Reading Activity Week #8 (Due Monday)

Chapter 7: Attention & Scene Perception

One of the first things that stood out to me as interesting was the concept serial self-terminating search. The thought of our brain just automatically going through such a process and then seeing or going through it myself as I went through the figure/example (pg. 193) was very fascinating. Then once I read about one type of search, all the other types of searches surfaced like guided search (which are attention can be restricted to a subset of possible items on the basis of information about the target item’s basic features), and conjunction search (search for a target defined by the presence of two or more attributes) which only made the topic of searches even more intriguing.

The second topic that I found captivating was the part about fusiform face area (FFA) and the parahippocampal place area (PPA). I was completely surprised to find out that through a fMRI there is a part of our brain that identifies peoples faces as well other parts that light up to other types of things. These are factors or types of attentional selection which is directly from this chapter.

And finally, change blindness. I thought the whole phenomenon and it really made me want to know and find out more information about. I especially enjoyed doing the experiment in Figure 7.33 (p. 213). I only found one difference and was astonished. I even thought, “could I be experiencing change blindness, right now?”. I especially enjoyed the whole section on change blindness, Dan Simons, and Dan Levin. It was all very interesting and going through the figures was very interactive which made the process of learning fun.

Least interesting thing about this chapter was when I was reading about feature integration theory. I was lost with what the text was trying to teach me. I had to read, re-read what illusory conjunction and proto-objects was and then I read the whole part again. The example wasn’t very fun either, another reason I dislike this part.

The most useful part of chapter 7 in understanding Sensation / Perception was definitely the continuous link to our brain, visual cortex, senses, attention and our reactions. Our brain is the whole part of sensation / perception or at least that is what I keep coming up with every time I answer this question on my blogs. Sensation / Perception is all about the brain…..

This chapter builds on sensation, perception and the continuous links attention has on brain. There is a neural activity that begins the moment our eyes are fixated on something and/or someone.

I definitely would like to learn more about change blindness and how common it is. Once I did the test or example and I didn’t do very well, I immediately wondered if ci suffered from it. Also does it still exist and do people even know they suffer from it? Are there current studies? Those are just a couple of questions I have.

Throughout this chapter I kept thinking about the brain and how many things are going on at one time. From the moment our eyes open our brain begins processing information. The five senses begin feeding information and our neural process are now becoming fascinating to me.

TERMS: Attention, scene perception, selective attention, guided search, conjunction search, scene-based guidance, serial self-terminating search, cue, target, fusiform face area (FFA), fMRI, parahippocampal place area (PPA), experiment, change blindness, Dan Levine, visual cortex, stimuli, perceive, test, feature integration theory, illusory conjunction, proto-objects, neural activity, processing, senses, eyes.

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?

First I find the idea of attention interesting. The book states that there are different kind of attention; overt attention, covert attention, divided attention, and sustained attention however it focuses on selective attention. When we think about paying attention to something we just think of it as a simple gesture that we decide. However; realizing that we can decide what we pay attention to and that we have to ability to pick one or more out of many stimuli and pay attention to that specific stimuli is interesting to me (selective attention). It is defined in the book as the form of attention involved when processing is restricted to a subset of the possible stimuli. I think I find the idea of selective attention so interesting because I experience it so often; I notice when people aren't listening to me and I notice when I myself am choosing to pay attention to one things versus another. Sometimes I can open a text message or say something out loud but really be focused on something else and want my attention to be on that other things and I can immediately forget what I just read, or what I just said or what I was just thinking because my attention went elsewhere.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?

I also find visual search experiments to be interesting. They provide a closer approximation of some of the actions of attention in the real world. In a typical visual search experiment, the observer looks for a target item among distractor items. This is interesting to me because I never realized why "where's waldo" puzzles were difficult I always just thought it was a matter of finding something quickly but there is more to it then that. Our brain has to interpret what we are seeing in order for us to actually find what we are looking for. Of course those tests and puzzle can be difficult but relating it to real life is really interesting. Finding a face in a crowd, or the milk in the fridge both seem like simple tasks that we do all the time without even realizing it but those are visual search experiments in our every day lives.

