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Post by francesx on Apr 10, 2016 3:23:39 GMT
This post was written collaboratively by Adam and Franceska.
- Attention is commonly used in everyday language/conversation, but do people really know what it means?
-- People typically characterize it with:
--- Selectivity: awareness only includes a tiny proportion of stimuli; the mind is continuously assigning priority to some sensory info over others
--- Capacity limitation: limited ability to carry operations at the same time
- Modern theories of attention
-- Early selection theory (Broadbent, 1958) [Filter theory]
--- Stimuli reaching sensory system processed by looking at physical attributes (e.g., location, loudness) and analyzing / explicitly representing
--- Only capable of handling one stimulus at a time (i.e., there is a filtering device to determine which stimuli should be processed further
--- Selection occurs early on in the stream of information processing (process)
-- Late selection theories
--- Deutsch and Deutsch (1963), Norman (1968), MacKay (1973), Duncan (1980)
--- Recognition of familiar objects proceeds unselectively and without capacity limitations
--- Cannot voluntarily choose to identify or recognize something
--- Transfer process that sends results of an (unconscious) analysis process to further mechanisms (e.g., memory and response) [Duncan, 1980).
-- Controlled parallel theory
--- When one stimulus is attended and another is rejected, the rejected stimulus is not analyzed beyond the physical level (like early selection theory)
--- When two stimuli are attended, both are identified in parallel (like late selection theory).
--- System carries out the processing that is most advantageous
- Two questions can be addressed by all 3 theories:
-- Are rejected stimuli analyzed fully?
-- Can multiple, attended stimuli be processed simultaneously when that is advantageous?
- Elements of compromise: attenuation and sharing: Different/Other theories:
-- Filter attenuation theory → Treisman (1960): rejected mesagess are attenuated rather than blocked
-- Graded capacity sharing → like a "computer"
- Methods and terms: Laboratory Measures of Attention
-- Filtering tasks → presented with +1 stimuli, have to report something about a subset of the stimuli that satisfy a selection criterion
-- Monitoring tasks → numerous stimuli; the question depends on the categorical identity of the stimuli
-- Tasks Involving a single Stimulus → one stimulus, no selection criterion that is explicit
Some discussion questions:
--> What is/was your definition of attention before reading the paper?
--> Out of the theories discussed in this paper what was your "favorite" one, or the one that makes sense to you? Why?
--> How do you see the topics and theories discussed in this paper affect your own research?
--> Do you see this being applicable in areas domains such as data visualization? What other domains from HCI do you think would benefit from these theories/topics?
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mkery
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Post by mkery on Apr 11, 2016 0:39:56 GMT
At the beginning of this reading, the authors go to great lengths fleshing out, then exorcising the “folk philosophy” of attention (my own understanding of attention was roughly that described). Yet while the common word is problematic to differentiate from the scientific study, I couldn’t really see where common understanding from introspection goes significantly wrong. For that, it would have been helpful to read about more experimental results perhaps.
The topics and theories in this paper (likely, the contents of rest of the book) are useful for my own research on programmer tools. Programmers balance many simultaneous, complex knowledge tasks related to code. Distraction from things like email and attention to certain aspects of the code rather than others are major concerns. The tools that programmers use, such as IDEs, are often tremendously busy, inelegant, and convey many different aspects of development at once with a million buttons. Distraction and monitoring several things at once, as discussed later in the paper, would be very useful to explore further, as would, I imagine, data visualization which has already thought deeply about focusing attention in complex knowledge tasks.
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Post by bttaylor on Apr 11, 2016 3:42:20 GMT
I also came away from this chapter wanting less framing and more results. Clearly, the rest of the book goes into more depth, but I was curious what evidence there is to support one of the models over the other. That said, this actually might be a more useful starting point to someone ignorant of the field, like I am. I think compared to jumping into some of the categorization papers, where citations summarizing decades of findings were sort of assumed as prior knowledge.
