4: Divided attention

Question 1

What are the two theories of divided attention?

Answer 1

Resource theory

Automaticity

Question 2

What is Yerkes-Dodson law?

Answer 2

Resource theory
– when you are in a low arousal
state, your memory for information is not that good. However, as your arousal level goes up, so does your memory performance, but only up to a point. That point is an optimal level of arousal that allows the most learning to occur. Beyond that your memory starts to decline because you are too agitated and excited, and the amount of information you can adequately remember goes down

Question 3

What is the resource theory of attention?

Answer 3

• • limited capacity attention (there is only so much mental fuel to be devoted here or there at any one time) but flexible and can be allocated
• • Two types of attentional limits:
    1) specific structural limits (regardless of how much attention/effort you put in, you can’t get beyond that because of skill set)
    2) non-specific “energy”, “resources
• • texting + driving
• • Resource: something you can control (ex. using phone when driving –the phone is a distractor but can be controlled to increase performance)
• • Data limited: something you can’t control (ex. Icy roads when driving)
• • resource/data-limits depends on difficulty of task

Question 4

What is automaticity?

Answer 4

-- Automatic:
rapid
unintentional (obligatory)
does not require resources
-- Controlled:
slow
intentional (control)
require resources
-- In divided attention, automatic tasks can be performed  concurrently but controlled tasks may interfere and hard to be done concurrently
-- ex. stroop task (automaticity of basic reading processes)