Attention Flashcards
What is attention?
Focussing of limited mental resources on the info and cognitive processes that are most salient at a given time.
Why do we have attention?
World is full or into and stimuli and we have limited cognitive capacity.
Types of processing
Top down
Bottoms up
Top down processing
Our search is influenced by our knowledge
Bottom up processing
Our search is influenced by salient items in the environment
Serial processing
Switch attention backwards as forwards between objects with only one item attended to and processed at a time.
Parallel processing
Attending to and processing more than one item at a time
What do some people argue processing is
Often flexible
What is stroops study
When the colours are spelled out but written in a different colour and you have to state the colour it is written in
What did stroop state
Some cognitive processes that seem to become highly automated through practice are difficult to disengage
Focused attention
Filtering out competing stimuli to attend to primary stimulus
Divided attention
Attending to multiple sources of stimuli to ‘multi-task’
Types of focused attention
Auditory and visual
Types of divided attention
Task similarity, task difficulty, and practice
Three parts of broadbents filter theory
Sensory register, selective filter, and short term memory
What does the selective filter do
Filters out competing stimuli before the short term memory
Cherry’s dichotic listening task
Messages in both ears and ppts can’t say whether one message was in a different language or not
Treisman and geffen study
Different sounds in each ear and told to listen out for target sound, 87% could identify.
Cocktail party effect
Ability to always detect your own name
When do you filter?
When you assess which stimulus is the most relevant
Surface processed
Non attended information not completely filtered out
Effects of distraction
Extent we are distracted when carrying out a visual attention task depends on demands of the task
High loads
Allow little distraction as require greater concentration
Low loads
Allow spare attention to be directed elsewhere
Lavie study
Perceptual load theory of attention. Largely based on visual processing.
