Chapter 15: Attention (lecture only)

Question 1

What is endogenous attention? Provide an example

Answer 1

top down attention, internal cognition; for example attending to a desk to look for your wallet

Question 2

What is exogenous attention? Provide an example

Answer 2

bottom up attention or attention to external stimuli; for example looking at a table because your dog pulled something off it

Question 3

What is the difference between covert and overt attention?

Answer 3

covert = no shift in eyes
overt = shift in eyes

Question 4

What interval does change blindness occur in? Why?

Answer 4

0.1s because memory is required and without memory being used it is noticed immediately

Question 5

What part of the brain is damaged in hemi-neglect cases? What happens?

Answer 5

superior parietal damage; you ignore whole halves of your visual field

Question 6

What is the concept of extinction in relation to hemi-neglect?

Answer 6

if something is competing in one half you ignore the other

Question 7

What is Simultagnosia? What is it caused by?

Answer 7

difficult attending to more than one object at a time which leads to an inability to see a scene but not describe all of it’s components at once; dorsal damage

Question 8

What do Alpha oscillations impair? What is unique about the impairment in relation to the waves?

Answer 8

awareness/attention; it is a pulsed inhibition and it depends how large the waves are

Question 9

What is the cocktail party phenomenon?

Answer 9

the ability for humans to block out unnecessary stimuli but still attend to them unconsciously for important stimuli (ie. your name)