Attention Flashcards
what are the limitations of attention
Attention is a limited capacity resource and has a processing bottleneck
how is attention used in every day life? what are outcomes if it fails
Can have negative outcomes if it fails e.g. education, driving. applied in clinical contexts e.g. ADHD. can have everyday applications such as advertising.
how many different types of attention are there.
selective
sustained
divided
attention to different sensory modalities.
what is selective attention
focusing on certain information while ignoring other info
what is sustained attention
maintaining focused attention. e.g. security guard looking at cams
what is divided attention
basically multi-tasking. a good way to look at capacity limits
what is attention to different sensory modalities
attention to touch sight smell sound
how do we study attention
visually by studying eye movements.
what the difference between covert and overt attention
covert is when ur paying attention to a stimulus but not directly staring at it. overt is when something has your full attention i.e. you’re staring at it
how do we study covert attention
reaction time experiments.
what are some examples of reaction time experiments
spatial cuing (you detect when a target stimulus is being projected and respond asap). visual search (pps asked to find target stimuli amongst many other stimuli (distractors)). stroop task (ink colour may be different to word meaning). flanker (arrow). singleton attentional capture.
why do we use distractors in experiments what does a successful distraction mean
if attention has been distracted by a stimulus then the reaction time will slow therefore we can conclude we have been distracted
