12: Attention

Question 1

overt attention

Answer 1

directing a sense organ at a stimulus

Question 2

covert attention

Answer 2

mentally focusing on one of the several possible sensory stimuli

Question 3

divided attention

Answer 3

attention directed to different stimuli

Question 4

sustained attention

Answer 4

maintaining a consistent behavioral response during continuous and repetitive activity

Question 5

selective attention

Answer 5

processing is restricted to a subset of all the possible stimuli

Question 6

attentional cueing

Answer 6

…

Question 7

reaction time (RT)

Answer 7

time from stimulus start to response

Question 8

cue

Answer 8

stimulus that might indicate where (or what) a following stimulus will be
valid, invalid, neutral

Question 9

stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)

Answer 9

time between onset of one stimulus to the onset of another stimulus

Question 10

simple cueing experiment

Answer 10

peripheral cue (ex of exogenous cue)

Question 11

exogenous cue

Answer 11

cue located outside of the desired final location of attention

Question 12

symbolic cueing experiment

Answer 12

symbol cue (ex of endogenous cue)

Question 13

endogenous cue

Answer 13

cue located in (near) the final location of attention

Question 14

“spotlight” model

Answer 14

attention can move from one point to the next

Question 15

“zoom” model

Answer 15

attention expands? from fixation (grows/shrinks)

Question 16

visual search

Answer 16

looking for a target among distracting elements in a display

Question 17

target

Answer 17

goal of visual search

Question 18

distractor

Answer 18

any stimulus other than target

Question 19

set size

Answer 19

of items in a display

Question 20

efficiency

Answer 20

the ease with which one can work through a display

Question 21

salience

Answer 21

vividness of a stimulus relative to neighbors (pop out)

Question 22

parallel

Answer 22

processing of multiple stimuli at the same time

Question 23

efficient search

Answer 23

when slope of function (RT to set size) is zero

Question 24

inefficient search

Answer 24

when slope of function (RT to set size) is larger than zero

Question 25

serial self-terminating search

Answer 25

items are examined one at a time until target is found (or all items are checked)

Question 26

conjunction search

Answer 26

search for a target defined by presence of two or more attributes (i.e. red vertical)

Question 27

guided search

Answer 27

search where attention can be restricted to a subset of possible items (e.g. color)

Question 28

pre-attentive process

Answer 28

happens without active attention
info from retinal image

independent
registered separately
processed in parallel

Question 29

attentive process

Answer 29

focused attention stage of processes
active focal attention
features combined by means of attention

Question 30

binding problem

Answer 30

challenge of tying different features of visual stimuli (color, orientation, motion etc) that are handled by different brain circuits