Attention. Week 4

Question 1

Theoretical brain mechanism which holds information while we process it.

Answer 1

The sensory store

Question 2

Focusing on specific features, objects, or locations or on certain thoughts or activities.

Answer 2

Attention

Question 3

The ability to focus on one message and ignore all others.

Answer 3

selective attention

Question 4

Occurs when one stimulus interferes with attention to or the processing of another stimulus

Answer 4

distraction

Question 5

The ability to pay attention to, or carry out, two or more different tasks simultaneously.

Answer 5

divided attention

Question 6

A rapid shifting of attention, usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement.

Answer 6

attentional capture

Question 7

Movement of the eyes from one location or object to another.

Answer 7

visual scanning

Question 8

whos definition of attention:
Millions of items … are present to my senses which never properly enter my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. … Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. … It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.

Answer 8

William James’s (1890)

Question 9

Modern research on attention began in the 1950s with the introduction of Broadbent’s filter model of attention.

Answer 9

True

Question 10

Model of attention that proposes a filter that lets attended stimuli through and blocks some or all of the unattended stimuli.

Answer 10

Broadbent’s filter model of attention

Question 11

The procedure of presenting one message to the left ear and a different message to the right ear.

Answer 11

dichotic listening

Question 12

Colin Cherry (1953 studied attention using a technique called ____

Answer 12

dichotic listening,

Question 13

The procedure of repeating a message out loud as it is heard. Shadowing is commonly used in conjunction with studies of selective attention that use the dichotic listening procedure.

Answer 13

shadowing

Question 14

The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli, especially at a party where there are a lot of simultaneous conversations.

Answer 14

cocktail party effect

Question 15

In Broadbent’s model of attention, the filter identifies the message that is being attended to based on its physical characteristics—things like the speaker’s tone of voice, pitch, speed of talking, and accent—and lets only this attended message pass through to the detector in the next stage.

Answer 15

filter

Question 16

In Broadbent’s model of attention, the detector processes the information from the attended message to determine higher-level characteristics of the message, such as its meaning.

Answer 16

detector

Question 17

Model of attention that explains selective attention by early filtering out of the unattended message. In Broadbent’s early selection model, the filtering step occurs before the message is analyzed to determine its meaning.

Answer 17

early selection model

Question 18

In Treisman’s model of selective attention, the attenuator analyzes the incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning. Attended messages pass through the attenuator at full strength, and unattended messages pass through with reduced strength.

Answer 18

attenuator

Question 19

Anne Treisman’s model of selective attention that proposes that selection occurs in two stages. In the first stage, an attenuator analyzes the incoming message and lets through the attended message—and also the unattended message, but at a lower (attenuated) strength.

Answer 19

attenuation model of attention

Question 20

A component of Treisman’s attenuation model of attention. This processing unit contains stored words and thresholds for activating the words. The dictionary unit helps explain why we can sometimes hear a familiar word, such as our name, in an unattended message.

Answer 20

dictionary unit

Question 21

According to Treisman, words that are common or especially important, such as the listener’s name, have _____

Answer 21

low thresholds

Question 22

Uncommon words or words that are unimportant to the listener have ____

Answer 22

higher thresholds

Question 23

Treisman’s is called an ____ because it proposes a filter that operates at an early stage in the flow of information.

Answer 23

early selection model

Question 24

A model of selective attention that proposes that selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after the information in the message has been analyzed for meaning.

Answer 24

late selection models of attention

Question 25

The amount of information input that a person can handle. This sets a limit on the person’s ability to process information.

Answer 25

processing capacity

Question 26

Related to the difficulty of a task. Low-load tasks use only a small amount of a person’s processing capacity. High-load tasks use more of the processing capacity.

Answer 26

perceptual load

Question 27

A task that uses few resources, leaving some capacity to handle other tasks.

Answer 27

low-load tasks

Question 28

Proposal that the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on the load of the task the person is carrying out. High-load tasks result in less distraction.

Answer 28

load theory of attention

Question 29

An effect originally studied by J. R. Stroop, using a task in which a person is instructed to respond to one aspect of a stimulus, such as the color of ink that a word is printed in, and ignore another aspect, such as the color that the word names. The Stroop effect refers to the fact that people find this task difficult when, for example, the word RED is printed in blue ink.

Answer 29

Stroop effect

Question 30

Scanning is necessary because good ____ occurs only for things you are looking at directly.

Answer 30

detail vision

Question 31

the area you are looking at.

Answer 31

Central vision

Question 32

everything off to the side.

Answer 32

Peripheral vision

Question 33

Because of the way the retina is constructed, objects in central vision fall on a small area called the ___, which has much better detail vision than the peripheral retina, on which the rest of the scene falls

Answer 33

fovea

Question 34

In perception and attention, a pausing of the eyes on places of interest while observing a scene.

Answer 34

fixation

Question 35

when you are freely viewing an object or scene without searching for anything in particular, you move your eyes about three times per second.

Answer 35

true

Question 36

Shifting of attention by moving the eyes. Contrasts with Covert attention.

Answer 36

overt attention

Question 37

based primarily on physical characteristics of the stimulus

Answer 37

bottom up

Question 38

based on cognitive factors such as the observer’s knowledge about scenes and past experiences with specific stimuli.

Answer 38

top down

Question 39

Bottom-up factors that determine attention to elements of a scene. Examples are color, contrast, and orientation. The meaningfulness of the images, which is a top-down factor, does not contribute to stimulus salience. See also Saliency map.

Answer 39

stimulus salience

Question 40

Map of a scene that indicates the stimulus salience of areas and objects in the scene.

Answer 40

saliency map

Question 41

Occurs when attention is shifted without moving the eyes, commonly referred to as seeing something “out of the corner of one’s eye.” Contrasts with Overt attention.

Answer 41

covert attention

Question 42

A procedure in which participants are given a cue that will usually help them carry out a subsequent task. This procedure has been used in visual attention experiments in which participants are presented with a cue that tells them where to direct their attention.

Answer 42

precueing

Question 43

Occurs when the enhancing effect of attention spreads throughout an object, so that attention to one place on an object results in a facilitation of processing at other places on the object.

Answer 43

same-object advantage

Question 44

attention directed to a specific location results in enhanced activity at one place in the cortex.

Answer 44

ture

Question 45

Occurs when the map of categories on the brain changes to make more space for categories that are being searched for as a person attends to a scene.

Answer 45

attentional warping