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?

Repetition blindness is interesting to me; if items are relatively close together, it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to determine whether you've seen one or two of a letter, word or picture and this is repetition blindness. A failure to detect the second occurrence of an identical letter, word or picture in a rapidly presented stream of stimuli when the second occurrence falls within 200-500 milliseconds of the first. This isn't something I have ever experienced but it is very interesting and I would like to learn more about it. I have never heard of repetition blindness before and it is confusing to me how when you see an object once how you wouldn't see that same object again.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?

The binding problem was probably one of the only things I didn't find interesting about this chapter and it was probably not interesting to me because I didn't fully understand it. The challenge of trying different attributes of visual stimuli which are handled by different brain circuits to the appropriate object so that we perceive a unified object. Basically saying we might see one thing but until we go back and see the "bigger picture" we won't understand what we are seeing. This is confusing for me I would need it to be explained differently for me and I didn't find it very interesting due to the confusion. Otherwise I found this chapter to be very interesting; it related to sensation and perception really well and was easy to relate to our own experiences.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Sensation / Perception?

I think the section on both attention and explaining visual experiments will be most helpful in me understanding the chapter and sensation and perception. The entire chapter focuses on attention and how our attention can affect what we see and what we don't see. I think that the visual experiments are a great way of explaining how our attention can be biased and how we often see what we want to see. They are also really cool to learn about because we don't think about so many every day things as being visual experiments but it is actually happening constantly; looking for a specific movie in my movie shelf for example. I also think that learning about extinction will help me in sensation and perception. Extinction is related to neglect; the book states "it might even be neglect in a milder form." Neglect is when patients behave as if part of the world isn't even there, this helps me with sensation and perception because they are acting a certain way because what they are seeing is different from what we are seeing; which makes them perceive it different than another person may.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?

This has been my favorite chapter so far; everything I learned about was interesting and made me want to keep learning on the topic. I love this chapter because it relates the mind to what we see and explains things that we never really would have thought about in that specific way. This chapter relates to sensation and perception because it is building off of just seeing things; but it is more interesting because it is helping us understand why we see certain things before other. How our mind processes what we see and why some things are harder for us to see than others. Our attention is a very complex thing; many of us struggle with keeping our attention on one thing, or at least keeping it on what it should be on. What we see is a reflection of our attention and this chapter helps make me see that clearly (pun intended.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?

I liked reading about how attention could enhance processing of a specific type of stimulus. I found this interesting because it is something I haven't put a lot of thought into until now, and once I read it my attention stuck with it. The example from the book explained how when we are sorting change and searching for all the pennies; pennies some how become harder to see, but then when we switch to dimes or quarters the pennies start to appear even if you swore that there were none left. The idea that we miss things we are actually searching for is so strange to me. You would think because we are placing extra focus on that one thing we would notice it faster and not miss it. However ever since I was little I remember that whenever I couldn't remember where something was I would look and look and then the only time I could actually find it was when I wasn't trying to. Or at work when I am waitressing I often remember orders without writing them down and make it through and entire 10 hour shift and lay in bed at night and remember "oh shit he didn't want bacon bits on his potato skins" it is weird how things come to us when we aren't trying to remember things; just how we see things when we often aren't trying to see them. I would like to learn more about this subject and more into the reasons of why this happens.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?

While reading the chapter I kept thinking back to my childhood and how I have always had such a short attention span. I often see something and so quickly forget what I see because I wasn't paying attention to that I was paying attention to something else. I can't even imagine how many times I would start reading something and then get done and have to go back and re read it because I have no idea anything that I just read. I was always afraid of reading in front of the class because I thought I would get asked a question about what I read and not be able to answer it. I wonder how much of that has to do with my attention and how much of it is selective attention. Even now it is hard for me to focus on what I know I should be focused on and I get really upset with myself when I read an article and don't remember what I read because my mind was in an entirely differently place. Selective attention is very interesting to me; I would like to learn more about it and if there are ways to improve it more or control it more.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Selective attention, stimuli, external, sustained, covert, selective attention, visual attention, attentional mechanisms, visual-field defect, visual search, color, size, orientation, motion, lighting direction, binding problem, feature integration theory, sensation, perception, repetition blindness, visual system, nervous system, abnormal vision, binding problem, visual search experiments, neglect, extinction.

