Chapter 14

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

Selective attention. A state or condition of selective awareness or perceptual receptivity, by which specific stimuli are selected for enhanced processing

Question 2

Overt attention

Answer 2

Attention in which the focus coincides with sensory orientation

Question 3

Covert attention

Answer 3

Attention in which the focus can be directed independently of sensory orientation

Question 4

Cocktail party effect

Answer 4

Selective enhancement of attention in order to filter out distracters

Question 5

Shadowing

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Inattentional blindness

Answer 6

The failure to perceive nonattended stimuli that seem so obvious as to be impossible to miss

Question 7

Divided-attention task

Answer 7

Task in which the participant is asked to focus attention on two or more stimuli simltaneously

Question 8

Attentional Spotlight

Answer 8

The shifting of our limited selective attention around the environment to highlight stimuli for enhanced processing

Question 9

Attentional bottleneck

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Perceptual load

Answer 10

Immediate processing demands presented by a stimulus

Question 11

Sustained attention task

Answer 11

Task in which a single stimulus source or location must be held in the attentional spotlight for a protracted period

Question 12

Endogenous attention

Answer 12

“voluntary attention” Voluntar direction of attention toward specific aspects of the environment, in accordance with our interests and goals

Question 13

Symbolic cuing

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Exogenous attention

Answer 14

“reflexive attention” involuntary reorienting of attention toward a specific stimlus source, cued by an unexpected object or event

Question 15

Peripheral spatial cuing

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

Inhibition of return

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Feature search

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Conjunction search

Answer 18

Search for item that is based on two or more features

Question 19

Binding problem

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Temporal resolution

Answer 20

Ability to track changes in the brain that occur very quickly

Question 21

Spatial resolution

Answer 21

Ability o observe the detailed structure of the brain

Question 22

Event-related potential (ERP)

Answer 22

“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

Question 23

Consciousness

Answer 23

State of awareness of one’s own existence, thoughts, emotions, and experiences

Question 24

Default mode network

Answer 24

Circuit of brain regions that is active during quiet introspective thought

Question 25

Cognitive Impenetrable

Answer 25

Referring to basic neural processing operations that cannot be experienced through introspection–in other words, that are unconscious

Question 26

Easy problem of consciousness

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Hard problem of consciousness

Answer 27

Understanding the brain processes that produce people’s subjective experiences of their conscious perceptions-that is, their qualia

Question 28

Quale

Answer 28

Purely subjective experience of perception

Question 29

Free Will

Answer 29

Feeling that our conscious self is the author of our actions and decisions

Question 30

Executive function

Answer 30

Neural and cognitive system that helps develope plans of action and organizes that activities of other high-level processing systems

Question 31

Neuroeconomics

Answer 31

Study of brain mechanisms at work during economic decisions.