Chapter 14 Flashcards
Attention
Selective attention. A state or condition of selective awareness or perceptual receptivity, by which specific stimuli are selected for enhanced processing
Overt attention
Attention in which the focus coincides with sensory orientation
Covert attention
Attention in which the focus can be directed independently of sensory orientation
Cocktail party effect
Selective enhancement of attention in order to filter out distracters
Shadowing
Task in which that participant is asked to focus attention on one ear or the other while stimuli are being presented separately to both ears, and to repeat aloud the material presented to the attended ear
Inattentional blindness
The failure to perceive nonattended stimuli that seem so obvious as to be impossible to miss
Divided-attention task
Task in which the participant is asked to focus attention on two or more stimuli simltaneously
Attentional Spotlight
The shifting of our limited selective attention around the environment to highlight stimuli for enhanced processing
Attentional bottleneck
A filter created by the limits intrinsic to our attentional processes, whose effect is that only the most important stimuli are selected for special processing
Perceptual load
Immediate processing demands presented by a stimulus
Sustained attention task
Task in which a single stimulus source or location must be held in the attentional spotlight for a protracted period
Endogenous attention
“voluntary attention” Voluntar direction of attention toward specific aspects of the environment, in accordance with our interests and goals
Symbolic cuing
Technique for testing endogenous attention which a visual stimulus is presented and participants are asked to respond as soon as the stimulus appears on a screen. Each trial is preceded by a meaningful symbol used as a cue to hint at where the stimulus will appear
Exogenous attention
“reflexive attention” involuntary reorienting of attention toward a specific stimlus source, cued by an unexpected object or event
Peripheral spatial cuing
Technique for testing exogenous attention in which a visual stimulus is preceded by a simple task-irrelevant sensory stimulus either in the location where the stimulus will appear or in an incorrect location.
Inhibition of return
Phenomenon observed in peripheral spatial cuing tasks when the interval between cue and target stimulus is 200 milliseconds or more, in which the detection of stimuli at the former location of the cue is increasingly impaired
Feature search
Search for an item in which the target pops out right away, no matter how many distracters are present, because it possesses a unique attribute
Conjunction search
Search for item that is based on two or more features
Binding problem
Question how brain understands which each individual attributes blend together into a single object, when these different features are processed by different regions of the brain
Temporal resolution
Ability to track changes in the brain that occur very quickly
Spatial resolution
Ability o observe the detailed structure of the brain
Event-related potential (ERP)
“evoked potential” Avg EEG recordings measuring brain responses to repeated presentations of a stimulus. Components of the ERP tend to be reliable because the background noise of te cortex has been averaged out
Consciousness
State of awareness of one’s own existence, thoughts, emotions, and experiences
Default mode network
Circuit of brain regions that is active during quiet introspective thought
Cognitive Impenetrable
Referring to basic neural processing operations that cannot be experienced through introspection–in other words, that are unconscious
Easy problem of consciousness
Understanding how particular patterns of neural activity create specific conscious experiences by reading brain activity directly from people’s brains as they’re having particular experiences
Hard problem of consciousness
Understanding the brain processes that produce people’s subjective experiences of their conscious perceptions-that is, their qualia
Quale
Purely subjective experience of perception
Free Will
Feeling that our conscious self is the author of our actions and decisions
Executive function
Neural and cognitive system that helps develope plans of action and organizes that activities of other high-level processing systems
Neuroeconomics
Study of brain mechanisms at work during economic decisions.
