

The purity or vividness of the colour

The perceived intensity of the coloured light

Short wavelength (blue)

Medium wavelength (green)

Long wavelength (red)

colour mixing of light

basic varieties of colour deficiencies

metamers

physically distinct stimulations that we perceive as one (e.g. mixing 530nm and 620nm light stimulates the same receptors (S,M,L) to the same extent as one 580nm wavelength).

Proposal that red/green, yellow/blue and white/black are paired in an antagonistic relationship in colour perception.

--> Young-Helmholtz theory is correct at the RECEPTOR level

--> Herring opponent process theory is correct at the RECEPTIVE FIELD LEVEL

Frontotemporal atrophy with 'knife like' thinning of gyri

Ventricular dilation

Swollen brain cells (pick's cells) with Tau protein inclusions

Inappropriate jocularity
Echolalia and echopraxia
Utilisation behaviours
Primitive reflexes still there

aggressiveness

social inappropriateness

apathy
decreased inhibition

non-fluent verbal output
poor naming

speech and language more severe changes than memory

Akinesia (impaired voluntary movement), plastic rigidity, paratonia (resistance to passive movement)

Suggested that lobotomy can reduce violent behaviour in monkeys

Invented the transorbital lobotomy

- Patients become stimulus bound
- weight gain/sexual promiscuity
- could not form/sustain goals
- distracted by circumstances
- very passive (vulnerability)

"The man who lost his ego"
- Law graduate who suddenly became very demotivated, apathetic and uninterested. Found a large astrocytoma in LPFC, callosal fibres and into RPFC (after seizure in college).
- Lack of concern when told he had ~1 year to live

Fast growing, most common type (40-50%) of brain tumour

Arises from any glial cell (astrocytomas, oligodendrogliomas)

Working memory
Stimulus driven behaviour (utilisation)
Concept formation
Temporal organisation/chronogenesis
Goal-oriented behaviour

- Concept formation
- Concept shifting
- Concept preservation

When a person (commonly as a side effect of LPFC damage) always persists with the same concept and isn't able to shift/adapt

much greater LPFC activiation during spatial working memory tasks

Using a modified Wisconsin card sorting task, Konishi et al (1998) suggested that the role of the LPFC is to inhibit dimensions that are not relevant, and to filter through possible alternatives.

i.e. increased complexity of task = increased dimensions to inhibit = increased LPFC activity

Organisation and segregation of memory representations. Chronogenesis.

Frontal damage: better recognition/recall, worse recency (arrange events in order)

Temporal damage: worse recognition/recall, better recency

Amygdala, thalamus, striatum, brain stem

TO: motor cortex and spinal cord (willed action)

FROM: thalamus & brainstem nuclei (importance of arousal state for ACC activation)

TO AND FROM: LPFC (cognition, monitoring presence of conflict)

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Lateral-orbital prefrontal cortex

Social and emotional judgement and decision making --> choosing how to act by integrating info about goals, values and the current social situation

Tumour bilaterally in orbitofrontal cortex
Lack of concern for social rules, poor social awareness
No 'schedule'

OFC damage results in decreased SCRs in anticipation, reward and punishment conditions.

People dont care if they get punished, stealing, violent behaviour etc (acquired sociopathy)

- 56 year old man, premorbidly quiet and withdrawn
- Frontal trauma including OFC
- poor recognition, attribution and automatic response to emotions
- poor identification of social behaviour violations
- poor theory of mind

- Cognition influences our affective reaction to a stimulus

- Fear to racial outgroup faces is not irrational
- Resistance to extinction in racial out group no instruction group

- Blink magnitude

- Skin conductance before/after face

race of CS

instruction or no instruction (no more shocks)

Chinese no-instruction group

- reflects evolutionary fear-of-the-unknown

- stereotype activation

Acquired (damage to occipitotemporal cortex)

Developmental (up to 2.5% of people)

Family named significantly fewer faces than controls (depends on pop culture knowledge)

Given novel target faces to learn and presented against distractor faces

requires MEMORY

family members were significantly worse than control

No memory component, had to rate morphed faces on similarity to target faces

Facial identity impairment for family not related to memory

Determine emotion from pictures of eyes

Thefamily displays normal processing of facial emotions

family has deficits in within-categoryidentification of non-face objects, not just for faces although it seems to alesser extent This family seems to have impairment onnon-face objects as well

Both control and family were similar,no evidence of global processing deficits for family

In the no mirror condition: there Isthe control condition, no systematic pattern of errors related to the mirrorhand position In the mirror condition: systematicerrors: the more the real and mirror locations differs, the greater the error.This pattern of errors will be consistent with the brain representing the handsomewhere between the real and mirror-signalled locations