Attention and Consciousness (Chpt.3)

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

can be defined as a concentration of mental activity that allows you to take in a limited portion of the vast stream of information available from both your sensory world and your memory

Question 2

Divided Attention task

Answer 2

You try to pay attention to two or more simultaneous messages, responding appropriately to each message

Question 3

Selective-Attention Task

Answer 3

Requires people to pay attention to certain kinds of information, while ignoring other ongoing information

Question 4

Dichotic Listening

Answer 4

is studied by asking people to wear earphones; one message is presented to the left ear and a different message is presented to the right ear

saying something directly afterwards this is called shadowing

Question 5

Cocktail party effect

Answer 5

paying close attention to one conversation you may notice if your name is mentioned in a nearby conversation this phenomenon is called cocktail party effect

Question 6

Working memory

Answer 6

is the brief, immediate memory for material that we are currently processing

Question 7

Stroop effect

Answer 7

state ink color of the word

people take a long time to name the ink color when that color is used in printing an incongruent word. In contrast, they can quickly name that same ink color when it appears as a solid patch of color

Question 8

Emotional Stroop task

Answer 8

People are instructed to name the ink color of words that could have strong emotional significance to them.

Question 9

Cognitive behavioral approach

Answer 9

psychological problems arise from inappropriate thinking (cognitive factors) and inappropriate learning (behavioral problems)

Question 10

Executive Attention Network

Answer 10

Responsible for the kind of attention we use when a task forces on conflict. The executive attention network inhibits your automatic responses to stimuli The executive attention network is primarily involved during top-down control of attention

Question 11

Visual Search

Answer 11

the observer must find a target in a visual display that has numerous distractors

Question 12

The isolated-feature/combined feature effect

Answer 12

if the target differed from the irrelevant terms in the display with respect to a simple feature such as color, observers could quickly detect the target. People can typically locate a isolated feature more quickly than a combined feature.

Question 13

The feature-present/feature absent effect

Answer 13

cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information in this case positive means that a feature is present, whereas “negative” meant hat a feature is missing. Can typically locate a feature that is present more quickly than a feature is missing. “pop-out” effect is automatic and researchers emphasize that locating the target is strictly a bottom up process.

Question 14

Saccadic eye movement

Answer 14

during reading is to bring the center of your retina into position over the words you want to read. A very small region in the center of the retina, known as the fovea has better acuity than other retinal regions

Question 15

Fixation

Answer 15

your visual system pauses briefly in order to acquire information that is useful for comprehending the written test

Question 16

Perceptual Span

Answer 16

refers to the number of letters and spaces that we perceive during a fixation

Question 17

Parafoveal preview

Answer 17

refers to the fact that readers can access information about upcoming words even though they are currently fixated on a word to the left (in english) of those words

Question 18

Regressions

Answer 18

by moving their eyes backward to earlier material in the sentence

Question 19

Orienting attention network

Answer 19

is generally responsible for the kind of attention required for visual search which you must shift your attention around various spatial locations

Question 20

Unilateral spatial neglect

Answer 20

when a person ignores part of his or her visual field

Question 21

Bottleneck Theories

Answer 21

proposed a similar narrow passageway in human information processing. In other words, this bottleneck limits the quantity of information to which we can pay attention

Question 22

Feature-integration theory

Answer 22

we sometimes look at a scene using distracted attention and we process all parts of the scene at the same time

Question 23

Distributed attention

Answer 23

allows you to register features automatically you use parallel processing across the field and you register all the features simultaneously.

distributed attention vs focused attention automatic vs controlled

Question 24

Focused attention

Answer 24

requires slower serial processing and you identify one object at a time. Searching for two or more features requires focused attention

Question 25

Illusory Conjuction

Answer 25

is an inappropriate combination of features, perhaps combining one object’s shape with a nearby object’s color

Question 26

Conciousness

Answer 26

means the awareness that people have about the outside world and about their perceptions, images, thoughts, memories, and feelings

consciousness is not easy to test the texture of conscious sensation

Question 27

Thought Supression

Answer 27

They try to eliminate the thoughts, ideas, and images that are relaxed to an undesirable stimulus

Question 28

Ironic effects of mental control

Answer 28

to describe how our efforts can backfire when we attempt to control the contents of our conciousness

Question 29

Blindsight

Answer 29

is a condition in which a individual which a damaged visual cortex claims not to see an object ; however, he or she can accurately report some characteristics of that objects such as its location.

Question 30

Surface features vs. semantics

Answer 30

People sometimes follow a coherent message we cannot always select on the basis of surface features. People sometimes process the meanings of unattended words. Attention is not required for all processing

Question 31

Posterior attentional network

Answer 31

attention to objects could be damages to the right is much more likely “unilateral effect” left side is neglected

Question 32

Controlled vs. Automatic processing

Answer 32

Letters and numbers there is a difference