Psychology Program Presents
Learning to Ignore:
The Impact of Stimulus Experience on Cognitive Control
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Preston Theater
4:45 pm EDT/GMT-4
4:45 pm EDT/GMT-4
Tom Hutcheon, Psychology Program
Classically, attention has been viewed as a static, goal-directed process. That is, attention prioritizes visual information over auditory information while reading because our goal is to read the book in front of us. Viewed in this way, attention is a purely top-down process. However, evidence is accumulating that, somewhat paradoxically, the information we are ignoring can impact our ability to ignore that same information at a later time. For example, we may become particularly efficient at ignoring the hum of the air conditioner during the summer, but when winter comes we will need time to adjust to ignoring the sound of the heating. In this way, attention is a combination of top-down (I want to read the book) and bottom-up (I have experience ignoring the air conditioner) processes. The term used to describe this flexible form of attention is context-driven control. In the current talk, I will review experimental evidence for the existence of context-driven control while highlighting the limits of context-driven control that have emerged from studies conducted in the cognitive ctrl lab at Bard College.For more information, call 845-758-7380, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 4:45 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Preston Theater