ATTENTION

Question 1

“Attention is the taking possession of the mind, in
clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem
several simultaneously possible objects or trains of
thoughts… it implies withdrawal from some things in
order to deal effectively with others.”

Answer 1

William James

Question 2

We select and process a limited amount of
information; captured by our senses, our stored
memories and other cognitive processes.

Answer 2

Attention

Question 3

Ability to attend a field of stimulation over a
prolonged period
•
Watchfully waits to detect a signal stimulus that
may appear at an unknown time
•
Needed in setting in which a given stimulus
occurs rarely but requires immediate attention as
soon it occurs.

Answer 3

VIGILANCE

Question 4

-people pick out
the important stimuli embedded in a wealth of
irrelevant, distracting stimuli.
-Often used to measure sensitivity to target’s
presence.

Answer 4

Signal Detection

Question 5

Includes both conscious and unconscious
processes.

Answer 5

Attention

Question 6

allows us to use our limited mental
resources judiciously. We can focus more on the
stimuli that interest us by focusing less on
outside stimuli and inner stimuli that are not of
interest to us

Answer 6

Attention

Question 7

4 MAIN FUNCTIONS
(ATTENTION)

Answer 7

Signal detection and Vigilance
Search
Selective Attention
Divided Attention

Question 8

•
Involves using our attentioinal resources to
actively and often skillfully seek out a target.
•
Scan of the environment for particular features -
actively looking for something when you are not
sure where it will appear.

Answer 8

Search

Question 9

-2 Different Kinds of Searches-

Answer 9

Feature search
Conjunction search

Question 10

Used in signal detection theory

Answer 10

SIGNAL DETECTION MATRIX

Question 11

4 possible outcomes of signal detection

Answer 11

Hits - “true positives”
False alarms- “false positives”
Misses-“false negatives”
Correct rejections -“true negatives”

Question 12

•
Anne Treisman (1986)
• Nobel laureates David Hubel and Torsten
Wiesel (1979)
•
explains why it is relatively easy to conduct
feature searches and relatively difficult to
conduct conjunction searches

Answer 12

Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

Question 13

2 Stages when we perceive objects

Answer 13

• color and size
• Connecting 2 or more features with some
  “mental glue”

Question 14

The more similar target and distracter are, the
more difficult it is to find the target.
•
The difficulty of search tasks depends on how
different distracters are from each other. But it
does not depend on the number of features to be
integrated.

Answer 14

Similarity Theory

Question 15

True or False. THEORIES OF DIVIDED ATTENTION

1. One model suggests that one single pool of
   attentional resources can be divided freely.
2. Another model suggests multiple sources of
   attention are available, one for each modality.

Answer 15

True

Question 16

Initial performance was
poor for the two tasks when the tasks had to be
performed at the same time (enough practice,
participants improved)

Answer 16

Dual-Task Paradigm

Question 17

Dichotic Presentation

Answer 17

Attended inputs > 👱< Unattended inputs

Question 18

•
Collin Cherry (1953)
•
Cocktail Party Problem - tracking one
conversation while distracted by other
conversation
•
He devised a task known as shadowing -
listening to two different messages.
•
“Dichotic Presentation” - he presented a separate
message to each ear.

Answer 18

Selective Attention

Question 19

FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE OUR
ABILITY TO PAY ATTENTION

Answer 19

• anxiety
• arousal
• task difficulty
• skills

Question 20

Being “prepared” to attend to some incoming event,
and maintaining this attention.

Answer 20

Alerting

Question 21

The selection of stimuli to attend to.
-This kind of attention is needed when we perform a
visual search

Answer 21

Orienting

Question 22

• includes processes for monitoring and resolving
  conflicts that arise among internal process

Answer 22

Executive attention

Question 23

WHEN OUR
ATTENTION FAILS US

Answer 23

-Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
-Change blindness/inattentional blindness

Question 24

Three primary symptoms of
ADHD are:

Answer 24

Inattention
Hyperactivity
Impulsiveness

Question 25

There are three main types of ADHD, depending on
which symptoms are predominant:

Answer 25

• Hyperactive-impulsive
•
Inattentive
•
Combination of hyperactive-impulsive and
inattentive behavior

Question 26

attentional
dysfunction in which participants ignore the
half of their visual field that is contralateral to
(on
the opposite side of) the hemisphere of the
brain that has a lesion.

Answer 26

SPATIAL NEGLECT

Question 27

Is an inability to detect changes in objects or
scenes that are being viewed.

Answer 27

Change blindness

Question 28

Is a phenomenon in
which people are not able to see things that are
actually there.

Answer 28

INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS

Question 29

• Require intentional effort.
•
Require full conscious awareness
•
Consume many attentional resources
•
Performed serially
•
Relatively time-consuming execution, as compared with
automatic processes.
•
Usually difficult tasks

Answer 29

Controlled processes

Question 30

they are performed without conscious awareness.
•
require little or no intention or effort
•
multiple automatic processes may occur at once, or
atleast quickly, and in no particular sequence.

Answer 30

Automatic processes

Question 31

which is named after John Ridley Stroop.
•
In 1935, Stroop observed a peculiar phenomenon of
visual selective attention.
•
It demonstrates the psychological
difficulty in selectively attending to the color of the ink
and trying to ignore the word that is printed with the ink
of that color.

Question 32

was proposed by Gordon Logan. He suggested that
automatization occurs because we gradually accumulate
knowledge about specific responses to specific stimuli.

Answer 32

Instance Theory

Question 33

MISTAKES WE MAKE IN
AUTOMATIC PROCESSES
Human errors shows that error can be classified as either as______

Answer 33

Mistakes and error

Question 34

Type of Errors

Answer 34

•
Capture errors
•
Omissions
•
Perseverations
•
Description Errors
•
Data-driven errors
•
Associative-activation errors
•
Loss-of-activation errors

Question 35

Both feeling of awareness and the content of
awareness, which may be under the focus of
attention under the focus of att

Answer 35

CONSCIOUSNESS

Question 36

Information that is available for cognitive
processing but that currently lies outside
conscious awareness exists at the preconscious
level of awareness.

Answer 36

PRECONSCIOUS
PROCESSING

Question 37

traces of visual perceptual ability in blind areas.
•
when forced to guess about a stimulus in the
“blind region”, they correctly guess locations and
orientation of objects at above chance levels.

Answer 37

Blindsight