The thing most related to my research that this paper made me think about was research into interruptibility. People are interested in trying to send messages/notifications/etc at points when people will be less distracted by them (e.g. notify me about an email after I finish submitting this post rather than while I'm typing it). I think a lot of that work just came from the "folk" recognition that interruptions are annoying and it's interesting to think that the real psychological route causes are not totally understood. It's not apparent that those causes necessarily need to be understood to create less interruptive systems, though. There was a study that used people's subjective judgement of whether or not another person was in an 'interruptible' state as the gold standard to try and achieve (i.e. if someone's secretary would choose to relay a message at a given time, then the computer should also send the notification). It may well be that this subjective human standard could be improved upon by a better understanding of how attention really works.
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Post by julian on Apr 11, 2016 14:08:48 GMT
I further read a little bit on wiki about attention and the thing that is more striking about attention is the gazillion theories that there are about it. All of them somehow connected with minimal differences. It is hard to decide then as an HCI researcher which Theory to focus on. All of the attention theories aim to explain attention as a process however I think most of these theories are missing what do we pay attention to and why. The wiki article at least gives some light on this issue by stating that some of our attention can be partially directed automatically. For example overt orienting (the act of attending to an item or location over others) can be made with two types of movements reflexive and controlled. The reflexive movement is fast and is due to abrupt changes in stimuli, on the other hand controlled movements are performed at will and are much slower. On how this knowledge would help in HCI I think first we need to know what the user is doing and then adapt the UI, or whatever is interacting with the user, to support that task without distracting the user. For example, if the user says is currently painting the very first layers of a drawing, suggesting or even showing only brushes that are appropriate for this purpose instead of the hundreds available, would be best for supporting the users current focus. (Shameful Self ad XD) We used recently information from the basic activity(walking, still, ...) and smartphone UI events to detect when is the best moment to interrupt a smartphone user. Although, in this work we didn't really work with attention directly but instead with what could be seen as a derivative called breakpoint detection for more info check: dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2807517 |
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Post by JoselynMcD on Apr 11, 2016 16:13:59 GMT
Similarly to Julian I feel at a loss for knowing which of the many attention theories are the ones that I should prioritize or consider in my work. I realize that the rest of Pashler's book goes on to describe the theories and rationale behind them in more detail. I'm interested in understanding more about how cognitive theories are formed and tested, and would be interested in discussing this more tomorrow in class. It's clear that Pashler is an expert in this area, but these theories strike me as almost too reductionistic and formulaic. This might be moving into social psych territory, but I sense that there is a benefits/cost negotiation aspect of attention in addition to just familiarity and stimuli processing. For my research interests, I'd like to learn more the motivations for attention, stimuli attraction, and the speed in which perceptions of benefits and costs of attention are negotiated.
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nhahn
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Post by nhahn on Apr 11, 2016 19:35:31 GMT
What I thought was really interesting about the theories is how they are highly related to different paradigms in computing. For example, a selector for attention is basically a multiplexer (or at least in the basic examples). In an electrical system, a multiplexers are used for input and output operations in order to enable multiple IO. Capacity sharing is highly similar to how computer systems switch between processes, with interrupts enabling forced switching between different programs (stimuli in this case). I am curious how much of attention theory influenced CS, of these ideas just happened to develop in parallel. This seems like a case where analogically reasoning could help to draw the two field together and possibly spur innovation, but I feel like that has already been done in this case.
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Post by stdang on Apr 11, 2016 19:50:09 GMT
I think attention actually plays a very large role in my project that is looking at the impact of pretense on what is learned from a pretend play session involving object substitution. The broader question that I am interested in is largely one of the unanswered questions in the attention literature that looks at what happens to unattended features of perception? In other words, when I pretend that a stuffed dog is actually a vicious cave troll, how does that impact my notion of cave trolls? of dogs? To some degree the person is selectively attending to the stuffed dog as an object with certain features such as a head and limbs. However, that person is also not attending to the color of the fur and the shape and texture of the stuffed animal as these are likely not common to cave trolls. What level of processing happens to those unattended features? Do they subtly influence the concepts that are summoned by either the perception of a dog or the conceptual manipulation of a cave troll? Are dogs now slightly more likely to be mean and eat children? Are cave trolls more likely to be soft and fuzzy? Who knows....
