Attention and Memory

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

• Alertness arousal

- Refers to our conscious ability to attend to the information that is relevant to our goals

Question 2

Selection (William James)

Answer 2

• Act of attending to an object to select it apart from the unattended object
• ex. you feel your clothes on your skin when you first put them on but as the day goes on you don’t notice

Question 3

Irrelevant information

Answer 3

• Acts as “noise” that makes it difficult to attend to important information
• When irrelevant information overwhelms us, we get distracted

Question 4

Automatic Processes

Answer 4

Involuntarily capturing attention through being triggered by external events; fast, efficient, obligatory

Question 5

Controlled Processes

Answer 5

Voluntary, conscious attention to objects of interest; slow, effortful (ex. when driving)

Question 6

Salient Information

Answer 6

• Found in automatic processes

- Information that captures our attention automatically, intentionally or not

Question 7

The Spotlight Model

Answer 7

• Attentional “spotlight” focusses on one part of the environment at a time
• Michael Posner

Question 8

Cuing Paradigms

Answer 8

• Test the automatic processes of attention
• Participant determines whether a star appears in the left or right box on a screen
• Box that flashes may not contain the star
• Flashing box automatically attracts the attentional spotlight to the cued location

Question 9

Single Filter Model

Answer 9

• Donald Broadbent
• selects important info based on physical characteristics; allows the info to continue on for further processing
• Infor that doesn’t pass through early physical filter is deemed “unimportant”
• Accepts less info than dual filter model

Question 10

Dual Filter Model

Answer 10

• Two filters: one physical, one semantic.
• Physical – information processed based on physical cues; weighs importance of incoming stimuli against physical cues
• Semantic – information processed based on meaning

Question 11

Breakthrough Effect

Answer 11

participants remember unattended information, especially when it is highly relevant (ex. name)

Question 12

The Stroop Task

Answer 12

Requires you to focus your attention on ink-colour (relevant to task), while ignoring the word itself (irrelevant task)

Question 13

Set Size

Answer 13

The number of items to search through

Question 14

Set Size Effect

Answer 14

Increase in difficulty as set size increases

Question 15

Single-Feature Search Task

Answer 15

Looking for only one particular feature to identify the target

Question 16

Pop-Out Effect

Answer 16

Single feature; object of a visual search is easily found, regardless of size; ex. colour

Question 17

Conjunctive Search Task

Answer 17

Identifying a target defined by 2+ features

Question 18

Contextual Cuing

Answer 18

Helps to search more efficiently; gained through knowledge of our environment

Question 19

Vigilance

Answer 19

Ability to maintain attention

Question 20

Change Blindness

Answer 20

Even with directed focus, attention limits lead us to miss information

Question 21

Bottom-Up Processing

Answer 21

external environment; facts, surroundings…

Question 22

Top-Down Processing

Answer 22

internal thoughts; bias, ideas…

Question 23

Hemispatial Neglect

Answer 23

• Paying attention to only half the world; affects reality, memories…
• Damage to the right parietal lobe

Question 24

Multi-Store Model

Answer 24

• Proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin

- Memory is composed of short and long term storage systems

Question 25

Short-Term Memory Buffer

Answer 25

Available for a short period of time; not stored permanently; information can be transferred to long term memory through rehearsal

Question 26

George Miller

Answer 26

• Short Term Memory Capacity – 7 ± 2 items.

- Organizing items into meaningful chunks expands the capacity of short-term memory

Question 27

Forgetting Curve

Answer 27

Describes the rapidly decreasing rate of recall over time (losing memories as time goes on)

Question 28

Serial Position Curve

Answer 28

Performance often best for items presented earlier or later in list and worst for items presented in middle of list

Question 29

Primacy Effect

Answer 29

• Memory good for items encoded early in the list

- Beginning of the list - first to enter short term memory -most opportunity to be rehearsed

Question 30

Recall Effect

Answer 30

Encoded info first sent to short term memory buffer, therefore most recently read words will be remembered well as they have just entered short term memory buffer

Question 31

Improving Primacy

Answer 31

Manipulating the presentation time of the items will affect the Primacy effect

Question 32

Encoding Specificity

Answer 32

Memory encodes all aspects of an experience

• properties of room
• chair you sat on
• font of words on test

Question 33

Attribution

Answer 33

Judgement that ties together cause with effect

Question 34

Encoding Phase

Answer 34

Subject learns list of items, words or pictures

Question 35

Retrieval Phase

Answer 35

Subjects tested for their memory of the items presented during the encoding phase

Question 36

Recall Test

Answer 36

Subject asked to freely generate as many items as they can remember

Question 37

Recognition Test

Answer 37

Subject shown several items and asked to judge whether each item is “new” meaning it was not previously presented, or “old” meaning it was previously presented

Question 38

Manipulation in Recency Effect

Answer 38

Performing a distracting task diminishes the recency effect

Question 39

Processing Model

Answer 39

• Suggests memory performance depends on the level at which items are encoded
• Item encoded at shallow level require little effort and is often directed at physical characteristics - poor performance

Question 40

Elizabeth Loftus

Answer 40

False memory:

• Vivid memories of events that did not occur
• Can be implanted by suggestion

Question 41

Seamon and Colleagues

Answer 41

• Not only common events occur as fake memories
• Repeatedly imagining an events can lead to a false memory, even for very bizarre situations
• Proves memory is reconstructive process

Question 42

Fluency

Answer 42

The ease with which an experience is processed, some experiences are easier (more fluent) than others

Question 43

Data Vs. Memory

Answer 43

Data - stored and retrieved data is identical to inputted information
Memory - include personal details and interpretations - memories can be altered or lost - reconstructed