the first thing that I found interesting was the section about visual search. Visual search is a search for a target in a display containing distracting elements. Within cueing experiments we provide insight into the development of attention. within the experiments the observer looks for a target item among all of the distractor items. I found this interesting because as we look at our lives we often don’t realize how many target and distractors that we face. How many of us look into a crowd of people and can't find the person we are looking for(target).
The second thing that I found interesting was the binding problem. Binding problem is when we analyze a collection of basic features in a preattentive stage but are not able to know how the items bond together until we attend to the object. We use preattentive feature when we use the idea of guide and search, we guide to the choice of what we should be attended to next.
The third topic that I found interesting was the part about feature search and parallel search. I find it interesting that some features make us capable of processing multiple items at one time and allow us to find the object that is different to the rest. I thought this was interesting in the fact that we often are actually able to pick out the “wrong” item to the eye without someone pointing it out to us.
One thing that I found least interesting about this chapter was the theories like feature integration theory. It was very confusing to read the chapter and be able to understand the topic and it took multiple times of coming back to it and read it again before starting to understand the concept.
The most useful part of chapter 7 in understanding sensation and perception was looking further in how our vision links to our brain. I think that anything that we learn about how our senses link to the functions of our brain are highly important.
This links back to previous chapters from sensation and perception of how we view the world, how it links to the brain, the visual system and how its able to focus on certain things.
One thing that I would like to learn more about is balint syndrome, the book talks about it but it was hard for me to understand. I would like to look further into it and see how it affects one's life on a daily basis.
Throughout this chapter I found myself continuously thinking about what it would be like to not be able to see hear touch or taste. What would it be like to have no motor functions and have to rely on people to help you with your 5 senses and the ability to live with a lack of a scene and how your brain can make up for it in another area of sense.
Terms: Attention, Visual search, Target, distractor, guided search, binding problem, preattentive, feature search, parallel search, visual field, balint syndrome,

1. There were many things from chapter 7 that I found to be interesting and one of the concepts that stuck out to me was the various forms of scene-based guidance. Scene-based guidance is information in our understanding of scenes that helps us find specific objects in scenes. Basically this is saying that we can find something in a scene because we are familiar with that scene making it easier to spot what we are looking for. The example in the book is a kitchen sink faucet. We are familiar with what a kitchen looks like therefore when we are asked to locate the faucet our first instinct is to find the kitchen sink. I find this interesting because although we have never seen that particular kitchen before, we know exactly where certain things are based on experiences are visual system has already perceived.

2. Inattentional blindness is another concept from chapter 7 that I found interesting. Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice- or at least to report – a stimulus that would be easily recognizable if it were attended (pg. 216). A good example to help understand this concept is to watch a clip of a basketball game. During this clip, people were told to keep track of how many passes happened and the movement of the basketball. What many of the subjects failed to notice was an actor in a gorilla suit who wandered into the middle of the scene, waved, and then wandered back out. I remember doing this test in a class and I did not notice the actor in the gorilla suit. I find this interesting because our eyes have the ability to notice so many things but when we are so focused on one thing, another thing could be happening that we are completely unaware of.

3. A third thing from chapter 7 that I really enjoyed reading about was the concept of neglect. According to the book, “neglect patients behave as if part of the world were not there.” (pg. 204). Some people experience neglect of the left visual field naming objects to the right of fixation and some people experience neglect of the right visual field naming objects to the left of fixation. One statement from the book that caught my attention said, “It is not always clear whether neglect affects one side of the visual world or one side of objects.” I find all of this interesting because this question is unanswered. The book says it could be of both but there really is no clear answer.

