2. 1. The Nature of Attention
and Consciousness
• Attention
– Is the means by which we actively process a
limited amount of information from the
enormous amount of information available
through our senses, our stored memories,
and our other cognitive processes
3. The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
• Consciousness
– More directly concerned with awareness – it
includes both the feeling of awareness and
the content of awareness, some of which may
be under the focus of attention
4. The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
Different conceptions of consciousness
• Biopsychological
– different levels of arousal (sleep, coma, hyperactivity)
• Meta-cognitive
– Reflection on your own cognitive processes
– Being aware of cognitive processes
• Psychoanalytic
– Unconscious information – we do not have access to
it in normal awakened state
• Phenomenological
– What it is like to have an experience of something
– Individual, subjective aspects of experience
5. The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
Relationship between attention and
consciousness
• Attention + Consciousness
• No attention + No Consciousness
• Attention + No Consciousness
• No attention + Consciousness
6. ?
Can you provide an example of each of the
possible relationships between attention
and consciousness?
7. The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
1. Preconscious Processing
•Information that is available for cognitive
processing but that currently lies outside of
conscious awareness exists at the
preconscious level of awareness
8. The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
Preconscious Processing
•Priming
– Processing of certain stimuli is facilitated by
prior presentation of the same or similar
stimuli
– Sometimes we are aware of the prime
sometimes we are not
– Even when we are not aware of the prime,
the prime will influence the processing of the
target
9. The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
Preconscious Processing
Antony Marcel (1983)
•Participants had to classify series of words into
various categories (e.g. pine-plant)
•Primes where words with two meanings such as
palm followed by target word (tree or hand)
•Task outline:
Is this a plant?
Prime – PALM
Target - TREE
10. The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
1. Preconscious Processing
Antony Marcel (1983) (cont.)
- If the participant was consciously aware of
seeing the word “palm”, the mental pathway for
only one meaning was activated
- If the word “palm” was presented so briefly that
the person was unaware of seeing the word,
both meanings of the word appeared to be
activated
11. The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
Preconscious Processing
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
•People who can not come up with the word, but
who thought they knew it, could identify the first
letter, indicate the number of syllables, or
approximate the word’s sounds
12. The Nature of Attention and
Consciousness
Preconscious processing
Blindsight
•Lesions in some areas of the visual cortex
•Patients claim to be blind
•When forced to guess about a stimulus in the
“blind” region, they correctly guess locations and
orientations of objects at above-chance levels