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Post by Anna on Apr 11, 2016 21:09:52 GMT
Graded capacity sharing seems to make sense, I think. Late selection theory's conclusion that we can attend to multiple stimuli at one time seems to go against more recent research (that I've heard of but not actually read...) suggesting that humans actually really suck at multitasking. (Anind was always saying this in PUI as an explanation as to why we wouldn't be able to use our computers and pay attention well in class).
In semi-response to Steven's strange but enjoyable post about dogs and cave trolls-- I am curious as to how to account for/predict individual variations in attention. For example, one's perception and understanding of a paper, a piece of literature, a movie, a computer system, etc. is going to be partially dependent on what stimuli most captures one's attention, or the order in which different stimuli capture one's attention, and this is going to vary by person. What are the roots of this variation (experience, etc?) and also the advantages/disadvantages of this variation? I feel currently, computer interfaces strive to direct users towards a particular path of stimuli, but what if instead they allowed for more branching, individualized interactions? (Or what research is out there that already does this?)
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toby
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Post by toby on Apr 11, 2016 23:39:16 GMT
I agree with Mary Beth that there should be more on how the understanding of attention in "folk psychology" through introspection differs from the more formalized models, and what are some concrete conclusions (rather than possible theories on this topic. And I really can't choose a "favorite" theory among the ones presented, as I don't think think any of them is falsifiable unless, as Steven said, we know more about what happens to the unattended features of perception. If we get to measure the attention and identifying of stimuli separately, then we can choose the ONE correct theory.
And for the impact on HCI, it reminds me of an article I saw on Facebook that presents a gaze study saying that no one pays attention to banner ad (and anything looks like a banner ad)anymore. Instead of using vivid color, or exaggerated design to try to "draw attention", it's much more effective to just have an ad that "looks like the actual content".This approach is trying to fool the “filter" in both the early selection and the late selection theory. However, early selection suggests that if an ad didn't pass the "physical description" filter, it just gets discarded and won't be processed for its semantic meaning. But if we go for the late selection theory, the ad would still get processed for the semantic meaning even if it didn't get attended, which goes back to Steven's point. We really want to know what happens to the unattended features, and what (if any) impact they have on our cognition.
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Post by jseering on Apr 12, 2016 0:00:19 GMT
During my brief stint doing learning science research I got to enjoy some interesting debates on what makes a good college education. I remember one particularly amusing discussion about how college students pay attention. One side was arguing that the latest psychology showed that students weren't realistically able to pay consistent attention for more than about five minutes, hence the "success" of the bite-sized video model in MOOCs. The other side snarked that whoever was lecturing during that study obviously wasn't a very good lecturer if their students stopped paying attention after five minutes. I think this speaks to the difficulty in measuring attention, and defining what is "good" attention and "bad" attention. Attention isn't particularly useful if the content isn't digested appropriately (i.e. if there isn't comprehension). I think in most cases it's difficult to measure attention directly without mixing in other cognitive concepts.
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aato
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Post by aato on Apr 12, 2016 0:46:07 GMT
Response to --> How do you see the topics and theories discussed in this paper affect your own research?
There are some models of stereotype threat that posit that the mechanism through which stereotype threat inhibits performance is by taking up attentional resources. Specifically, that the mind and working memory, or "capacity" can be taken up with negative stereotype thoughts and there is not enough room in the working memory to perform math calculations or other problems on standardized tests. Intervention literature has a number of ways of addressing stereotype threat, but I am not sure they all pull on the different theories of attention listed here. Some interventions seek to cancel out stereotypes by having people perform self-affirmation techniques (e.g., list 3 things that are important to you and describe why) as ways of essentially preventing the negative thoughts from even entering the attentional space. Having not plundered the depths of this literature yet, I wonder how other psychologists have used theories of attention to aim interventions at other aspects of attention.
