Attention

Question 1

Wiliam James

Answer 1

“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind in clear form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought…It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state.”

Question 2

Selecting information to attend to

Answer 2

we select information that is relevant to our goals.

Question 3

Irrelevant Stimuli

Answer 3

acts as noise that can make it difficult to identify and attend to important information.

Question 4

Automatic Processes

Answer 4

are triggered involuntarily by external events and triggers the capture of attention. Operate in a fact, efficient and obligatory manner.

Question 5

Controlled Proceses

Answer 5

voluntarily guide attention and consciously to the objects of intent. Operate slowly because they require more cognitive effort.

It’s difficult to attend to many aspects of a task environment at the same time because the resources for controlled processes are limited.
As demands for attention increase, you must make adjustments to compensate.
Intimately linked with learning - some cues lead to stronger and quicker associations

Question 6

Spotlight Model

Answer 6

there is an analogous process to visual attention - attentional spotlight focuses on only part of the environment at a time.
can be hijacked by unconscious process that can quickly grab your attention.
objects within the spotlight and processed preferencially

Question 7

Cueing Paradigms

Answer 7

quicker response when target appears in flashed box - automatically attracts attentional spotlight and attention will amplify the perceptional processes of that target
slower response when target appears outside of flashed box because attentional spotlight will be directed away from the target

Question 8

Cocktail Party Effect

Answer 8

surrounded by many sounds competing for you attention - despite noise, you can still single out the voice of your conversation partner.

Question 9

Filter Models

Answer 9

sifts away distractions and only allows important information through

Question 10

Broadbent’s Single Filter Model

Answer 10

the attentional filter selects important on the basis of physical characteristics and allows that info continue on for further processing (info that doesn’t pass through is completely eliminated)

Question 11

Dichotic Listening Paradigm

Answer 11

subjects remember nothing about unattended information and rarely noticed changes in the message in unattended ear - attentional filter only allow info from attended ear to proceed

Question 12

Limitations of Broadbent’s model

Answer 12

assumes that there s absolutely no additional processing of unattended signals - some say that some info is processed even in unattended ear

Question 13

Breakthrough

Answer 13

participants are able to remember important info in an unattended stream - they responded to conditional stimuli even in unattended ear and some info about sound and meaning is able to pass through the filter

Question 14

Triesman’s Dual Filter Model

Answer 14

based on physical and semantic filters

Question 15

Physical Filter

Answer 15

importance of incoming stimuli based on physical cues and passes them along to semantic

Question 16

Semantic Filter

Answer 16

semantic evaluated for meaning and takes into account the weights assigned by the physical filter and considers the deeper meaning and relevance of the stimuli and chooses which info will be attended to while the rest is discarded. Can override early filtering decisions by the physical filter.

Question 17

Stroop Task

Answer 17

say the colour and ignore the word - faster for congruent and slower for incongruent, where various proportion congruent manipulations lead to an increase in the effect when congruent>incongruent, and a decreased effect when congruent<incongruent

Question 18

Set Size Effect

Answer 18

the number of items to search through - increase in set size leads to an increase in difficulty

Question 19

Pop-Out Effect

Answer 19

when the object of a visual search is easily found regardless of set size.

Question 20

Single Feature Search

Answer 20

looking for only one difference makes it easy to spot (colour is easier than feature)

Question 21

Conjuction Search

Answer 21

looking for more than one feature to search for, it becomes a lot harder