Attention Flashcards
What is attention?
Process of focusing on specific features of
the environment or on certain thoughts or
activities
Selective:
excluding other features of the
environment
Limited:
in capacity and timing
results of dichotic listening
unable to report unattended ear; noticed: change in gender, tone, and cocktail party effect
early selection model
broadbent’s filter model; filters message before incoming information is analyzed for meaning
sensory memory, broadbent’s filter model
holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second, transfers all information to next stage
detector, broadbent’s filter model
processes all information to detect higher-level characteristics
short-term memory, broadbent’s filter model
receives output of detector, holds info for 10-15 seconds and may transfer to long-term memory
Shortcomings, broadbent filter model
cocktail party phenomenon, attended messages cross ears, unattended ear training (according to meaning)
late selection model
after McKay 1973
McKay 1973
attended ear: message; unattended ear: biasing words; chose meaning of message
intermediate selection model
Treisman’s Attenuation Theory; messages filtered after attenuator or dictionary unit
attenuator, treisman’s
Analyzes incoming message in terms of physical
characteristics, language, and meaning; attended messages pass with full strength vs weaker strength
dictionary unit, treisman’s
words have thresholds for being activated
divided attention
Practice enables people to simultaneously do
two things that were difficult at first
Spelke et al. (1976)
After hours of practice, participants could read and
categorize dictated words
Schneider and Shiffrin (1977)
Divide attention between remembering target and
monitoring rapidly presented stimuli
* Memory set: 1-4 target characters
* Test frames: could contain a target (or not) and
distractors
Consistent mapping condition
target would be numbers, and distractors would be
letters
stroop effect
Name of the word interferes with the ability to
name the ink color
– Cannot avoid paying attention to the meanings of
the words (automatic processing)
cellphones
Owned by 91% of the U.S. population (2013)
* 85% of drivers use it on the road (NHTSA, 2006)
* At any given daylight time, 660,000 drivers in the US use
it
cell phone records
Redelmeier & Tibirashni (2007): All collisions
* 24% drivers on the phone 10 minutes before accident
* 4x higher – comparable to drunk driving
* McEvoy et al. (2005): Only crashes requiring
transportation to hospital for medical care
* 4x higher
scene schema
knowledge about what is
contained in typical scenes
Egly 1994
Object-based visual attention
fit
feature integration theory; object-preattentive stage(features)-focused attention stage-perception
