Chapter 3 Flashcards
What are the features of attention?
Limited capacity
Flexibility (switch from one thing to another)
Voluntary control
What is attention?
Concentration of mental effort on sensory or mental events
What is pre-attentive processing?
occurs before the focus of attention is Brought to a stimulus
What does pre-attentive processing not require?
Attention
What is post-attentive processing?
Occurs once attention has been focused on a stimulus
Ex: counting
What is the pop-out effect?
a visual phenomenon where a target stands out from a set of distractors due to a unique feature
What is goal driven attention?
Observer has a goal in mind and guides the attentional process in the service of that goal
What is space-based attention?
Attention focused on a region of space
Spotlight metaphor
What are visual search tasks?
Tasks in which participants have to report if a target stimulus is present or absent
What is conjunction search?
Target differs from distractors by combination of features that are individually present among distractors
What does the red-orange change suggest?
Pre-attentive
What does the orange-red change suggest?
Post-attentive
What is feature-present theory (pre-attentive)?
Moving within stationary objects
What is the feature absent theory?
Post-attentive
Stationary within moving objects
What is guided search?
Wolfe
Emphasizes the role of pre-attentive and post-attentive processes in guiding later stages of visual attention
What is search for multiple targets?
Searching for multiple targets leads to poorer performance than a search for a single target
Ex: airport TSA looking through luggage
What is attentional blink?
Period of time after the detection of a visual stimulus during which another stimulus cannot be detected
What is Rapid Serial Visual presentation?
Letter display video trying to see the letter in white
People miss the letter after the white letter because you are paying attention to the white letter and miss the next letter because they are switching their attention from one letter to the next
What is inattentional blindness?
failure to notice an obvious but unexpected object because attention is engaged in some other task
What is selective attention?
the ability to attend to one source of information while ignoring other ongoing stimuli around us
What are selective attention tasks?
tasks in which some information must be processed and some must be ignored
What are visual search tasks?
tasks in which participants must report if a target stimulus is present or absent
What is conjunction search?
target differs from distractors by combination of features that are individually present among distractors
What are early selection theories?
We “select” what moves on for further processing in the initial stages of taking information in from the environment
What are problems in early selection theories?
Cocktail party phenomenon
What are late selection theories?
All incoming information is recognized but only the selected piece of information emerges into conscious awareness
What is load theory?
Processing of task-irrelevant information depends on demands of the main attentional task
What are the assumptions of load theory?
Perception has limited capacity
Perceptual processing automatically registers all input that can be managed by this limited capacity
What is divided attention?
processing of and responding to multiple inputs
What is dual task interference?
We are not really understanding the multiple inputs coming at us, either we are missing both or we are flipping from one to the other
What is the bottleneck approach?
idea that there is only one path through which information relevant to only one task at a time can pass
What is the capacity theory?
theory of attention positing limited-capacity pool of attentional resources that is allocated to different tasks
What is automatic processing?
the ability to perform a task with little or no attention
What does automatic processing develop because of?
extensive practice
Ex: driving a car
What are the characteristics of automatic processing?
occurs without intention
less conscious control
attentional efficiency
What are the advantages of automatic processing?
multitasking
tasks can be performed more quickly and efficiently
What are the disadvantages of automatic processing?
automatic processes tend to be hard to abort or modify
absent minded mistakes
action slips
the actions are correct but done at the incorrect time
What is feature attention?
Attention is focused on particular objects (EX: a squirrel pops up in classroom)