4. Most of what was in this chapter was interesting to me but wasn’t like WOW, that is so cool! This chapter was filled with many different concepts but a few things that I wasn’t enjoying while I read them were the ideas of response enhancement and sharper tuning. It talked about different neurons and cells and I didn’t really catch on about the significance of these terms. I have never really been interested in neurons and different kinds of cells so trying to read about these subjects when the other parts of the chapter were pretty interesting was hard for me.

5. I think the basic concept of attention is very important when trying to understand the idea of sensation and perception. The whole purpose of chapter 7 was to explain the significance of attention in our visual system and what we can see and what we can’t see which goes back to the terms of neglect and extinction.

6. Once again, chapter 7 relates to all of the previous chapters because it also relates to the visual system but this time it focuses more on the idea of attention. This chapter also relates to the previous chapters because it builds on the idea of how our eyes have limits and the stimuli we perceive might not be what are right in front of our faces meaning that it is playing tricks on us.

7. I would really like to learn more about the concept of change blindness. Change blindness is the failure to notice a change between two scenes. I would like to learn more about this because the whole idea is fascinating. I looked at the two pictures in the book of the bees and the beehive and it was hard for me to distinguish the difference between the two pictures. This immediately sparked my interest and I would like to further research this subject.

8. One thing that I was thinking about when reading the chapter was me and my ability to put my attention on a single thing. I always thought that I was really good at noticing different things when looking at a scene or an image. After reading this chapter I realized I was not near as skilled at noticing different things as I thought I was. I now wonder if there is something wrong with my eyes.

9. Terms: Scene-based guidance, inattentional blindness, stimulus, neglect, extinction, sensation, perception, visual field, visual system, response enhancement, sharper tuning, attention, change blindness.

1A&B) What did you find interesting? Why?
I found the types of attention interesting. Attention is the set of processes we use to determine what to ‘focus on’, because we can’t focus on everything. Overt attention refers to giving a sensory organ specific direction of focus (the textbook while reading). On the other hand, covert attention refers to pointing your eyes toward the textbook while focusing on something to your side. An example of divided attention would be how I am listening to Pandora while typing my assignment; I am aware music is playing while engaged in writing. Sustained attention is something like the timer at a race, it is constantly watching to see when participants cross the finish line. Selective attention is most relevant to perception. The brain isn’t capable of processing all of the available sensory input, so we must narrow down the input to what is important or noticeable.

2A&B) What did you find interesting? Why?
I also found Anne Treisman’s feature integration theory interesting. This theory states there is an attentive stage of basic feature processing that occurs, followed by a second stage which demands attention. This theory is one of the concepts from the chapter you can read about and go huh, I always kind of knew that was the case, but its nice there’s empirical evidence.

3A&B) What did you find interesting? Why?
I liked learning about various aspects of visual disorders of attention. One of these is neglect, where the individual is unable to attend to or respond to stimuli in the opposite-side visual field. Another clinical symptom is extinction. Similar to neglect, extinction involves the inability to perceive stimulus to one side of focus in the presence of another stimulus in a corresponding position in the other visual field (the opposite side of the original stimulus. While reading about these symptoms, I was interested in learning more about them.

4A&B) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Why?
The response time selection studies done by Michael Posner are kind of boring to learn about. I think the bulk of his findings could be summarized more quickly. In fact, a common theme in this book is getting too lengthy without providing more detail or information. In the case of Posner’s study, the book doesn’t share much depth of his findings, so the reading could have been shorter.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Sensation / Perception?
Now that we’ve gotten more into the cognitive area, I think some of the concepts will relate to other sensory organs as well. Additionally, most of the content is highly relatable to real life. Anybody can recognize most of the phenomena in chapter 7 occur in their daily life.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
Previous chapters had such narrow topics and did not relate much back to cognitive psychology. Now that we’re talking more about the brain’s processing and our perception, I’m finding it more interesting than prior topics.

7A&B) What topic would you like to learn more about? Why?
I’d like to learn more about the clinical symptoms of visual disorders in attention. What causes these, how common are they? How are they studied? How do individuals experiencing these symptoms cope with them?

