Attention

Question 1

Overt vs. covert attention

Answer 1

Overt: paying attention with full body language
Covert: paying attention, but not acting like it

Question 2

Selective attention

Answer 2

Filtering the stimuli that we process/attend to
Attending to whatever matches a “criterion”
Attending to what changes suddenly, ignoring the rest

Question 3

Automatic processing

Answer 3

Processing that occurs without attention (automatically) and requires few cognitive resources (little demand on attention)
Depends on practice and difficulty of task

Question 4

Controlled processing

Answer 4

Processing that requires attention and significant cognitive resources
Difficult tasks or not-practiced ones

Question 5

When divided attention can be accomplished

Answer 5

When tasks that attention is divided between are fairly easy and sufficiently practiced

Question 6

Late selection theory

Answer 6

All incoming stimuli processed for meaning prior to selection occurring

Question 7

McKay’s ambiguous sentence experiment

Answer 7

Evidence for late selection theory
Dichotic listening experiment: attended ear “they were throwing stones at the bank”, unattended ear “river” or “money”
People were more likely to choose the definition of “bank” that they had heard in the unattended ear

Question 8

Flanker task

Answer 8

Evidence for late selection theory
Blank circle presented: 1 of 2 stimuli put in circle
When distractor stimuli (stimuli outside of circle) were added, congruent (same stimuli as one in circle) was processed faster than incongruent (different stimuli than one in circle)

Question 9

Problem with late selection theory

Answer 9

Inefficient- takes up a lot of cognitive resources

Question 10

Broadbent’s filter model

Answer 10

Early selection theory
Messages from environment come in -> enter sensory memory -> unimportant stimuli filtered out -> attended message is passed onto detector -> processed for meaning
What distinguishes important message from unimportant: physical characteristics (tone, pitch, volume, etc.)

Question 11

Supporting evidence for early selection theory

Answer 11

Dichotic listening experiments (at the same time, problem: people hear the other message even when trying to ignore it)

Question 12

Evidence against early selection theory

Answer 12

1. Dear Aunt Jane experiment: dear Aunt Jane message in one ear, counting in other (switch off every other word)- people hear whole message, even though some of it occurred in the unattended ear
2. Cocktail party effect (when in a conversation with someone, you pay attention to someone else saying your name)
3. Flanker task

Question 13

Treisman’s attenuation theory

Answer 13

Evidence for intermediate selection
Similar to volume control: attenuator adjusts some stimuli up while adjusting others down
Messages -> attenuator -> attended message (amplified) and unattended message (subdued) -> dictionary unit (determines meaning of message, mostly the attended message unless the unattended message has significance) -> to memory

Question 14

Problems that intermediate selection theory addresses

Answer 14

Cocktail party effect

Dichotic listening task

Question 15

How low perceptual loads are processed

Answer 15

Not much stimuli to sort through
Flanker effect occurs (congruent is faster than incongruent)
Processing for meaning

Question 16

How high perceptual loads are processed

Answer 16

Lots of stimuli to sort through
No Flanker effect
Physical processing only