EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

EXPERIMENT PROPOSAL

Working Title: Experimenter:

Implications of Processing Strategies Marquez, Cherry Luz P.
on Attention Allocation

LITERATURE REVIEW

Processing Strategies

Processing strategies as defined by Wixted and Thompson-Schill (2018) pertains to a

set of techniques or schema that acquires, analyzes and absorbs information from various
sources as provided by environmental cues or stimuli. In the field of experimental psychology,
the concept is corroborated by information processing, or the stages associated with absorbing
and interacting with knowledge and stimuli, is a construct often found in counselling theory, or
therapy.

A Pediatrics Week article (2011) cited McLeod for his discussion that processing
strategies relate to depth of processing involved in memory, and predicts the deeper information
is processed, the longer a memory trace will last. Unlike the multi-store it is a non-structured
approach. The basic idea is that memory is really just what happens as a result of processing
information. In relation to this, memory is just a by-product of the depth of processing of
information, and there is no clear distinction between short term and long term memory.
Moreover, it takes into consideration the strategies and level of processing entailed in the
treatment of information. Basic principles dictate that the idea that the way information is
encoded affects how well it is remembered, and the deeper the level of processing, the easier
the information is to recall.

In an attempt to understand how information are processed through the employment of

various strategies, De Winstanley and Bjork, as cited Soderstrom et al. (2015), presented
findings in their study relating to the characterization of the learner emerging from recent
metacognitive research and have possible implications for how learners might be induced to
process information more effectively. When presented with items that must be generated versus
read at encoding, individuals typically remember better those items that they generated versus
those that they only read. In a first set of two experiments, participants were able to profit from
such an experience to the extent that a generation advantage was eliminated on subsequent
memory tests of generated and read items. Two additional experiments demonstrated the
critical nature of this experience in leading to improved processing of future to-be-read
information and elimination of a generation advantage.

Soldat et al. (2016) argued that various environmental cues provide affective information
that directly influences processing strategies with positively valenced cues leading to systematic
processing. It was found out in their research that an environmental cue, such as color, can
directly affect processing strategy in low motivation participants. Further, there were no effects
on accuracy on these simple tasks or on affective state. It was therefore identified in the study
that processing strategies extend the cognitive tuning branch of the affect-as-information strand.
Relating to this, cognitive tuning was originally applied to the effects of experiences affect and
such includes various environmental cues and affective signals. In simpler terms, environmental
cues or stimuli set the starting point of mental processing through the use of wide array of
processing strategies.

According to Schweizer et al. from University of Frankfurt as cited by co-author Wang

(2019), effects due to specific processing strategies become obvious in comparing the models
representing these processing strategies and also by investigating the variances of the
corresponding latent variables. The usefulness of such models is demonstrated by the reaction
time data of a cognitive task including three treatment levels. Two different processing
strategies were considered: analytic and holistic. The results indicated that the participants
applied both processing strategies.” The researchers concluded: "The analytic strategy was
primarily applied for performing with respect to the second and third treatment levels and the
holistic strategy with respect to the first treatment level."

Attention Allocation

Attention allocation as defined by Kramer et al. (2016) refers to an evaluative cognition

methodology which focuses on optimizing limited cognitive resources. It was further noted that
attention allocation has several purposes which includes guiding the process of working out
what knowledge should be stored in memory, what should be stored locally on disk, and what
can be stored distributed on other machines; and guide the forgetting process. Essentially, it
derives context from the meaning of attention in the field of psychology as the concentration of
awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli; or the awareness of the here
and now in a focal and perceptive way.

According to Archibald et al. (2015), attention allocation, updating working memory, and
language processing are interdependent cognitive tasks related to the focused direction of
limited resources, refreshing and substituting information in the current focus of attention, and
receiving/sending verbal communication, respectively. Results from the study revealed a
selective attention cost when working above but not within memory span capacity. Measures of
general working memory were positively related to overall task performance, whereas language
abilities were related to response time. In particular, higher language skills were associated with
faster responses under low load conditions. These findings suggest that attentional control and
storage demands have an additive impact on working memory resources but provide only
limited evidence for a domain-general mechanism in language learning.

In a study spearheaded by Haller et al. (2017) entitled “Attention allocation and social
worries predict interpretations of peer-related social cues in adolescents,” it was noted that there
are several limitations that need to be considered when interpreting the results of this study.
Firstly, we did not measure depressive symptoms. The lack of an interaction between social
anxiety and attention allocation may be attributable to a possible presence of depressive
symptoms. Depressive symptoms frequently co-occur with social anxiety. There is some
evidence to suggest that co-occurring depressive symptoms may ‘cancel out’ attentional biases
linked to anxiety. The research also cited a study by Taghavi et al. positing that while anxious
adolescents, relative to controls, selectively allocated attention toward threat stimuli,
adolescents with both types of symptoms did not show any attentional bias towards either
threat- or depression-related material relative to participants in the control group .

