%% ### ==Todo== - [ ] [Attention within the predictive processing framework – Shamil Chandaria](https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/320-constructing-self-and-world) - [ ] When you attend to something, you give more weight to parts of the predictive processing hierarchy stack. In particular, you give more precision weighting to the likelihood of the sensory data. - [ ] Instead of your priors dominating what you perceive (i.e., your posterior), the sensory data gets a greater weight in determining the contents of the generative model, that is, your perception. - [ ] So in a sense, attention is a mechanism to up-regulate the weight of sensory data in determining your perception. - [ ] Add from [[Psych]], chapter 7 - [ ] Review and add what seems useful: - [ ] [Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/science/attention) - [ ] [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention) - [ ] [[Mindwandering]]; esp. exploration vs exploitation - [ ] Add from previous notes: - [ ] Attention isn't necessarily under voluntary control. For instance, experienced meditators recognize that they can't really "choose" what to focus on next — everything continually arises in consciousness to be noticed. - [ ] The Increased Saliency Theory suggests that the limited attentional resources are constantly shifted around, which brings different aspects of our internal and external environment into focus — that is, they become more **salient**.^[Weinstein et al., 2019] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(neuroscience) - [Attention influences](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438803001053) the processing of visual information even in the earliest areas of primate visual cortex. There is converging evidence that the interaction of bottom-up sensory information and top-down attentional influences creates an integrated saliency map, that is, a topographic representation of relative stimulus strength and behavioral relevance across visual space. - [ ] Add from [[The Art of Self-Coaching]] - [ ] Class 3 Attention: Practices that improve attention management %% **Attention can be defined as the ability to focus on a specific stimulus** (or set of stimuli) — or, alternatively, as the set of mechanisms that enable such focus.^[Seel, 2012; Weinstein et al., 2019] In other words, attention is the ability to **select** the relevant sensory information, **amplify** it, and **deepen** its processing.^[Dehaene, 2021] Attention "governs the extent and quality of one's interactions with one's environment".^[https://www.britannica.com/science/attention] As a result, attended stimuli are **processed faster and more correctly** than non-attended stimuli.^[Seel, 2012] This solves the problem of **information saturation**. The senses detect millions of bits of information per second — too much for the brain to process in depth.^[Dehaene, 2021] In contrast, attention can be thought of as a **limited-capacity resource**.^[Moray, 1967] We can only attend to and process a limited amount of information at any given time.^[The amount of attentional resources that a particular task requires is known as "**cognitive load**" (Weinstein et al., 2019).] Paying attention to one task reduces the amount of attention available for another task.^[Research suggests that it's almost **impossible to pay attention to more than one thing at the same time** (Weinstein et al., 2019). When doing two things at once ("multi-tasking"), we actually switch attention back and forth between the two things. Because **switching attention has costs**, doing two things at once reduces efficiency.] So attention works as a **filter** (or as a [[Perception compresses the complexities of fitness payoffs to bare essentials (data compression algorithm)|data compression algorithm]]) that reduces the available information to a manageable size. Attention is crucial to **[[Organisms have evolved to maximize their chances of survival and reproduction|survival and reproduction]]**, as it helps an organism attend to the most relevant aspects of its environment. To [[The brain adjusts itself to extract the maximum amount of information from its environment within the constraints of limited energy|extract as much (fitness-relevant) information from its environment within the constraints of limited energy]], [[Organisms pay more attention to unexpected and unfamiliar events|organisms pay more attention to unexpected and unfamiliar events]].^[Eagleman, 2020] Attention is fundamental to **learning**. "In the absence of attention, discovering a pattern in a pile of data is like looking for the fabled needle in a haystack."^[Dehaene, 2021, p. 148] If people don't attend to the right information, they will learn little to nothing of relevance. Michael Posner distinguishes at least three major **attention systems**:^[Dehaene, 2021] - **Alerting**: This system tells us *when to attend*. It adapts our level of vigilance. - **Orienting**: This system tell us *what to attend to*. It amplifies any object of interest and filters out everything else. Dehaene (2021) suggests that only the items that lie at the focus of attention are represented in the brain with sufficient strength to be efficiently learned. - **Executive attention** (“self-control”): This system decides *how to process* the attended information. It chooses a course of action and controls its execution by activating the relevant operations and inhibiting the inappropriate ones. This ability develops with age and education. Lieberman (2021) lists three main **theories** that have been proposed to explain how attention works: - **Filter theories** suggest that sensory data is filtered at an initial stage and only the most relevant data reaches a secondary stage where it receives proper attention and evaluation. However, there is still disagreement among researchers as to where in the processing system the data selection occurs. - An alternative view is to see **attention as a pool of resources** that can be allocated across competing tasks. On this view, there isn't a fixed filter, but a limited amount of attentional resources that continuously get reallocated. - One variation of the second view above is **attention as a spotlight**, which suggests that we can either concentrate our attentional resources on a narrow aspect or spread them out more widely but thinly. The former is useful to perform a single clearly defined task, whereas the latter is useful to explore the environment. To achieve more with limited attentional resources, we **automate** many processes so they no longer require conscious attention.^[Lieberman, 2021] For example, when a child learns to read, they process each letter of a word separately. With practice, the child learns to associate the letters and the word becomes a single unit. This process is called **chunking**. As a result, the word takes up no more capacity than was originally required for a single letter.^[Lieberman, 2021] There is an interesting reciprocal **relationship between attention and [[Implicit learning is characterized by more unconscious and unintentional operations|implicit learning]]**.^[Seel, 2012] On the one hand, the allocation of attention changes with repeated exposure to sensory information, a phenomenon called *implicit attentional learning*. On the other hand, the patterns in sensory information can only be learned when properly attended to, which is referred to as *attention-dependency of implicit learning*. Together, this creates a circular relationship where selective attention shapes (and is necessary for) implicit learning, which in turn influences where attention will be directed in the future, etc. --- Created: [[2023-03-22]] Type: #permanent Topics: [[Learning (Index)]] Related notes: - [[What are the cognitive mechanisms of learning and how do they work?]] - [[Perception is the organization and interpretation of sensory information]] - [[Learning benefits from the strategic use of limited working memory capacity]] - [[Emotions are attention magnets – they help direct attention to where it’s needed for the organism to survive and reproduce]]