O’Craven et Al. (1997) challenged the theory of whether earlier cortical areas used in vision processing show the effects of voluntary attention, and specifically did so by testing the effects of voluntary attention on the MT-MST complex which according to past research primarily processes motion elements of stimuli. They tested this specific inference by creating a two paradigm experimental design, one with a fixed stimulus in order to record the modulation of activity based on changes to the stimulus being attended to, and the other a complex stimulus paradigm in order to define the regions under question and allow for quantitative comparisons to be made between the different stimuli being attended to. In this experiment a control group was used verify the lack of eye movement …show more content…
The first experiment consisted of fMRI scans of participants viewing both black and white dots with the white dots moving towards the center of the picture, the fixation point. The participants were ask to switch their focus from either the black or white dots to the opposite every 20s (indicated by an audible tone) for 220s in order to test the signal changes depending on where attention is focused, and the color terms were used rather than “moving” and “non-moving” to eliminate bias. The second experiment also used fMRI scanning and consisted of two groups of subjects, one which focused only on the black dots, and another which only focused on the white dots. The stimuli presented to the subjects consisted of three paradigms, one in which the white dots were moving towards the fixation point at the center of the screen, another in which the black dots are moving towards the fixation point, and finally 20 second intervals of simply stationary black dots innervated the other two paradigms. In experiments two these three paradigms were presented to the subjects
Sullivan, G. D., Georgeson, M. A., & Oatley, K. (1972). Channels for spatial frequency selection and detection of single bars by the human visual system. Vision Research, 12, 383-94.
William James, an American psychologist, proposed the first theory of what we now call “selective attention”. Selective attention is the assumption that in order to focus on one activity going on in your environment, you must hinder all other tasks occurring in the background. A good illustration of this would be to block out the music playing for the sake of progress on school work. This is referred to as the spotlight theory. In premise, your visual attention works like a spotlight. There is a focal point, or place or concentration. Beyond the focal point is considered to be fringe; seen by the viewer, but not observed clearly. Outside of the focal point and fringe is surplus and not viewed at all (Cherry, 2014).
Figure 1.2 shows a simple schematic detailing the combination or retinal information and eye velocity estimates to generate a perceived motion direction. This diagram is analogous to figure 1.1, showing the integration of signals from a lower ‘detector’ level, at the eye movement and retinal velocity estimate level, and later at an integrator stage, after which the motions have been transformed into the perceived direction. This diagram also illustrates the focus of chapters 2, 3 and 4. Chapter 2 investigates the motion aftereffect (see adaptation section) which follows simultaneous retinal motion and repetitive smooth pur...
Though the term “inattentional blindness” would not be conceived until 1998, the concept itself is not new. As cited by Simons and Chabris, Hungarian neurologist and psychiatrist Rezso Balint wrote in 1907 “It is a well-known phenomenon that we do not notice anything happening in our surroundings while being absorbed in the inspection of something…” (1999). Using the term “selective looking,” Ulric Neisser, an American psychologist, demonstrated this idea in 1979. In his study, he instructed subjects to count the number of times a group of participants threw a basketball to each other. While the subjects were focused on this attention demanding task, a woman with an umbrella walked in the middle of the participants. At th...
Classical theories demonstrating the inattentional blindness paradigm are (1) the perceptual load, (2) inattentional amnesia and (3) expectation.
Thompson, W.L., Hsiao, Y., & Kosslyn, S.M. (2011). Dissociation between visual attention and visual mental imagery. Journal of cognitive psychology, 23, 256-263.
As with the mental map experiments, the fact that reaction time depends directly on the degree of rotation has been taken as evidence that we solve the...
Macleod and Mathews (1991) induced attentional biases within a laboratory setting to determine that a ca...
Distracted driving: the practice of driving a motor vehicle while engaged in another activity. Anything besides focusing on the road can be considered distracted driving. Most people would think that the only real distraction while driving is the use of a cell phone, however, that is entirely untrue. There are people that give the term, distracted driving, a whole new meaning. People do everything from fixing their makeup to shaving while driving in their cars. Distracted driving is one of the leading causes of car crashes in the United States.
The advances in technology of neuroimagery have enabled us to see what parts of the brain are stimulated when carrying out certain tasks. For example, Schon et all discovered that when reading music, a tiny spot at the back of the head (known as the right superior parietal cortex) becom...
Donovan, W. L. & Leavitt, L. A. (1980). Physiologic correlates of direct and averted gaze. Biological Psychology, 10, 189-199.
For our third writing assignment, I chose the movie A Beautiful Mind based on the real life story of the mathematician Professor John Nash, the Nobel Memorial Prize Laureate in Economic Sciences 1994. While the definition for a psychological disorder is a collections of symptoms marked by a “clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation or behavior”(American Psychiatric Association, 2013), the more reliable method to distinguish “abnormality” from normality is to determine whether these dysfunctional thoughts, emotions or behaviors are maladaptive, in other words, whether they interfere with normal day-to-day life (Psychology). By that standard, Prof. John Nash is, without doubt, considered as “abnormal”
The development stages of an individual's lifespan are one of the most essential phases they can go through. During these stages the individual goes through not only physical maturity, but also cerebral, behavioral, and poignant growth. A character I have chosen is Sasuke Uchiha, one of the protagonists from the famous anime Naruto. In the anime Sasuke’s own brother kills off their whole entire clan by order, and leaves only Sasuke to live. Sasuke grows up hating his brother, and develops hatred throughout his childhood towards everything. Throughout the whole anime it is shown clearly how Sasuke developed, and how his choices affected his life.
The unconscious mind is a complex part of the brain as it contains all the automatic processes that occur without self examination, including memory, affect, and motivation. Although these course of actions are well buried underneath the conscious, they (arguably) still have an impact on the behaviour. This concept was further developed by the Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Driven from evidence, studies show that the whole “hidden mind” also contains “repressed feeling, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, thoughts, habits, and automatic reaction”, even some further ulterior phobias and/or desires. (“The term psychoanalysis is used to refer to many aspects of Freud’s work and research, including Freudian therapy and the research methodology he used to develop his theories. Freud relied heavily upon his observations and case studies of his patients when he formed his theory of personality development.”) (Psychology About 1) According to psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious actions/processes are usually expressed in slips of the tongue and in symbolic forms expressed in dreams. Therefore, the unconscious can be placed as the source of dreams and natural thoughts (the ones that occur without discernable reason and/or cause), an archive of abandoned memories (ones that may be still pulled to consciousness at some later time), and the main location of understood knowledge (the things we have already learned and now do them without much thought). It is often argued that the consciousness itself is affected by other parts of the mind including the unconscious “personal habit, being unaware, and intuition” (Unconscious Mind Wikipedia 1). Some of the symptoms of the unconscious might consist of “awakening, im...
The phenomenon of ‘Divided attention’ is the idea that an individual has the ability to divide their attention between two or more tasks (multi- tasking). Focused attention models such as Broadbent’s theory, Treisman’s theory and Deutsch and Deutsch model explains how all our inputs are focused on one task at a time, however it is clear from looking at everyday life that we are able to divide our attention, successfully being able to complete more than one task at the same time.