2.1C Thinking and remembering 2021/2022- Lecture 1 – Opening Lecture by Steven Verheyen - Sept 2021
Atkinson Shiffren (1968): Information processing model. One of the first models of cognitive psychology.
Central idea: humans are active info processors; we do not act passively like robots.
Using a computer as a metaphor: input from the environment via senses, processing via sensory and short term
memory and storage in long term memory.
In this course:
Attention
Bottom up: easy to spot: objects that stand out and Top down: we must pay attention and look for it, e.g.
automatically draw our attention a box full of watermelons and turtles on top with the
same colour scheme. We have to focus to see the
turtles: info from higher cognition made you look for
turtles.
Why do we need attention?
We have limited info processing capacity. We can only attend to or be consciously aware of a small amount of
indo at any given time. Especially when there is a lot of distraction e.g. noise/tv, it can be seen as a mental
resource to focus on e.g. a book and ignore the distractions.
Selective attention: some info is attended to while Divided attention: multitasking
other info is intentionally blocked out.
Sustained attention e.g. in order to follow an entire Task switching (differs from divided attention): switch
lecture, you must be able to sustain your attention between tasks every so often.
and block out the rest. It’s very difficult to sustain
attention for a long time: people working at airports
that have to focus constantly at a lot of screens retire
at the age of 55 because of this.
Alternating runs paradigm:
Task alternates every N trials. Fixed number of trials N: engage in a particular task N times, then switch and
participate in another task N times before switching again.
e.g. you’re presented with digits and the task is to check if the digit is even or uneven- and the other task is to
identify if the digit is higher or lower than 5. The color of the square in which the digit is presented, presents the
signal which task you have to do.
In the alternating runs paradigm, you’ll get e.g. 4 times the same color (e.g. red for (un)even) and 4 times
another color (e.g. blue for high/low).
Atkinson Shiffren (1968): Information processing model. One of the first models of cognitive psychology.
Central idea: humans are active info processors; we do not act passively like robots.
Using a computer as a metaphor: input from the environment via senses, processing via sensory and short term
memory and storage in long term memory.
In this course:
Attention
Bottom up: easy to spot: objects that stand out and Top down: we must pay attention and look for it, e.g.
automatically draw our attention a box full of watermelons and turtles on top with the
same colour scheme. We have to focus to see the
turtles: info from higher cognition made you look for
turtles.
Why do we need attention?
We have limited info processing capacity. We can only attend to or be consciously aware of a small amount of
indo at any given time. Especially when there is a lot of distraction e.g. noise/tv, it can be seen as a mental
resource to focus on e.g. a book and ignore the distractions.
Selective attention: some info is attended to while Divided attention: multitasking
other info is intentionally blocked out.
Sustained attention e.g. in order to follow an entire Task switching (differs from divided attention): switch
lecture, you must be able to sustain your attention between tasks every so often.
and block out the rest. It’s very difficult to sustain
attention for a long time: people working at airports
that have to focus constantly at a lot of screens retire
at the age of 55 because of this.
Alternating runs paradigm:
Task alternates every N trials. Fixed number of trials N: engage in a particular task N times, then switch and
participate in another task N times before switching again.
e.g. you’re presented with digits and the task is to check if the digit is even or uneven- and the other task is to
identify if the digit is higher or lower than 5. The color of the square in which the digit is presented, presents the
signal which task you have to do.
In the alternating runs paradigm, you’ll get e.g. 4 times the same color (e.g. red for (un)even) and 4 times
another color (e.g. blue for high/low).
