12: Attention Flashcards
overt attention
directing a sense organ at a stimulus
covert attention
mentally focusing on one of the several possible sensory stimuli
divided attention
attention directed to different stimuli
sustained attention
maintaining a consistent behavioral response during continuous and repetitive activity
selective attention
processing is restricted to a subset of all the possible stimuli
attentional cueing
…
reaction time (RT)
time from stimulus start to response
cue
stimulus that might indicate where (or what) a following stimulus will be
valid, invalid, neutral
stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)
time between onset of one stimulus to the onset of another stimulus
simple cueing experiment
peripheral cue (ex of exogenous cue)
exogenous cue
cue located outside of the desired final location of attention
symbolic cueing experiment
symbol cue (ex of endogenous cue)
endogenous cue
cue located in (near) the final location of attention
“spotlight” model
attention can move from one point to the next
“zoom” model
attention expands? from fixation (grows/shrinks)
visual search
looking for a target among distracting elements in a display
target
goal of visual search
distractor
any stimulus other than target
set size
of items in a display
efficiency
the ease with which one can work through a display
salience
vividness of a stimulus relative to neighbors (pop out)
parallel
processing of multiple stimuli at the same time
efficient search
when slope of function (RT to set size) is zero
inefficient search
when slope of function (RT to set size) is larger than zero
serial self-terminating search
items are examined one at a time until target is found (or all items are checked)
conjunction search
search for a target defined by presence of two or more attributes (i.e. red vertical)
guided search
search where attention can be restricted to a subset of possible items (e.g. color)
pre-attentive process
happens without active attention
info from retinal image
independent
registered separately
processed in parallel
attentive process
focused attention stage of processes
active focal attention
features combined by means of attention
binding problem
challenge of tying different features of visual stimuli (color, orientation, motion etc) that are handled by different brain circuits
