Attention Flashcards
what is attention
the process of concentrating on specific features of the environment or on certin thoughts or activities
what is selective attention
focus on one object, idea, etc excluding others
we do not attend to a large fraction of information in the environment
filtering out some information and promoting other information for further processing
what is divided attention
attending to more than one thing at the same time
results of dichotic listening
participants could not report the content of the message in the unattended eat (knew there was a message vs music vs silence, knew the gender of speaker and tone)
but unattended ear is being processed at some level
cocktail party effect - recognize your own name
change in gender is noticed
-change in tone is noticed
but start in one language end in another not noticed
name the early selection model
broadbent’s filter model
name the intermediate selection model
Tresiman’s attenuation theory
name the late selection model
McKay
explain Broadbent’s filter model
filters model before incoming formation is analyzed for meaning
messages -> sensory memory -> filter -> detector -> to memory
aspects of Broadbent’s filter model
- sensory memory
holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second
-transfers all information to the next stage
aspects of Broadbent’s filter model
- filter
identifies attended message based on physical characteristcis
-only attended message is passed on to the next stage
aspects of Broadbent’s filter model
- detector
processes all information to determine higher-level characteristics of the message ie meaning
aspects of Broadbent’s filter model
- short-term memory
receives output of detector
holds information for 10-15 seconds and may transfer it to long-term memory
name and explain three things broadbent’s mode, does not explain
participants name gets through - cocktail party effect
participants can shadow meaningful messages that switch from one ear to another
effects of practice on detecting informaiton in untrained ear - you can be trained, based on the meaning of the message
explain Treisman’s attenuation theory
attended message is separated from unattended message early in the information-processinf system (before meaning)
only important unattended information is fully processed for meaning and brought into conscious awareness
messages -> attenuator -> dictionary unit -> to memory
aspects of Treisman’s attenuation theory
- attenuator
analyzes incoming message in terms of pysical characteristics, language and meaning
-attended message is let through the attenuator at full strenght, unattended message is let through at a much weaker strength
aspects of Treisman’s attenuation theory
- dictionary unit
contains words, each of which have thresholds for being activated
- words that are common or important have low thresholds
- uncommon words have high thresholds
explain how late selection models work and what evidence supports them
selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after all information has been analyzed for meaning
McKay
-in attending ear, participants heard ambiguous sentences
-in unattended ear hear words that could be drawn (eg bank - river or money)
-had to chose meaning of the sentence
-the meaning of the biasing word significantly affected participants choice
-yet participants were unaware of the presence of the biasing word
define inattentional blindness
a stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though a person might be directly looking at it
sometimes effects of attention are so strong that we fail to see stimuli directly infront of our eyes
gorilla in basketball video = classic example
selective attention - inattentional blindness experiment
participant attend to a different part of the screen
no warnign leads to failure to detect change 90% of the time
warnign means we do detct it