attention

Question 1

Describe a study demonstrating unintentional blindness

Answer 1

Participants run after a confederate around a university campus. They run past 3 other confederates fighting. At night 35% saw the fight and 72% in the day. If participants were asked to count how many times the confederate in front touched his head 56% saw the fight.

Question 2

Describe Broadbent’s model of attention

Answer 2

Both attended and unattended go to the sensory buffer store. The selective filter select the attended one to focus on. Higher level processes extracts meaning and this enters into the working memory

Question 3

Whats the capacity of sensory buffer store

Answer 3

Unlimited

Question 4

Whats shadow tasking

Answer 4

A different auditory stimulus is played in each ear. Participants report information from one ear only.

Question 5

Whats Treisman’s attenuation theory of attention

Answer 5

Both attended and unattended enter the sensory store. All attended and some unattended are passed to dictionary unit. Inputs are given a threshold and low thresholds are more likely to capture your attention

Question 6

Whats the cocktail party effect

Answer 6

When the brain focuses on one piece of information while filtering out out pieces of information

Question 7

What is the attentional spotlight theory

Answer 7

Our attention is like a spotlight which we can move around and use to focus all our attention on. We are slower to focus on things outside out spotlight

Question 8

What are the features of an endogenous cue x6

Answer 8

1. ) Symbolic of a target location
2. ) Indicated where a target may appear
3. ) Can voluntarily follow the cue
4. ) Slow response
5. ) Driven by internal goals
6. ) Often centrally presented in our vision

Question 9

What are the features of an exogenous cue x5

Answer 9

1. ) Automatically captures attention
2. ) Appears in the location of a target
3. ) Rapid response
4. ) Driven by external events in the environment
5. ) Peripherally presented in our vision

Question 10

Whats an endogenous cueing task

Answer 10

An endogenous cue shifts our attention in the direction the arrow is pointing. A cue appears. We are faster to find the cue when the arrow is pointing towards it as our attention have shifts

Question 11

Whats an exogenous cueing task

Answer 11

A exogenous cue in the form of a flash directs participants attention. We are quicker to locate cue when the flash appears in the same place as our attention is there

Question 12

Whats inhibition of return

Answer 12

If there’s a long delay between the exogenous flash and cue our attention shifts away and we take longer to find the cue as we shift our attention to a different location

Question 13

What is feature integration theory

Answer 13

When you break did the separate features of a scene into smaller components based on physical characteristics. Attention combines the features to create a scene

Question 14

What are the 3 visual search tasks

Answer 14

1. ) parallel search task - based on one feature. Reaction times remain the same no matter how many items are displayed (the letter ‘a’)
2. ) conjunction search - searching for more than one feature. Reaction times slow when more items added (red letterboxing ‘a’)
3. ) Pop-out effect - faster to detect a object if its features are different from other items

Question 15

What’s local processing

Answer 15

Fine, small details. Narrow attentional spotlight

Question 16

What’s global processing

Answer 16

Large scale, big picture. Broadens attentional spotlight

Question 17

What’s the navon task

Answer 17

Participants shown a large letter comprised of smaller letters. Asked to identify the large letter (global processing) and then the smaller letters ( local processing)

Question 18

Whats a consistent representation

Answer 18

When a stimulus and response match up (turn left is presented in the left ear)

Question 19

Whats an inconsistent representation

Answer 19

When a stimulus ands response don’t match (turn left is presented in the right ear)

Question 20

Whats the Simon effect

Answer 20

Subjects are asked to press a arrow key in the direction they saw a stimulus. They are faster when the target is on the same side as the stimuli.

Question 21

Whats a stroop task

Answer 21

Coloured words are shown but the colour doesn’t match what the words say. We ae asked what colour the word is. We find this hard as we automatically read the word rather than say the colours so we have to suppress our automatic tendency

Question 22

What is the path of light through the eye

Answer 22

1. ) Cornea
2. ) pupil
3. ) refracted to the lens
4. ) lens muscles allow it to focus the light to the…
5. ) retina where the image is flipped and then travels down optic nerve

Question 23

What do rod cells do

Answer 23

Low level vision in black and white. See vision in dim light with a low spacial resolution

Question 24

What do cone cells do

Answer 24

High level vision in colour. See vision in bright light with a high spacial resolution

Question 25

What is the fovea

Answer 25

Area on the retina with the highest visual acuity due to lots of cone cells.

Question 26

Whats overt attention

Answer 26

Attention to information being looked at with eye movements

Question 27

Whats covert attention

Answer 27

Attention not associated with eye movements

Question 28

How do eye trackers work

Answer 28

Infrared light is beamed into the participants eyes and hits the cornea. Its reflected off the cornea. The eye tracker locks onto the reflection and follows the beams of light as the eye moves the cornea moves and the eye tracker follows it

Question 29

Whats a fixation

Answer 29

Where our eyes stop to focus

Question 30

Whats a saccade

Answer 30

A rapid jerky eye movement

Question 31

How do eye trackers help us to understand cognition

Answer 31

It shows wha we focus our attention to and therefore what features are important to us