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
Finally, we’re fully immersed in cognitive psychology! The majority of the content is relatable – I read about a concept and I can recognize I’ve experienced it before.

9) Attention, overt attention, covert attention, divided attention, sustained attention, selective attention, feature integration theory, neglect, extinction

1a) Simultagnosia

1b) I find all of the agnosia disorders really interesting. The fact that the brain has been damaged (or in some cases the patient is born that way) to the degree that the individual cannot know something is fascinating. Simultagnosia is the inability to see more than one object at one time. This is an extreme onset of neglect, the inability to respond to stimuli in the visual field, or extinction, the inability to perceive a stimulus to a certain side based on the point of focus.

2a) Change Blindness

2b) I love the “Spot the Difference” games. This was interesting to me and so much fun to learn about. The basic gist of change blindness is the inability to notice small changes in pictures. If the change isn’t drastically different, it tends to go unnoticed. I have noticed this in my own experiences. I play a “spot the difference game” that has a mode that will allow give you two photos that only have one difference. Each time you find that one difference, you flash to another version of the same photo with another difference. This continues until your allotted 60 seconds is up. I remember when I started playing these games that I was really frustrated with the white screen between the photo changes. It was almost disorienting. This, to an extent, summarizes what change blindness is.

3a) Inattentional Blindness

3b) Inattentional blindness is the inability to notice an event when otherwise it would be easily identified. A great example of this is the experiment done by Dan Simons. He had a group of participants count how many times a ball was passed in a video. The participants were so focused on the ball that they failed to notice an actor dressed as a gorilla walk into frame, wave his arms, and walk out. The ball passing video was something that I watched when I was in high school. I think it’s interesting that when people are focused on one event, they very rarely see something as obvious as a gorilla walking into the frame.

4a) Ensemble Statistics

4b) Ensemble statistics is the average and distribution of properties like the way something is pointed, what color it is, the size, etc. Honestly, first glance at this section probably made me biased towards the topic because of the word statistics. However, it was slightly more interesting than that. This topic was the least interesting to me because its information just seemed pretty obvious. It felt like I was simply attaching a term to something that I already knew.

5) I think an important concept from chapter seven would be ensemble statistics. It gives us a summary of how we view objects and scenes.

6) This chapter continues to focus on entire scenes like chapter six did as well. Instead of focusing on single stimuli, we are looking at how the brain perceives entire images and environments.

7a) Change Blindness

7b) I would like to study more about how they work. It is one of the most fun brain tricks that I have come across. I love puzzles, so maybe I can crack this one and move onto a new one.

8) I thought a lot about my own experience with Attention Deficit Disorder. My loved ones tend to get very frustrated with me. If anything is going on around me, I lose track of conversations almost instantly. I could be completely interested in everything the other person is saying, but something around me (anything from a television to a wrapper falling on the floor) is taking my attention.

9) Key terms: Simultagnosia, agnosia, neglect, visual field, extinction, point of focus, Change blindness, inattentional blindness, Dan Simons, Ensemble statistics

The first thing I found interesting was the act of selective attention. This is a type of attention strategy by the brain where it can pick one (or a few) out of many stimuli to devote itself. Varying degrees and subjects of attention allow the brain to deal with the overwhelming amount of information constantly bombarding it through countless stimuli. Selective attention allows us to choose which of these stimuli we focus on. For example, I am choosing to focus my attention on writing this post as opposed to the sound of my roommate watching TV in the other room. I find this very interesting because of the power it seems to hold over us at times. The book gave the example of getting a shot at the doctor's office hurting more than a similar injury playing a sport, because one is more likely to being paying more attention to the shot than a cut sustained in the middle of a game. This is interesting to me, because I have often experienced the pain differences between the two scenarios and I always found it fascinating.

The second topic I found interesting was simultagnosia. This is a symptom of Balint Syndrome, which is a condition where the patient has bilateral lesions of the parietal lobes. Simultagnosia is the inability to perceive more than one object at a time. This is seen as an extreme form of neglect or extinction, which is when someone does not perceive part of an object or multiple objects at the same time due to perceptual deficiencies. I thought this was interesting, because I could not imagine going through life only being able to perceive one object at a time. I wonder if the world would seem overwhelming because of the possible inability to not pay attention to what you want because of distractions, or would it be underwhelming because you could only perceive one thing at a time as opposed to the multitude of things normal people perceive simultaneously.

