Attention Flashcards
Exam 1
What is attention?
The ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment
Selective Attention
Attending to one thing while ignoring others
Divided Attention
Paying attention to more than one thing at a time
Limited Attention
In Capacity or timing
Overt and Covert
We can consciously attend to information, but some information grabs our attention.
We do not attend to a ____________ fraction of the information in the environment
Large
Dichotic Listening
One message is presented in the left ear and another in the right ear
How did people study selective attention?
Dichotic listening,
In the unattended ear, participants reported that (2)
Knew there was a message and knew the speakers gender
Cocktail party effect
In a loud environment, you can hear certain things through the crowd
Models of selective attention
Early, intermediate, and late selection model
Early selection model
Broadbent’s filter model
Intermediate Selection model
Treisman’s attenuation model
Late selection model
MacKay
Broadbent’s filter model
Early selection model; filtering occurs before meaning is processed of anything; ONLY THE ATTENDED MESSAGE GOES THROUGH THE DETECTOR; NOT USED
Sensory memory
Holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second; temporary storage place that transfers all info to filter
How does the filter work in Broadbent’s model?***
Only the attended message is passed on to the next stage
How does the detector work in Broadbent’s model?
Processes all information to determine higher-level characteristics of the message
Short-term memory
Receives output of detector; holds info for 10-15 seconds
What could Broadbent’s model not explain?
The Cocktail party phenomenon
Why can people shadow meaningful messages and switch from ear to ear
The dear aunt Jane model
Treisman’s attenuation model
Intermediate selection model
What did Treisman’s attenuation model state?
Attended messages can be separated from unattended messages early in the information-processing system; selection can also occur later
What is the attenuator in Treisman’s model?
It analyzes incoming messages in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning.
Treisman’s model said attended message is let through at
Full strength
Treisman’s model said unattended message is let through at
weakened strength
Dictionary unit
Contains words, each of which has a threshold for being activated
Uncommon words have a ________ threshold, while common words have a ________ threshold
Higher; lower
The lower the threshold the __________ it is to be activated
Easier
Late selection models
Selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after information has been analyzed for meaning
MacKay Study
In attended ear, participants heard ambiguous sentences; In the unattended ear, they played misleading words; participants then chose which jambled sentence was closest to the meaning of the original
What came out of MacKay’s study?
Participants were unaware of the presentation of the biasing of words; The unattended ear bias helped participants select which sentence
Processing capacity
how much information a person can handle at any given moment
Perceptual load
The difficulty of a given task
High-load
(difficult) tasks use higher amounts of processing capacity
Low-load
(easier) tasks use lower amounts of processing capacity
Overt Attention
Eye movements, attention, and perception
Saccades
Rapid movement of the eyes from one place to another
Fixations
Short pauses on points of interest
How do we study overt visual attention?
Eye tracking
Stimulus Salience
Areas that stand out and capture attention; bottom-up process
Example of salience
color and motion are very attention grabbing
Scene schema
Knowledge of what is contained in typical scenes; top-down
Eye movements are also determined by the ____________
Task we are trying to complete
What is the basis of covert attention?
Attention without Eye movement
Precueing
directing attention without moving the eyes
What did Posner determine about precueing?
Participants respond faster to a light at an expected location than at an unexpected location
The Stroop Effect
Name of the word interferes with the ability to name the ink color; cannot avoid paying attention to the meaning of the words
Divided Attention
Practice enables people to simultaneously do two things that were difficult at first
Schneider and Shiffrin
Divide attention between remembering target and monitoring rapidly presented stimuli
Memory set
one to four characters called target stimuli
Test Frames
Can contain random dot patterns, a target, distractors
What did Schneider and Shiffrin do in their experiment?
Initially presented a stimulus in a memory set. Then presented a series of 20 test frames very fast. Were then asked if their target from the memory set was in the frame.
What was the conclusion of Schneider and Shiffrin’s experiment?
This experiment proved that with practice the subjects improved
Overtime in S&S’s experiment, the participants reported the task to be ____________
automatic
How does something go from controlled to automatic?
Intense practice
If sometime the target is the distractor, the participant ______________________
will never make this an automatic experience
100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study
Video recorder is placed in car; proves accident risk is 4x higher when using a cell phone
Strayer and Johnston’s simulated driver experiment
Participants on phone missed twice as many red lights and took longer to apply the brakes
In Strayer and Johnston’s experiment, what happened when using a “hands-free” cell phone?
The same results as holding the phone; proved that it does not matter where your hands are, it is where your mind is
Inattentional blindness
Stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though a person may be looking directly at it (Ex: GORILLA VIDEO)
Location-based visual attention
Moving attention from one place to another
Object-based visual attention
Attention being directed to one place on an object
What was Egly et al. Study?
Present a cue, then present a stimulus; measure how inaccurate cues changed the reaction time of a stimulus
Reaction time fastest when the target __________________
appeared where indicated
Reaction time remained fast when the target was _________________________
in the same cued rectangle
The idea of Egly et al. is that the enhancing effect of attention spreads ___________________________________
throughout the object
Attention can be based off of (2)
- Environment (the whole scene of a football game)
- Specific objects (a football)
Change blindness
If shown two versions of a picture, the differences between them are not immediately apparent
____________ requires concentrated attention and search
Task to identify differences
What is Binding?
The process by which a color, form, motion, and location are COMBINED to create our perception of an object
Feature Integration Theory (FIT)
How an individual combines features of an object to form a perception
What is the preattentive stage in FIT?
Analyze the object into features
What is the focused attention stage in FIT?
Combine the features of an object
What was Treisman and Schmidt’s experiment?
Different shapes, colors, and sizes cause participants to combine features from the different stimuli
Why do illusory conjunctions occur?
Features are “free-floating”; it takes focused attention to correctly identify objects
R.M.: Patient with Balint’s syndrome
inability to focus attention on individual objects; high number of illusory conjunctions reported
FIT is a mostly _______ processing
bottom-up; has to do with working with incoming stimuli
Physiology of attention
attention enhances neural responding