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judy
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Post by judy on Apr 12, 2016 1:32:01 GMT
I had the opportunity to work with some interaction designers a few weeks ago "experience prototyping" a virtual reality experience. In an attempt to understand what is different and special about telling a story in VR, we conducted a series of three "experiments" (the quotations are deserved). I wrote up the synthesis of the experiments for the designers in this Medium post: medium.com/stanford-d-school/the-storyteller-s-guide-to-the-virtual-reality-audience-19e92da57497#.nv5wbt75nIn one experiment, we played out a brief scene with actors in a built out set (a bedroom). The audience member stood in the center of the room wearing glasses that mimicked how mobile VR restricts one's peripheral vision and wore headphones that played 360 sound, including a voiceover that included many of the scene's story points. There were 3 conditions: 1) restricted vision to 90 degrees of the room 2) restricted vision to 180 degrees of the room 3) full 360 degree (the room was divided using simple foam core walls). In the 360 scene, many details of the story (many of which were conveyed over the audio) were lost. For example, none of the 6 participants could remember the main character's name. Also, participants in the 360 could recall few objects from the room (but commented on the lighting and mood). It seems as though their attentional resources were spent on "higher level" information in the 360 view and that more detailed information fell away. It's possible that the audio fell away entirely. I don't really know which theory of attention this demonstrates. Is it early selection theory (filtering)? Or was there a process of identifying the most advantageous information and honing in on that? Interestingly, all of the participants in the 360 scene could identify how the main character was feeling, and in fact, commented on the overall mood of the piece. In the 90 scene, no participants felt they had enough information to describe how the character felt. |
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Post by cgleason on Apr 12, 2016 2:26:52 GMT
If you had asked me a few years ago, I think I would have agreed with the folk interpretation of attention. Lately, however, I've been acutely aware of how little I seem to be able to focus my attention at will. Distractions seem to be everywhere! Going into the paper, I probably held some variant of the early selection theory, although I like the late selection theory a bit more. It make more sense to me that recognition is automatic, although it seems like there should still be a capacity limit somewhere.
I enjoyed the chapter, but I felt like it left me with more questions than answers. I suppose that is a good thing for someone interested in the topic (which I am!). I would be eager to read the rest of the book.
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Post by fannie on Apr 12, 2016 3:03:45 GMT
Relating this to my research, I've been working with visualizing different EEG brain waves and seeing how that affects behavior. Attention is one thing that's come up a lot because of associations of certain brain waves with focus and concentration. Actually, I was considering going the route of trying to get people to control their activity since certain techniques have been used to help kids with ADHD be more focused. But there was the question of the visualization being an additional stimulus that's drawing people away from other things they need to be paying attention to. I've been going the direction of having a more ambient stimulus, so I'm interested in how people's attention differ for ambient/more environmental changes. In regards to measuring attention, we've also had questions about whether or not the activity would properly represent focus on something (or if there's a "good" and "bad" attention as Joseph mentioned)...eye-tracking was one possible way that was discussed to try to point out targets of attention.
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Post by judithodili on Apr 12, 2016 5:01:36 GMT
I felt like all the different theories, clarified to some extent what I think attention is - although I've never actively defined (or thought about) what attention actually means. Based on my readings on how people learn, I agree with the late selection theories of recognition of familiar objects. I'm also leaning towards believing that rejected stimuli goes through an attenuation rather than completely discarded. I can easily remember instances of things that I wasn't paying paying attention to, but when I had to recall those details, I could at least remember some of it without actively paying attention to it (maybe my attention was limited).
I wish the the paper had shed some more light on multitasking though, and why some people are better multi taskers than others. Also,why some people (like me) have very limited attention spans while others can pay attention to things for endless amounts of time. It would have made the reading more interesting and the findings more enlightening, rather than more of a lit review of the different attention theories that exist.
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