Attention Flashcards
What is attention about?
focus.
What can attention be described as?
arousal
What is bottom up attention?
automatic attention in the environment that grabs your attention
What happens when there is too much or too little arousal?
too much: stress, not good for cognition
too little: not alert
what is top-down attention?
activated by observer when you want to pay attention.
What are the types of top-down attention?
- selective attention
- sustained attention
- divided attention
What is selective attention?
attending to one thing while ignoring the rest
What is sustained attention?
Maintaining focus on a task or stimuli (vigilance)
what is divided attention?
Shifting attentional focus between tasks (multi-tasking)
Why does selective attention exist?
because we have limited amount of processing capacity.
at what level is information filtered at?
the ear
what is the late selection filter model?
process relevant and irrelevant information and select what we want to attend to at the level of the meaning.
What is spatial neglect
damage to the parietal lobes which causes an inability to attend to any input in the area on the contralateral side of the brain damage.
what is the early selection filter model?
we filter out things we don’t want to attend at the level of perception.
What problem can occur with early filter?
unattended information can “break through” into your attentional awareness
what is controlled processing?
activities we must effortfully attend to consciously
what is automatic processing?
activities that do not require conscious attention to run smoothly.
What is the load theory of selective attention?
assumes that when we perform a task, we use up all our resources.
What is the central resource capacity view?
one resource pool from which all attention resources are allocated.
What is the multiple resource capacity view?
multiple resources from which attention resources are allocated.
attentional capacity is reached later if two tasks provide similar information.
What is inattentional blindness?
consequence of selective attention. failure to attend to new events in our environment that are right in front of us because attention is not focused to that location.
What is change blindness?
not detecting a change in the environment.
How does deja vu happen?
new location is encountered with inattention blindness, so you aren’t aware of it but still register it below threshold of awareness. Next time you encounter location with awareness, it feels familiar due to implicit priming, bu you do not have a conscious recollection of attending the location.
What is spotlight theory of attention?
Attention is about focusing on a central view in space and ignoring what is located “outside” of the focused area.
