Chapter 3 Flashcards
Capture
The ability of one source of information to take processing priority from another. For example the sudden onset of novel information within a modality such as an apple falling may interrupt ongoing attentional processing.
Selection for perception
The type of attention
necessary for encoding
and interpreting
sensory data.
Selection for action
The type of attention necessary for planning controlling and executing responses, or actions.
What are two possible functions of selectivity in visual attention according to Schneider and Deubel (2002)?
Selection for perception and selection for action
Binding problem
The problem of how different properties of an item are correctly put together, or bound, into the correct combination.
in order to correctly combine what something is with
where it is, these two sources of information must be correctly linked
together. For example, if there is a red colour in the shape of a circle
on the left, and a green colour in the shape of a square on the right, the
colour, shape and position of each property must be correctly bound
together. What is this problem called?
Binding problem
Attention processing that is under conscious, intentional control. It requires attentional resources, or capacity, and is subject to interference.
Controlled attention/ executive control (top-down)
Attention that
is controlled by
the intention of a
participant.
Endogenous attention, happens while controlled attention
Attention that is drawn automatically to a stimulus without the intention of the participant.
Exogenous attention,
stimulus-driven, bottom-up, automatic processing
Processing by exogenous attention cannot be ignored.
Stroop effect
The effect of a well- learned response to a stimulus slowing the ability to make the less-well-learned response; for example, naming the ink colour of a colour word.
Slips of action
Errors in carrying out sequences of actions, e.g. where a step in the sequence is omitted, or an appropriate action is made, but to the wrong object.
Psychological refractory period
The time delay between the responses to two overlapping signals that reflects the time required for the first response to be organised before the response to the second signal can be organised.
Bottleneck
The point in
processing where
parallel processing
becomes serial.
What is a central cognitive process in the bottleneck processing hypothesis?
they occur after early perceptual processing but before later response selection and can not happen parallel to other CCPs
What did Cherry’s shadowing with dichotic listening tasks revealed about attention?
When listening to two different messages per ear (left-right) and concentrating on one of these messages, people could not recognize the meaning of the other message (meaning/semantics was not processed), but they recognize change from male to female voices and detect a bleep (perceptual properties are processed)
dichotic listening tasks
presenting two different messages at
once over headphones, one message to the left ear and the other mes-
sage to the right ear.
shadowing
Used in a dichotic listening task in which participants must repeat aloud the to- be-attended message and ignore the other message.
Broadbent’s “filtermodel”
The first complete conceptualisation of the flow of information processing from input to response. assumes the existence of a selective filter between the perceptual input system and a limited capacity channel (which can only process serially). As stimuli can only be transferred one at a time from the parallel input to the serial stage this causes a bottleneck in processing.
Early selection
Selective attention that operates on the physical information available from early perceptual analysis.
Breakthrough (effect)
The ability of information to capture conscious awareness despite being unattended. Usually used with respect to the unattended channel in dichotic listening experiments.
Late selection
An account of selective processing where attention operates after all stimuli have been analysed for their semantic properties. Bottleneck in processing is at the point of response selection, where only the most important signals switch in other processes such as memory storage or motor output.
What compromise between early and late selection did Treisman proposed?
Rather than the filter being an ‘all or none’ mechanism, she suggested
that it acted as an attenuator, turning down the activation for the unat-
tended message rather than completely blocking it. This meant that
familiar or important words (such as a person’s name), or words that
followed on in a story, could break through the filter because their activation levels are higher.
Galvanic skin
response
A measurable change in the electrical conductivity of the skin when emotionally significant stimuli are presented. Often used to detect the unconscious processing of stimuli.
Masking
The disruptive effect of an auditory or visual pattern that is presented immediately after an auditory or visual stimulus. This is backward masking, but there are other types of masking.
