Attention

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

• Focus a mental resource on a specific internal or external stimuli
• Active and limited process

Question 2

Selective attention

Answer 2

-Ability to attend to one source of information and exclude others

Question 3

Applications

Answer 3

-Consumer, education, multitasking and safe driving

Question 4

Hard to study

Answer 4

-Hard to define, operationalise and measure

Question 5

Importance

Answer 5

-Identify how information is processed and the limitations.

Question 6

Covert attention

Answer 6

• Not externally observable e.g. listening to a conversation while looking at something else.
• Can sometimes be tested by EEG but is impacted by eye movements

Question 7

Overt attention

Answer 7

-Externally observable e.g. gaze direction.

Question 8

Functions

Answer 8

• Focusing (reduce items processed)
• Binding (combining info)
• Perceptual enhancement (increase gain)
• Action Selection
• Sustaining Behaviour despite distractors

Question 9

Tod-down processing

Answer 9

• Attention is driven by past experience, expectations and knowledge
• central cues: based on meaning can be ignored
• when reading letters are processed by meaning
• Charlie Chaplin once lost a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition due to judges preconceived ideas

Question 10

bottom up processing

Answer 10

• Attention is based on the stimuli that captures attention
• Colour and orientation pop
• Peripheral cues: based on stimuli cant be ignored

Question 11

Spotlight analogy

Answer 11

• Illuminates a specific region of space, stimuli in this region processes stimuli more efficiently
• independent of vision, covert, fast and active
• Supported by attentional cuing which found true cues resulted in faster responses as attention moved to the correct response
• Weakness: spatial attention rather than object based

Question 12

Limited processing capacity

Answer 12

• Information is processed serially and cannot be processed simultaneously
• Support: During WW2 pilots found monitoring so much information difficult
• Shorter delay between stimuli results in slower responses

Question 13

Information bottleneck

Answer 13

• Before bottleneck info is processed serially without attention
• After bottleneck information is processed with attention to determine the meaning and response
• Location unknown

Question 14

Filter theory

Answer 14

• Before filter only low level auditory characteristics are processed e.g. pitch, intensity and location.
• After the filter meaning and response is determined
• Support: dichotic listening task found participants could only report low-level information about info in the unattended ear
• Weakness: cocktail party effect

Question 15

Attenuator theory

Answer 15

• Unwanted ingomtion is simply turned down before the filter, meaning is still processed and priority is determined
• After the filter response is determined
• Support: Cocktail party
• Switching stories during dichotic listening task found participants could switch stories to answer questions
• Weakness: attention is covert