Attention and Memory Flashcards
Attention
- Alertness arousal
- Refers to our conscious ability to attend to the information that is relevant to our goals
Selection (William James)
- 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
Irrelevant information
- Acts as “noise” that makes it difficult to attend to important information
- When irrelevant information overwhelms us, we get distracted
Automatic Processes
Involuntarily capturing attention through being triggered by external events; fast, efficient, obligatory
Controlled Processes
Voluntary, conscious attention to objects of interest; slow, effortful (ex. when driving)
Salient Information
- Found in automatic processes
- Information that captures our attention automatically, intentionally or not
The Spotlight Model
- Attentional “spotlight” focusses on one part of the environment at a time
- Michael Posner
Cuing Paradigms
- 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
Single Filter Model
- 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
Dual Filter Model
- 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
Breakthrough Effect
participants remember unattended information, especially when it is highly relevant (ex. name)
The Stroop Task
Requires you to focus your attention on ink-colour (relevant to task), while ignoring the word itself (irrelevant task)
Set Size
The number of items to search through
Set Size Effect
Increase in difficulty as set size increases
Single-Feature Search Task
Looking for only one particular feature to identify the target
Pop-Out Effect
Single feature; object of a visual search is easily found, regardless of size; ex. colour
Conjunctive Search Task
Identifying a target defined by 2+ features
Contextual Cuing
Helps to search more efficiently; gained through knowledge of our environment
Vigilance
Ability to maintain attention
Change Blindness
Even with directed focus, attention limits lead us to miss information
Bottom-Up Processing
external environment; facts, surroundings…
Top-Down Processing
internal thoughts; bias, ideas…
Hemispatial Neglect
- Paying attention to only half the world; affects reality, memories…
- Damage to the right parietal lobe
Multi-Store Model
- Proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin
- Memory is composed of short and long term storage systems
Short-Term Memory Buffer
Available for a short period of time; not stored permanently; information can be transferred to long term memory through rehearsal
George Miller
- Short Term Memory Capacity – 7 ± 2 items.
- Organizing items into meaningful chunks expands the capacity of short-term memory
Forgetting Curve
Describes the rapidly decreasing rate of recall over time (losing memories as time goes on)
Serial Position Curve
Performance often best for items presented earlier or later in list and worst for items presented in middle of list
Primacy Effect
- Memory good for items encoded early in the list
- Beginning of the list - first to enter short term memory -most opportunity to be rehearsed
Recall Effect
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
Improving Primacy
Manipulating the presentation time of the items will affect the Primacy effect
Encoding Specificity
Memory encodes all aspects of an experience
- properties of room
- chair you sat on
- font of words on test
Attribution
Judgement that ties together cause with effect
Encoding Phase
Subject learns list of items, words or pictures
Retrieval Phase
Subjects tested for their memory of the items presented during the encoding phase
Recall Test
Subject asked to freely generate as many items as they can remember
Recognition Test
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
Manipulation in Recency Effect
Performing a distracting task diminishes the recency effect
Processing Model
- 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
Elizabeth Loftus
False memory:
- Vivid memories of events that did not occur
- Can be implanted by suggestion
Seamon and Colleagues
- 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
Fluency
The ease with which an experience is processed, some experiences are easier (more fluent) than others
Data Vs. Memory
Data - stored and retrieved data is identical to inputted information
Memory - include personal details and interpretations - memories can be altered or lost - reconstructed
