Attention Flashcards
What type of experiment did McKay do and what was the result of his experiment? What did this finding lead to?
His subjects listened to ambiguous sentences like “they threw stones at the bank” in the attended ear and could be interpreted in more than 1 way. The unattended ear got bias information. Like money or river.
He believed that these unattended words must still be processed w meaning.
Therefore, this led to development of Late Selection models of attention praising that most incoming info is processed to the level of meaning before message to be processed is selected.
Nilli Lavie introduced what concept?
Selective attending can depend on what?
Processing capacity and Perceptual load.
Selective attention can depend on distraction and nature of task.
What are 2 early selection models? Why are they considered this?
Broadbents filter model and Treismans attenuator model of attention.
Filter operates at an early stage in the flow of information.
Define processing capacity and perceptual load, and what this addresses.
Processing capacity refers to amount of info and limits that can be handled.
Perceptual load is related to difficulty of task. Easy task is low load. These only take small processing capability.
This answers how people can ignore distraction while trying to focus their attention on a task.
Stroop effect is an example of a task irrelevant stimuli. Why is it so difficult to name the color of the block?
Bc reading is highly practiced and automatic.
What is an example of top down bottom up processing for attention?
Top down- observers knowledge about scenes and past experiences w stimuli.
Bottom up- physical characteristics.
Why would a task irrelevant stimulus slow down reaction time during an easy task?
Due to load theory of attention, there’s processing capacity left in the brain so the person slows down to respond to the irrelevant stimulus.
You are more likely to be distracted during low load task.
Attention can be influenced by stimulus salience. Define it. What is a Saliency map?
Physical properties such as color, contrast, movement. This is bottom up.
We can see saliency contrast in the black and white pixelated photo of the tidal waves on the beach. We
What is same object advantage?
Faster response when enhancement spreads within an object. Ex) when eyes avert from a to b is faster because they’re in the same object (box).
Define scene schema. Is this top down or bottom up?
Top down processing.
Scene Schema refers to observers knowledge about typical scenes.
Scene schema help you fill in what is around you without paying close attention
What did Posner want to find out w pre-cueing? Hint- Zoom Lens Model
His experiment showed that information processing is more effective at the place you DIRECT attention.
What experiments include task irrelevant information?
Forester and lavis high and low load tasks and stroop.
Define and provide example of divided attention.
Distribution of attention among 2 or more tasks. Like playing a game on my phone while hearing nearby conversations.
T or F? Automatic processing of Divided attention is all the same no matter how difficult a task.
False. If task is difficult like using letters for both targets and distractions, automatic processing is not possible even with practice.
Describe Schneider and Shiffrins model. What type of attention does it involve?
How did they carry this experiment out?
What did they learn?
Involved divided attention.
Requires subjects to carry out 2 tasks simultaneously: 1) Hold onto info about target stimuli in memory and 2) pay attention to series of “Distractor stimulus” and determine whether the target from #1 is among them.
After 600 trials, subjects automatically responded without conscious thought, and so they believed practice allowed them to divide their attention.
Divided Attention can be achieved with practice (Automatizing).
What does cell phone and driving demonstrate? How much more do ppl get in accidents?
Divided attention doesn’t work for driving and cell phone use because of the difficulty of the task. 4 times more.
Why would using only a small portion of the environment be our most adaptive feature?
Because by focusing on what is important, is making optimal use of our limited resources. Like looking at dangers such as a charging animal.
Strayer and Johnson did what type of experiment? What did they find? What’s the reason this is dangerous? How many more times is it dangerous for truck drivers to text and drive?
Subjects missed twice as many red lights while talking on phone whether it was hands free or not.
The problem is not driving with one hand but there are fewer cognitive resources.
23 more times.
Define inattentional blindness. What are examples of this?
Something is clearly visible (like the Gorilla in the video), but we miss it because we were not paying attention to it, even when we’re looking STRAIGHT AT IT.
Finch and Lavies experiment involved subjects determining which part of the cross was different in line. On the 6th trial, they flashed a Square, and only 10% of subjects saw this. In other words most of the subjects were blind to this, even though it was located right next to the cross.
Define change blindness.
Difficulty in detecting changes in scenes. Continuity errors in movies is an example.
What did Li’s experiment on perception and attention show? What was their experiment and what did their findings show? How does this relate to Evolutionary theory?
We’re well adapted to take in information to survive, even if we take a small amount of that information.
Subject’s central task was to indicate if all the letters in the central stimulus are the same, and their peripheral task was to indicate whether the scene contained an animal or random shapes. 90% of people saw the animal.
