Attention

Question 1

Name the kinds of attention there is

Answer 1

1. Selective attention
2. Overt attention
3. Covert attention
4. Divided attention

Question 2

Dichotic listening task

Answer 2

Participants were exposed to two different messages in each ear.

After, the participants were asked to pay attention to only one ear and repeat what the message was saying.

Question 3

Shadowing

Answer 3

The participant would repeat what they heard immediately after.

This allows to the researchers to verify if the participants are actually paying attention to what they are supposed to.

Question 4

What would the participants report if they would be asked about the message on the unattended ear?

Answer 4

They would be able to report the gender of the speaker and they would be able to report that there was a message but they could not report the contents of the message.

Question 5

Explain Donald Broadbent’s model of attention

Answer 5

1. Sensory store: holds the incoming information for half a second. Therefore, it receives both the attended and unattended messages.
2. Selective filter: Based on physical properties (pitch, tone of voice, accent, etc.) identifies the attended message and ONLY sends the attended message to the next step.
3. Higher-level processing: identifies the content of the message and other high-level characteristics
4. Working memory:

Question 6

True or False

Broadbent’s claim that no information about the unattended message would pass.

Give an example.

Answer 6

False

If you are at a very crowded place where you are having a conversation with someone and someone shouts your name, you will hear your name.

Question 7

True or False

The unattended message is processed enough for it to have meaning.

Answer 7

True

The Dear Aunt Jane experiment showed this.

Question 8

Describe the Dear Aunt Jane Experiment

Answer 8

In the Dear Aunt Jane experiment, participants were presented with two different messages in each ear.

For example, the right ear would be presented with:

“Dear 6 Jane”

and the left ear with:

“5 Aunt 7”

When asked to attend to the right ear, participants would report that they heard: “Dear Aunt Jane” and not “Dear 6 Jane”

Question 9

Explain Treisman’s Attenuation Model

Answer 9

1. Sensory Store: Holds the incoming information for half a second. Therefore, both messages enter it.
2. Attenuating filter: Identifies the attended message by looking at its physical properties. It then attenuates the unattended message and transmits both messages to the next step.
3. Hierarchy of analyses: Dictionary of words were each word is associated with an activation threshold. When the words are common or important, their activation threshold is lower.
4. Working Memory: Both messages enter the working memory but with a difference in “strength”

Question 10

Notice, both Broadbent’s and Treiman’s models suggest that the filter happens early in the processing.

Question 11

Describe Donald G. Mackay’s experiment to prove that there was a late selection between attended and unattended messages

Answer 11

In this experiment, participants would hear on the attended ear the sentence: “They threw stones at the bank”

and in the other ear either: “Money” or “River”

Participants were then asked to point out which sentence was more similar to the one they heard:

“They threw stones towards the side of the river.”

“They threw stones at the savings and loans association.”

Participants that heard the word money picked the second sentence and participants who heard the word river picked the first one.

Question 12

In Donald G. Mackay’s experiment, the bias word affected the participants pick.

What does this mean?

Answer 12

This means that the unattended word must have been processed at a higher level of meaning.

Question 13

True or False

No one model can explain all the data

Answer 13

True

In some cases, the data shows an early selection, whereas in others, the data shows a late selection.

Question 14

What resources does attention need?

Answer 14

it requires cognitive capacity and cognitive load.

In other words, there is a limit to what our brains can do and there is a certain amount of cognitive resources that a cognitive task would need.

Question 15

Describe the Flanker Task

Answer 15

In the flanker task, the participants are shown with a given pattern that contains a target and other figures that will influence the participant’s reaction.

The participants must only react to the target and not to the “flankers”.

Question 16

Describe Posner and Snyder’s experiment

Answer 16

In this experiment, the participants were shown with the letters AA or AB and they needed to

report if the letters were the same or different. Before the letters would appear, there was one of

three possible messages that could appear:

+ (Neutral)

A (Priming)

G (Misleading)

Question 17

Explain the graph of results from Snyder’s and Posner’s experiment

Answer 17

Here we can see that the low-validity condition, benefited when priming and had a very low cost of misleading. On the other hand, high-validity condition benefited much more of the priming but also cost much more.

Question 18

Name two types of primes and their descriptions

Answer 18

1. Stimulus-based: Seeing the stimulus beforehand provides an advantage for identifying the same thing after.
2. Expectation-based: Priming the wrong detector has a cost.

Question 19

Posner’s Cueing Paradigm

Answer 19

The participants would have to identify on which side the target would appear. In this experiment, subjects were shown 80% of the time, an arrow showing the actual side where the target would appear. They were also 20% of the time to be mislead.

Question 20

True or False

Posner’s Cueing Paradigm yielded different results than the Posner and Snyder experiment.

Answer 20

False

The Posner’s Cueing Paradigm yielded similar results

Question 21

Describe the experiment by Schneider and Shiffrin

Answer 21

1. Present the participant with a target
2. Show 20 frames containing 4 objects in each very fast
3. Was the target in one of the frames?

Question 22

What were the results of Schneider’s and Shiffrin’s experiment?

Answer 22

• Participants claimed that after 600 trials, the task started to feel automatic

Question 23

Varied Mapping

Schneider’s and Shiffrin’s second experiment.

Answer 23

First, the participants were asked to complete the same as in the first experiment.

1. Give a target P
2. Find target in 20 fast frames
3. Give as new target the distractor T
4. Find the new target in 20 fast frames

Question 24

Results of varied mapping

Answer 24

Participants did worse in varied mapping and it took them longer to do well.

The task was so hard that it required controlled processes

Question 25

Controlled processes vs automatic processes

Answer 25

• Controlled processes require more resources whereas automatic processes require less.
• Automatic processes are faster
• Automatic processes might sometimes (rarely) be incorrect

Question 26

Inattentional blindness

Answer 26

Failure to notice a fully visible but unexpected object because attention was engaged in another task.

Question 27

Change detection task

Change blindness

Answer 27

Tell the difference between two pictures that a shown for a very small amount of time and switch between the two.

This task is hard and it often takes a while to find the difference.

Question 28

True or False

We need attention for perception?

Answer 28

True

This is what inattentional blindness and change detection show.

Moreover, it would require too many resources to be paying attention to everything!

Question 29

Overt Attention

Answer 29

• Shifts of attention accompanied by eye movement
• Bottom-up: Physical characteristics
• Top-down: Relationships between the perceiver and the scene

Question 30

Covert Attention

Answer 30

• Shifting attention without moving the eyes
• Attention is like a spotlight

Question 31

True or False

Attention relies on a mix of both location-based and object-based processes

Answer 31

True

Question 32

Unilateral Neglect Syndrome

Answer 32

Patients neglect some side of what they see

Question 33

Feature Integration Theory

Answer 33

1. Detect the different features of an object
2. Put all the features together

Question 34

Treisman’s experiment to prove Feature Integration Theory

Answer 34

1. Participants were shown for a 5th of a second an image containing multiple geometric figures in multiple colours
2. Participants would have enough time to intake the different features but wouldn’t have time to put them together

Question 35

Illusory conjunctions

Answer 35

When two features of two different objects get mixed up.

Question 36

Balint Syndrome

Answer 36

Disorder of feature combining

Question 37

True or False

Attention is very important in social situations

Answer 37

True!

We are even influenced by other people gaze.