Attention Flashcards
Divided Attention
doing two things at once you end up switching between tasks rather than doing them simultaneously
Selective Attention
process of reacting to certain stimuli selectively as they occur simultaneously
Exogenous
don’t have to tell ourselves to look for them (ex: bright colors, loud noises, “pop-out effect”
Endogenous
require internal knowledge to understand the cue and the intention to follow it, ex: a mouse arrow, or the cocktail party effect)
Cocktail Party Effect
ability to concentrate on one voice amongst a crowd. Or when someone calls your name
Inattentional blindness
we aren’t aware of things not in our visual field when our attention is directed elsewhere in that field
Change blindness
fail to notice changes in envt
Shadowing task
left ear hear one thing, right ear another thing. Told to repeat everything said in one ear and ignore the other. We can learn about how selective attention works by seeing what they filter out in other ear
Broadbent’s Early Selection Theory
all info in environment goes into sensory register, then gets transferred to selective filer right away which filters out stuff in unattended ear and what you don’t need to understand it (accents etc.) and finally perceptual processes identifies friend’s voice and assigns meaning to words. Then you can engage in other cognitive processes
Problem: completely filter out unattended info, shouldn’t identify your own name in unidentified ear, cocktail party effect
Deutch & Deutch’s Late Selection Theory
places broadband selective filter after perceptual processes. Selective filter decides what you pass on to conscious awareness. But given limited resources and attention, seems wasteful to spend all that time assigning meaning to things first
Treisman’s Attenuation Theory
instead of complete selective filter, have an attenuator- weakens but doesn’t eliminate input from unattended ear. Then some gets to perceptual processes, so still assign meaning to stuff in unattended ear, just not high priority. Then switch if something important
Spotlight model of attention
selective attention- takes info from 5 senses, but don’t pay attention to everything
Aware of things on an unconscious level
Priming
where exposure to one stimulus affects response to another stimulus, even if we haven’t been paying attention to it
We’re primed to respond to our name, why it’s a strong prime for pulling our attention
Resource model of attention
have limited resources in attention
both models say something about our ability to multitask- not very good at it. Supported by research study
Task similarity
listening to radio while writing a paper. Better to listen to classical music, because harder to multitask with similar tasks
