attention

Question 1

What are two main ways to define attention

Answer 1

• attention as a mental process (concentrating effort on a stimuli/event)
• attention as a limited mental resource (limited energy/resources)

Question 2

Selective attention

Answer 2

you have so much stimuli but not a lot of time/cognition to fully process
- massive information+limited capacity
- selecting to focus on one thing and ignore others

Question 3

Information processing model

Answer 3

• Sensation
• Perception
  (attention)
• Mental Representation
• Memory (retrieval if going backwards)

Question 4

What is the effect when you are in a loud room and you hear someone say your name far away, even if you were in the middle of a conversation

Answer 4

cocktail party effect (you notice critical info)

Question 5

Dichotic listening experiments

Answer 5

• one different message in each ear at the same time, the person may shadow (repeat one side and ignore the other)

Question 6

For Dichotic listening experiments, who was a key player and what did they find

Answer 6

• Cherry
• found people could process surface level info of the voice (ie gender, pitch) but not the content
• suggesting info is processed but filtered

Question 7

Early vs late filters for attention processing

Answer 7

• Early: can select physical characteristics. Broadbent says filter follows detection but is before recognition
• Late: can select via meaning. Deutshs says it happens after recognition (processes after some understanding)

Question 8

How did Treisman build off of the filter theories for attention

Answer 8

• switching experiment (shadow message, but have it jump)
• Intermediate-selection model: attended messages can separate from unattended ones early in info processing, filter based on meaning or physical traits

Question 9

Treisman’s attenuator

Answer 9

• attended message is let though at full strength (stuff that matters gets a signal boost, stuff that doesn’t is slowed)
• not all or none, strong or weak varies

Question 10

Treisman’s dictionary unit

Answer 10

• contains words that have thresholds for being activated
• common words=low thresholds
• uncommon=high thresholds

Question 11

t or f: for treisman’s dictionary unit, words with high thresholds have less of a need for a signal to activate

Answer 11

false, low threshold=less of a need for signal to activate and high=ignored

Question 12

Because its hard to distinguish filter models for attention, emphasis has shifted to _______ of attention

Answer 12

• capacity theories
• ability/resources for info processing
• multitasking

Question 13

automaticity

Answer 13

• highly practiced
• hard to overcome/override

Question 14

Whether attentional capacity is exceeded depends on _____ and _____

Answer 14

the task and state of the person (ie. alertness/autonomic or effortful tasks)

Question 15

Automaticity vs controlled attention

Answer 15

auto: no mental effort needed, practice, w out intention, unconscious, doesnt interfere w other tasks
control: deliberate, voluntary allocation of effort/concentration (ex creative, different situation each time)

Question 16

When looking for a red circle among blue circles, this is a:
a) attentional control task
b) automatic attention task

Answer 16

b) automatic

Question 17

When looking for a vertical red among vertical blue and horizontal red rectangles is it uses:
a) attentional control task
b) automatic attention task

Answer 17

a)

Question 18

Because reading becomes an automatic process ______ words are often skipped

Answer 18

function/small (ex. of, the)

Question 19

Stroop effect

Answer 19

• difficulty saying colour of font if word is a different colour
• reading is automatic
• solution: blue eyes

Question 20

disadvantages of automaticity

Answer 20

• hard to undo/override
• brain is efficient at cutting corners
• even if task is set up, brain will skip things (ex proof reading)

Question 21

Feature vs conjunction search

Answer 21

feature: easier, autonomic
conjunction: searching but you need to find combo of features to find it

Question 22

Feature integration theory

Answer 22

• Treisman and Gelade
• Perception occurs in two stages: preattentive (physical features) and attention processes (features glues together)
• you only get true perception of things when you pay attention to it
• fast parallel processing of visual features

Question 23

Conjunction errors

Answer 23

• attention is not enough
• confused with a near stimuli easier

Question 24

some jobs require automaticity be avoided to ___________

Answer 24

accurately perform the job without error

Question 25

Inattentional Blindness

Answer 25

• You see very little when youre not paying attention (Neisser)
• when controlled or conscious attention takes away from noticing other things
• outside of control
• can include purposefully ignoring info to complete a task

Question 26

Walking and chewing gum at the same time is considered _____ _______

Answer 26

divided attention

Question 27

Dual task procedure

Answer 27

• have someone do two tasks
• measure performance of primary task then on both tasks to determine if theres a decrease in performance
• Johnston & Heinz (shadow message and flashing light)

Question 28

t or f: it is the actually act of speaking that takes up the most amount of resources

Answer 28

false, its planning on what you’ll say

Question 29

PRP (divided attention)

Answer 29

• psychological refractory period
• time between making selections of more than one stimuli
• during points of processing, those processes take up all your resources
• you need to finish one task before doing another, you can recover info but response takes time

Question 30

real world example of psychological refractory period

Answer 30

fakes in sports games

Question 31

Damage to the _______ lobe causes attentional neglect

Answer 31

right parietal (damage to left side of visual field)

Question 32

t or f: attentional neglect is not a sensory level problem

Answer 32

true (but it does affect all senses)

Question 33

Posner’s attentional cueing paradigm

Answer 33

• attention
• cueing participants right or wrong to see response time
• the way you direct attention helps you focus and react to info
• slow reaction when arrows were in wrong direction

Question 34

Why is there a time difference between Posner’s attentional cueing paradigm when the arrows were wrong

Answer 34

• participants need to disengage and reorient attention to proper side (disengage, move, and enhance attention)