2.1 Resisting a body–mind–social split To what extent are you your body? The seventeenth-century philosopher René Descartes saw human subjective experience (including rationality, thought and spirituality) as separate and fundamentally different from the objective world of matter, that of our bodies and the physical universe. This idea of a fundamental divide between mind and matter (as two different kinds of ‘stuff’) set the stage for centuries of debate on what came to be known as Cartesian dualism. Critics of this w
References Further reading Styles, E.A. (1997) The Psychology of Attention, Hove, Psychology Press. A very readable textbook, which covers and extends the topics introduced in this unit. Pashler, H. (ed.) (1998) Attention, Hove, Psychology Press. An edited book, with contributors from North America and the UK. Topics are dealt with in rather more depth than in the Styles book. 5.4 Summary of Section 5 Many familiar themes have re-emerged in this section, together with the recognition that attention is involved in the assembly of remembered material as well as of current perceptions. Attention is associated with the generation of perceptual objects. In addition to being an essential part of external stimulus processing, attention influences remembered experiences. ERP data show that cortical signals derived from una 5.1 Introduction Modern techniques for revealing where and when different parts of the brain become active have recently provided a window on the processes of attention. For example, one of these brain-scanning techniques, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has been used to show the behaviour of an area of the brain that responds to speech. It turns out also to become activated in a person viewing lips making speech movements in the absence of sound. For this to happen there must be connecti 4.1 Introduction The above account of having attention taken away from the intended target reminds us that, while it may be advantageous from a survival point of view to have attention captured by novel events, these events are actually distractions from the current object of attention. Those who have to work in open-plan offices, or try to study while others watch TV, will know how distracting extraneous material can be. Some try to escape by wearing headphones, hoping that music will be less distracting, bu 3.1 Introduction The binding of features emerges as being a very significant process when displays are brief, because there is so little time in which to unite them. With normal viewing, such as when you examine the letters and words on this page, it is not obvious to introspection that binding is taking place. However, if, as explained above, it is a necessary precursor to conscious awareness, the process must also occur when we examine long-lived visual displays. Researchers have attempted to demonstrate th 2.6 Summary of Section 2 The results of the visual attention experiments we have considered can be interpreted as follows. Attention can be directed selectively towards different areas of the visual field, without the need to re-focus. The inability to report much detail from brief, masked visual displays appears to be linked to the need to assemble the various information components. The visual information is captured in parallel, but assemb 2.5 Masking and attention Before I summarise the material in this section, and we move on to consider attentional processes with clearly-seen displays, it would be appropriate to consider the relevance of the masking studies to the issue of attention. We began the whole subject by enquiring about the fate of material which was, in principle, available for processing, but happened not to be at the focus of attention. Somehow we have moved into a different enquiry, concerning the fate of material that a participant was 2.4 Rapid serial visual presentation It has been known for a long time that backward masking can act in one of two ways: integration and interruption (Turvey, 1973). When the SOA between target and mask is very short, integration occurs; that is, the two items are perceived as one, with the result that the target is difficult to report, just as when one word is written over another. Of more interest is masking by interruption, which is the type we have been considering in the previous section. It occurs at longer S 2.2 Knowing about unseen information An obvious difference between hearing and seeing is that the former is extended in time, while the latter extends over space. So, for example, we can listen to a spoken sentence coming from one place, but it takes some time to hear it all. In contrast, a written sentence is spread over an area (of paper, say) but, as long as it is reasonably short, it can be seen almost instantly. Nevertheless, seeing does require some finite time to capture and analyse the information. This process can be ex 1.4 Eavesdropping on the unattended message It was not long before researchers devised more complex ways of testing Broadbent's theory of attention, and it soon became clear that it could not be entirely correct. Even in the absence of formal experiments, common experiences might lead one to question the theory. An oft-cited example is the cocktail party effect. Imagine you are attending a noisy party, but your auditory location system is working wonderfully, enabling you to focus upon one particular conversation. Suddenly, from 1.1 Introduction To cover some of the concept of attention (we have only a unit, and there are whole books on the subject) I shall follow an approximately historical sequence, showing how generations of psychologists have tackled the issues and gradually refined and developed their theories. You will discover that initially there seemed to them to be only one role for attention, but that gradually it has been implicated in an ever-widening range of mental processes. As we work through the subject, two basic i References 2.7 Reflecting on explanations of ‘abnormal’ development: the case of dyslexia We can draw the following general conclusions about cognitive and biological explanations of abnormality from the material presented above. Both cognitive and biological accounts of dyslexia are offered as theories which explain the behavioural difficulties that are observed. While some theories may dominate accounts of a given condition (e.g. the phonological deficit hypothesis), and may result in influencing the nature of interventions, they are sti 2.3.4 Lateralisation It has long been suspected that unusual patterns of cerebral lateralisation (i.e. the ‘division of labour’ between left and right hemispheres of the brain) may have some connection with dyslexia. Early researchers noticed an apparent excess of left-handedness in children with specific reading difficulties (and their relatives). However, most dyslexic people are in fact right-handed, and most left-handed people are not dyslexic. Nonetheless, large-scale analyses of the research find 2.3.4 Symbolic data The fourth kind of data is essentially symbolic – symbolic creations of minds, such as the texts people have written, their art, what they have said (recorded and transcribed), the exact ways they use language and the meanings they have communicated. These symbolic data are the products of minds, but once created they can exist and be studied and analysed quite separately from the particular minds that created them. These kinds of data are used to provide evidence of meanings, and th 1.3 Psychology has social impact The relevance of psychology to everyday concerns, and the ease with which it can be popularised and used, mean that psychological knowledge – some of it dubious, some of it accurate – is continually absorbed into culture and often incorporated into the very language we use. Examples of psychological concepts that have entered popular discourse include the notion that we are predisposed, both through evolution and through the functioning of our brains and nervous systems, to behave in cert 8 Paired samples T-Tests This activity introduces the paired samples t-test. It is also known as the ‘within participants’ or ‘related’ t-test. It is used when your design is within p 6 Correlation This activity demonstrates how a simple correlation analysis can be carried out. Correlations tell us about the relationship between pairs of variables. For example:<
Activity 7
Activity 5
