Attention

Question 1

Define Attention

Answer 1

• The ability to focus and concentrate on a topic
• How we’re allocating our processing resources to the stimuli in our environment
• Suggests we have some limited amount of processing resources

Question 2

Define Processing, and what are the 2 types.

Answer 2

Utilizing cognitive resources to interpret data presented. 1) Controlled processing 2) Automatic processing

Question 3

Controlled Processing

Answer 3

Processing that requires conscious effort -ie) learning a new skill such as musical instrument or language (requires much focus / attention) -with practice, eventually becomes automatic processing

Question 4

Automatic Processing

Answer 4

Tasks you’ve already learned well have become easier and require less attention -ie) Driving / reading

Question 5

Selective Attention

Answer 5

When you try and “attend” to one task over another -challenging to attend to multiple things at the same time -ie) Stroop Test - an automatic process makes it more difficult to attend to a controlled process

Question 6

Dichotic Listening Task

Answer 6

subject listens to a different sound in each ear and asks subject to “attend” to one over the other -theoretically it’s difficult to attend one thing over another –but, we can draw attention to one ear or the other through cocktail party phenomenon

Question 7

Cocktail Party Phenomenen

Answer 7

Phenomenon where you’re speaking with friends but immediately change attention to another conversation because you heard your name

Question 8

Divided Attention

Answer 8

When you try to attend to 2 stimuli simultaneously and respond to both instead of making a single response to multiple stimuli (called interference) -ie) singing / dancing, talking / walking

Question 9

Shadowing

Answer 9

in cognitive testing, a task in which a participant repeats aloud a message word for word at the same time that the message is being presented, often while other stimuli are presented in the background. It is mainly used in studies of attention.

Question 10

Theories of Attention

Answer 10

1) Bottleneck Theory 2) Early selection 3) Attenuation Theory 4) Late selection 5) Treisman / Geffen

Question 11

Bottleneck Theory

Answer 11

suggests that individuals have a limited amount of attentional resources that they can use at one time. Therefore, information and stimuli are ‘filtered’ somehow so that only the most salient and important information is perceived. This theory was proposed by Broadbent in 1958.

Question 12

Early Selection Theory

Answer 12

Proposed by Broadbent and Follows up Bottleneck Theory.

• The early selection model of attention posits that stimuli are filtered, or selected to be attended to, at an early stage during processing.
• A filter can be regarded as the selector of relevant information based on basic features

Question 13

Attenuation Theory

Answer 13

Proposed by Treisman and similar to early selection theory but differs in the sense that not all unattended information is forgotten

-Physical characteristics will choose which messages get fully processed, but other parts will get partially processed

Question 14

Late Selection Theory

Answer 14

Theory stating that everything entering sensory memory gets processed, but you can only choose one possible response