The third topic I found interesting were the two types of blindness discussed in the book: inattentional and change. Inattentional blindness is a failure to notice a stimulus that would be easily perceived if it were attended to. An example of this is the experiment done by Simons and Chabris where participants were asked to watch and count the number of times a basketball was passed in a video. Many of the participants were so focused on counting the passes that they missed the man dressed as a gorilla walking through the camera shot. Change blindness, on the other hand, is the failure to notice a change between two scenes. If the meaning of the scene is not altered, quite large changes may pass unnoticed by the observer. I found these interesting, because of the fact that we can so easily miss much of the perceivable world simply because we are not paying enough attention to it. It also extends into a pretty good metaphor for life that I do not feel like I need to spell out.

I found the discussions on neuron activity to be quite uninteresting. I have never found the actual workings of neurons, or cells at all for that matter, to be capable of holding my interest for more than a few fleeting moments. I supposed I just do not enjoy reading about processes that I cannot see for myself and are not abstract ideas. It also does not help that I have heard the same things so many times in my undergraduate career.

I think the whole idea of attention will be of great importance in helping me understand sensation and perception. In this case, it is not necessarily what we can perceive, it is what our brains allow us to perceive, and, in some cases, what we choose to perceive. It puts restrictions on human ability beyond that of anatomical structures. Because of this, we can overcome these restrictions with practice. It is not every day that you read about a fault of the human brain that can be easily improved without much effort.

This chapter is similar to previous ones, because it discusses what we perceive in the world. It builds on those chapters by talking about how our brain filters out the bombardment of sensations rather than just its ability to perceive them. It talks about how we may not perceive things, not because we are physically or mentally unable to, but simply because of poor circumstance or timing.

I would like to learn more about Balint Syndrome. I am curious as to how people with this condition live their every day lives with such a damper on their perception of the world. The book did not talk much about how their brain chooses what object they can perceive at any given time, so it would be interesting to find research about that.

My main thought during this reading was how I need to improve my own personal selective attention. It is difficult to say if I have a mild case of ADD or if I am simply a product of generation that is in constant need of entertainment, but whatever the cause, I have such difficulty keeping my attention to things like schoolwork that I feel my grades may suffer. Perhaps I will seek help for this, but not before I try to fix it on my own of course.

Terms: Selective Attention, Attention, Stimuli, Simultagnosia, Balint Syndrome, Lesions, Parietal Lobes, Perceive, Neglect, Extinction, Distractions, Inattentional Blindness, Change Blindness, Neurons

1a) What did you find interesting?
i thought this chapter was pretty interesting, but i think what i most found interesting is the Selective attention part, which is a form of attention involved when processing is restricted to a subset of possibly stimuli.

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
this was interesting to because in this time in our culture, we do so many things at once, multitasking, and not realizing it, i want to know whether or not if we actually pay the same amount attention to each things that we're multitasking to.

2a) What did you find interesting?
I think visual search is pretty interesting as well, this is when one search for a target in a display containing distraction elements, this would be like when you're looking for some in a crowded place, at a mall, in a restaurant, or at a bar.

2b) Why was it interesting to you?
i thought attention blink, which is the tendency no to perceive or respond to the second of two different target stimuli amid rapid stream of distracting stimuli if the observer has responded to the first target something else that i thought was interesting in this chapter was stimulus within the first target within 200-500 mili seconds before the second stimulus, in other words, is basically not being able to pay attention to two things at once.

3a) What did you find interesting?
i think response enhancement is pretty interesting as well, this is an effect of attention on the response of a neuron in which the neuron responding to an attended stimulus gives a bigger response.