According to news reporting originating from Boston, Massachusetts, by VerticalNews

correspondents, research stated, "In a recent paper, we introduced a method and equation for
inferring the allocation of attention on a continuous scale. The size of the stimuli, the estimated
size of the fovea, and the pattern of results implied that the subjects' responses reflected shifts
in covert attention rather than shifts in eye movements.” When the stimuli were close together,
as in the previous study, fixations that supported correct responses at one stimulus also
supported correct responses at the other stimulus, as measured over the entire session. Yet, on
any particular trial, correct responses were limited to just one stimulus. This pattern suggests
that the constraints on responding within a trial were due to limits on cognitive processing,
whereas the ability to respond correctly to either stimulus on different trials must have entailed
shifts in attention.

An article authored by Lehrer (2010) about a psychological disorder Attention

Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) presented a theory that the disorder is really about the
allocation of attention, being able to control our mental spotlight. Even arithmetic is now
compelling enough to notice; the neural currency of long division has been increased, which
makes it easier to allocation our attention to the place in the classroom it is supposed to be
allocated.

Influence of Processing Strategies on Attention Allocation

Writing in Handbook of Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Weiner (2012)

asserted that parallel processing strategies have substantial impact on attention allocation as
the stimuli presented by the external environment are processed and filtered as some of these
are irrelevant to the goals and priorities of human beings. According to the discussions, the
selectivity of attentional processing means that people’s representations of social entities are
always incomplete, whether in significant or merely trivial ways. Furthermore, attentional filtering
inevitably produces memory representations containing less than a full recreation of the social
environment.

Focusing on the conservation of capacity for higher attention, Soldat et al. (2016) argued
that when processing strategies are employed to process affective cues which signal that a
situation or occurrence may be beneficial or not, other cognitive resources are conserved which
may give ample space for more significant processing of information and learning. Accordingly,
through facial analysis in heuristic or non-systematic processing, the mind could allocate its
capacity for having higher level of alertness, longer attention span and stronger motivation. The
study also highlighted the importance of identifying the rationale or purpose of the information
received to evaluate its propensity to contribute in the physiological and psychological well-
being of an individual. Furthermore, empirical results necessitate that there is strong correlation
between the assistive tendency of processing strategies to attentional allocation.

According to the news editors in a research published in Psychology and Psychiatry

Journal Atlanta (2018), the ability to detect threatening stimuli is an important skill for police
officers. No research has yet examined whether implementing different information processing
strategies can improve threat detection in police officers and police trainees. However, clear and
convincing findings have shown that induced processing strategies can influence attentional
mechanisms related to threat detection in police trainees and police officers.

Operationally, the primary aim of their study was to compare the effect of strategies
accentuating the processing of the emotional or the semantic dimension of stimuli on attention
towards threatening and neutral information. In a cueing paradigm, participants had to respond
to a target that was presented following a threatening or neutral cue. Participants then answered
a question, known before hand, concerning the cue. The question was used to induce both the
emotional or semantic processing strategy. Results showed that when the processing strategy
was emotional, police trainees and officers were faster to detect the target when it followed a
relatively threatening cue, compared to a neutral cue, independently of its spatial location. This
was not the case when the processing strategy was semantic.

Pinto and Papesh (2019) experimented that when observers search for multiple targets,
they are slower and less accurate, yet have better incidental memory for non-target items
encountered during the task. One explanation for this may be that observers titrate their
attention allocation based on the expected difficulty suggested by search cues. Difficult search
cues may implicitly encourage observers to narrow their attention, simultaneously enhancing
distractor encoding and hindering peripheral processing. Across three experiments, we
manipulated the difficulty of search cues preceding passive visual search for real-world objects,
using a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task to equate item exposure durations. In all
experiments, incidental memory was enhanced for distractors encountered while participants
monitored for difficult targets. Moreover, in key trials, peripheral shapes appeared at varying
eccentricities off center, allowing us to infer the spread and precision of participants' attentional
windows. Peripheral item detection and identification decreased when search cues were
difficult, even when the peripheral items appeared before targets. These results were not an
artifact of sustained vigilance in miss trials, but instead reflect top-down modulation of attention
allocation based on task demands. Implications for individual differences are discussed.

REFERENCES

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