Chapter 3

Question 1

What are the features of attention?

Answer 1

Limited capacity
Flexibility (switch from one thing to another)
Voluntary control

Question 1

What is attention?

Answer 1

Concentration of mental effort on sensory or mental events

Question 2

What is pre-attentive processing?

Answer 2

occurs before the focus of attention is Brought to a stimulus

Question 3

What does pre-attentive processing not require?

Answer 3

Attention

Question 4

What is post-attentive processing?

Answer 4

Occurs once attention has been focused on a stimulus

Ex: counting

Question 5

What is the pop-out effect?

Answer 5

a visual phenomenon where a target stands out from a set of distractors due to a unique feature

Question 6

What is goal driven attention?

Answer 6

Observer has a goal in mind and guides the attentional process in the service of that goal

Question 7

What is space-based attention?

Answer 7

Attention focused on a region of space

Spotlight metaphor

Question 8

What are visual search tasks?

Answer 8

Tasks in which participants have to report if a target stimulus is present or absent

Question 9

What is conjunction search?

Answer 9

Target differs from distractors by combination of features that are individually present among distractors

Question 10

What does the red-orange change suggest?

Answer 10

Pre-attentive

Question 11

What does the orange-red change suggest?

Answer 11

Post-attentive

Question 12

What is feature-present theory (pre-attentive)?

Answer 12

Moving within stationary objects

Question 13

What is the feature absent theory?

Answer 13

Post-attentive
Stationary within moving objects

Question 14

What is guided search?

Answer 14

Wolfe
Emphasizes the role of pre-attentive and post-attentive processes in guiding later stages of visual attention

Question 15

What is search for multiple targets?

Answer 15

Searching for multiple targets leads to poorer performance than a search for a single target

Ex: airport TSA looking through luggage

Question 16

What is attentional blink?

Answer 16

Period of time after the detection of a visual stimulus during which another stimulus cannot be detected

Question 17

What is Rapid Serial Visual presentation?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 18

failure to notice an obvious but unexpected object because attention is engaged in some other task

Question 19

What is selective attention?

Answer 19

the ability to attend to one source of information while ignoring other ongoing stimuli around us

Question 20

What are selective attention tasks?

Answer 20

tasks in which some information must be processed and some must be ignored

Question 21

What are visual search tasks?

Answer 21

tasks in which participants must report if a target stimulus is present or absent

Question 22

What is conjunction search?

Answer 22

target differs from distractors by combination of features that are individually present among distractors

Question 23

What are early selection theories?

Answer 23

We “select” what moves on for further processing in the initial stages of taking information in from the environment

Question 24

What are problems in early selection theories?

Answer 24

Cocktail party phenomenon

Question 25

What are late selection theories?

Answer 25

All incoming information is recognized but only the selected piece of information emerges into conscious awareness

Question 26

What is load theory?

Answer 26

Processing of task-irrelevant information depends on demands of the main attentional task

Question 27

What are the assumptions of load theory?

Answer 27

Perception has limited capacity

Perceptual processing automatically registers all input that can be managed by this limited capacity

Question 28

What is divided attention?

Answer 28

processing of and responding to multiple inputs

Question 29

What is dual task interference?

Answer 29

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

Question 30

What is the bottleneck approach?

Answer 30

idea that there is only one path through which information relevant to only one task at a time can pass

Question 31

What is the capacity theory?

Answer 31

theory of attention positing limited-capacity pool of attentional resources that is allocated to different tasks

Question 32

What is automatic processing?

Answer 32

the ability to perform a task with little or no attention

Question 33

What does automatic processing develop because of?

Answer 33

extensive practice

Ex: driving a car

Question 34

What are the characteristics of automatic processing?

Answer 34

occurs without intention

less conscious control

attentional efficiency

Question 35

What are the advantages of automatic processing?

Answer 35

multitasking

tasks can be performed more quickly and efficiently

Question 36

What are the disadvantages of automatic processing?

Answer 36

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

Question 37

What is feature attention?

Answer 37

Attention is focused on particular objects (EX: a squirrel pops up in classroom)