3b) Why was it interesting to you?
this was interesting because i want to have a better on why i pay more attentions to things that have a bigger font or bold fonts than regular written statements.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
i didn't think ensemble statistics was very interesting

4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
i think i didn't find as interesting because i didnt understand as well nor did i care to try and understanding because it got me confused right away, it just probably didn't catch my attention.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Sensation / Perception?
i think visual attention is pretty useful to to sensation and perception, even though you can perceive information without being able to see, i personally feel like you're at a huge disadvantage if you can't visually perceive things, it's easier for anything to just look at information and process it right away.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
this chapter builds one to the last chapter in many ways, how we perceive things, the way we perceive things, or the reason why we might see things the way that we do. this chapter is mostly giving us information about why we see things the way we do, it explains certain angles of things and it gives us better knowledge on why we can pay attention to certain things than others.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
i would like to learn about the Balint Syndrome

7b) Why?
i want to learn more about it because i've never heard of it before, i want to know how someone can see two things exactly at the same time, even though they're different , they wouldn't be able to make that knowledge that they're different just because they saw them at the same time, as confusing as that sounds, i would like to know more about it.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
somethings were making sense like the selective attention part, where even if there are more than one conversation that's going on around you, you subconsciously pick up that you might think you're interesting in and just pay more attention to that, you'll catch a word from the other conversations but you're mostly just paying attention to the one that you're interesting in, also when something is written in big letters, it's easier for people to remember.

TERMS:Simultagnosia, Ensemble Statistics, Visual field, Visual attention, Response enhancement, Attention Blink, Visual Search, Target, Selective Attention,Reaction Time.

1a) The first thing that I really enjoyed from chapter seven is how it explains in detail that attention is not just a single item, but rather a bunch of different mechanisms that work together and restrict processes in certain ways. Attention is a very large set of processes in the brain, and the nervous system cannot process everything at once, so it has set up different ways of input in order to restrict processing to a subject of place, time, things, or ideas. Our brains are not capable of focusing on many things at once which is why it must weed out the undesirable influences in the surrounding environment.

1b) The mere concept of attention fascinates me because there is so much that we can learn and study from it. It reminds me of an attention experiment that I did recently in another class where we were put into groups of three and two people had to read random passages selected to the third person, and the third person had to try and retain information from both readings. Of course we found this impossible and usually the third person latched on to and remember the more interesting selection read while had no idea what the other was about. Attention is also interesting because of the different disorders that can come from it like ADD and ADHD.

2a) The next interesting part from chapter eight’s reading was the visual search experiments. These experiments are designed to provide a closer approximation of some of the actions of attention in the real world. Typically in these experiments the observer must find a certain object called a target item hidden among distractor items.

2b) These kinds of experiments remind me of those old children’s books like I Spy and Where’s Waldo. The object to these games is to find a certain person or thing on a page full of different distractors. The more you think about it, the games could technically be considered visual search experiments already.

3a) The third most interesting part of chapter seven was the passage on Balint Syndrome which occurs when there is a bilateral lesion of the partial lobes. This disorder has three major symptoms. First is spatial localization abilities are greatly reduced. This makes the person have a difficulty reaching out and grabbing objects. The second is that the patient does not more their eyes much. The final symptom is the inability to perceive more than one thing at a time also known as simultagnosia.

3b) This part was interesting just because I tried to imagine what a person with balint syndrome might view the world. Humans naturally are curious about things that are different than what they have, so I am very interested in this abnormality.

4a) The least interesting part of this chapter was the discussion of spatial layout which, as the name implies, is a description of the structure of a scene without reference to the identity of a specific objects in the scene.

4b) This was not interesting because it was a common term that most people would know what it is about just by reading the word. Of course this does not mean it is not important, it still is, but it is just a boring topic in my opinion.

5) After putting all the parts from this chapter together, I believe the most useful part to understanding sensation and perception is the knowledge of what we actually in see in life and how we will not remember more than 10% of what we see each day until something similar happens in which case it may make us momentarily remember. This is important because it helps us understand why we may not remember a certain town from our past that we once visited because this vision was not imbedded fully in our mind while things we are around often we can sometimes picture in our heads. Also when driving we need to focus more and use our attention better when in a new area as compared to just driving to a nearby store that you may go to every week. To me this is very important to our learning and understanding of this material in this chapter.

