Attention

Question 1

limited capacity

Answer 1

humans have limited mental resources that can be used at a given time

Question 2

divided attention

Answer 2

ability to flexibly allocate attentional resources btw 2 or more concurrent tasks

Question 3

sustained attention

Answer 3

ability to focus for a long time

Question 4

spacial attention

Answer 4

how we focus on one part of our environment & how we move attention to other locations in the environment

Question 5

selective attention

Answer 5

ability to select certain stimuli to process while ignoring distracting information

Question 6

dichotic listening

Answer 6

experimental task where 2 messages are presented to different ears

Question 7

shadowing

Answer 7

task in which an individual is asked to repeat an auditory message as it is presented

Question 8

Broadbent’s filter model

Answer 8

based on dichotic listening tasks

result: people select info based on physical features (ear, pitch of voice, colour/font on visual message)
* people aware of physical features of unattended information, but had no knowledge of meaning
* therefore, selection very early, with no additional processing for unselected info

Question 9

Treisman’s attenuation model

Answer 9

Anne trainman - carried out dichotic listening experiments

results: switched stories from ear to ear
- individuals followed the story when shifted from right to left ear
- suggests we monitor unattended info
- selection starts at physical/perceptual level

Question 10

late selection model

Answer 10

Deutsch & Deutsch - suggest all info in the unattended ear is processed on the basis of meaning, not just the selected or highly pertinent information

• only relevant info for task gets into conscious awareness
• don’t need to be aware of or attending a message for it to be fully processed for meaning

Question 11

multimode model

Answer 11

suggests that the stage at which selection occurs can change depending on the task
Johnson & Heinz - demonstrated that under some conditions, we can select what to attend to at a very early stage

Question 12

subliminal perception

Answer 12

stimuli presented below the threshold for awareness can influence thoughts, feelings, or actions
ex: movies & ads can subconsciously affect what you buy

Question 13

divided attention tasks

Answer 13

performing 2 tasks simultaneously

• done more poorly when done at same time
  ex: reading book while watching TV
• texting while driving

Question 14

texting & driving

Answer 14

eyes and hands off road, but also cognitive demands on our limited capacity system can impair driving

Question 15

cell phone conversations

Answer 15

can produce in-attentional blindness or lack of awareness of what is right before your eyes
2% of population can truly perform cognitive tasks without impaired driving