6) This chapter build quite a bit from the previous chapter four where we learned a lot about different brain areas and its processing of objects. This now combined with the knowledge of attention and scene perception helps us understand what areas of the brain controls how we perceive the environment and distinguish between different things.

7a) As stated earlier in this paper I am very interested in balint syndrome and more importantly the simultagnosia part of it.

7b) I wish to know more about it and what causes it. Also is it possible for simultagnosia to be part of other disorders of the visual field.

8) This chapter had me think more about my previous cognitive psychology class and how the experiments we conducted in there were similar to the ones I just read not too long ago. It also made me think about how all of these underlining causes of sensation and perception we take for granted mostly because we do not need to think about why we act or see things the way we do, because we just do it automatically. Now with this reading I can point out in my mind why a bug on the wall may have distracted me during my homework using terminology that I just learned and how it’s motion cause me to look at it and it gain my attention in doing so. People without this information would have seen the bug and thought nothing about it.

Terms: simultagnosia, balint syndrome, attention, distractors, visual field, lesions, visual search experiments, partial lobes, environment, target

The subject of visual search was interesting to me, because I love puzzles like “Where’s Waldo”. Visual search is defined as a search for a target in a display containing distracting elements. I remember the “Mini Page” that came weekly in the paper and the section called “try and find” which was a picture that had items hidden that you would try to locate and circle within the other picture. This can be made easier or more difficult based on the set size, number of items in the display. The set size and number of distracters make the search easier or more difficult. This is important in cases for those who must do things like find tumors on x-rays and agents looking for dangerous items in luggage. Beyond my fascination with puzzles this was interesting as it pertains to something that is very easy to see importance in real world situations. By understanding limitations and what enhances visual search situations can be manipulated to ensure fewer errors in important situations.
Change blindness was also interesting. This is the failure to notice a change between two scenes as long as the main idea of the scene remains the same. In the text they showed the two similar scenes of the bees in the hive. It took me a while to even find two of the differences. In looking my eyes began to glaze over because it was so similar. This means that if I were watching a show and these pictures were used in separate scenes it is very likely that I would never notice. It is interesting how some things we may not notice the difference. It was interesting because we see so many of these things daily.
I also found the inattentional blindness interesting. Inattentional blindness is a failure to notice a stimulus that would be easily reportable if it were attended. This is similar to the gorilla in the basketball game experiment. If one was not so focused on a task it would be obvious that a man in a gorilla suit had entered the court and then left again. I found this interesting because it seems so similar to what those with ADD struggle with. Because the focus is not there they may miss very obvious events.
Spatial layout was the subject I found least interesting. Spatial layout is the description of the structure of a scene without reference to the identity of specific objects in the scene. We more quickly can tell general qualities of the scene such as smooth or rough than we do specific like beach or prairie. I think once again there was a lot of technical information that wasn’t easily understood. I read the section a few times and still struggle to put into words what it all entails.
In this chapter we really focused on how we perceive specifics and also how we don’t perceive specifically and the reasons behind it. I learned a lot about how our brain selects what is important to avoid overload and how we can so easily miss things that can be so obvious.
Each chapter has built up sight and how we perceive the world. In the first few chapters the very technical functions of all the parts of the eye and corresponding parts of brain were examined. The chapters have expanded to this chapter that deals with how we perceive large portions of sights and information and how they are processed both efficiently and inefficiently.
I would like to learn more about inattentional blindness. I think it would be interesting to see if there are links between this and ADD. I also think it would be interesting in the study of how we miss things that should be so obvious.
It would also be interesting to find out if we tend to have more inattentional blindness in certain areas and the ability to miss almost nothing in others. I thought about change blindness and how I might not be able to see the differences in the bee scenes, but I can walk in my house and just know immediately if something has moved and know someone (usually a hungry teenager) has been by and moved even the slightest thing.
Terms: visual search, change blindness, perception, observed, inattentional blindness, stimulus, spacial layout