Chapter 4 Flashcards
Dichotic listening
Participants are presented with two verbal messages simultaneously, typically one to each ear, and are asked to focus on (i.e. to attend to) only one of them. They are then asked to respond to a series of questions about what they heard, most often about the message played to the unattended ear.
Selective attention
Attending to relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information.
Cocktail party phenomenon
The ability to attend to one conversation when many other conversations are going on around you.
Shadowing task
A task in which the subject is exposed to two messages simultaneously and must repeat one of them.
Filter
A hypothetical mechanism that would admit certain messages and block others.
Selective looking
Occurs when we are exposed to two events simultaneously, but attend to only one of them.
Early selection
The hypothesis that attention prevents early perceptual processing of distractors.
Late selection
The hypothesis that we perceive both relevant and irrelevant stimuli, and therefore must actively ignore the irrelevant stimuli in order to focus on the relevant ones.
Stroop task
A naming task in which colour names are printed in colours other than the colours they name.
Controlled vs automatic processes
Processes that demand attention if we are to carry them out properly versus processes that operate without requiring us to pay attention to them.
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)
An area of the brain that may exert a top-down bias that favours the selection of task-relevant information. Near the top of the cortex.
Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)
An area of the brain that may detect conflicting response tendencies of the sort that the Stroop task elicits. Near the front of the brain.
Spatial attention
The process of selecting visual information for conscious awareness in specific regions of space.
Spotlight metaphor
The idea that spatial attention is like a spotlight that we shine on an objet when we select it for more complex and conscious processing.
Endogenous shifts
Voluntary movements of attention.
Exogenous shifts
Involuntary movements of attention triggered by external stimuli.
Attention capture
The diversion of attention by a stimulus so powerful that it compels us to notice it even when our attention is focused on something else.
Peripheral cueing paradigm
A test in which a light (i.e., the cue) flashes in the periphery and is followed by a target either in the same (cued) location or a different (uncued) one.
Catch trials
Trials of a detection task in which a target is not presented, to keep the subject on their toes and see if they are focused or not.
Cueing effect
Faster responses on cued compared to uncued trials in the cueing task.
Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)
The time difference between the onset of one stimulus and the onset of a subsequent stimulus.
Inhibition of return (IOR)
Slower responses to cued than to uncued trials in the cueing paradigm.
Central cueing paradigm
An experimental method in which a central cue (e.g. arrow) points to a location in which a target might subsequently appear.
Inattentional blindness
Failure to attend to events that we might be expected to notice (Gorilla in basketball video).
Flanker task
An experiment in which participants may be influenced by an irrelevant stimulus beside the target (picture of Clinton).
Deja vu
The impression that you have already experienced the situation in which you find yourself, accompanied by the sense that this is not actually the case.
Domain-specific modules
The hypothesis that parts of the brain may be specialized for particular tasks, such as recognizing faces.
Capacity model
The hypothesis that attention is like a power supply that can support only a limited amount of attentional activity.
Structural limits
The hypothesis that attentional tasks interfere with one another to the extent that they involve similar activities (looking for an address and turning the music down).
Central bottleneck
The hypothesis that there is only one path along which information can travel, and it is so narrow that the most it can handle at any one time is the information relevant to one task.
Divided attention
The ability to attend to more than one thing at a time.
Mind wandering
A shift of mental resources away from the ask at hand and towards internal thoughts.
Sustained attention to response task (SART)
A continuous response task in which digits (eg. 0-9) are sequentially presented on a computer screen and participants are asked to press a button in response to all but one of them (eg. the infrequent digit 3); response to this infrequent digit is supposed to be withheld.
Commission error
Failure to withhold a response to the infrequent digit in the SART.
Default network
A set of brain areas that are active when an individual does not have a specific task to do and is absorbed in internal thought.
Attentional blink (AB)
Failure to notice the second of two stimuli presented within 550 milliseconds of each other. The AB lessens as time passes.
Action slips
The kind of behavioural errors that often occur in everyday life… eg. milk in the cupboard, etc.
Parallel mental activity
Thinking about something other than the task at hand.
Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP)
The presentation of a series of stimuli in quick succession.
Set
A temporary, top-down organization in the brain that facilitates some responses while inhibiting others in order to achieve a certain goal; also referred to as a mental set.
Task switching
Changing from working on one task to working on another; usually studied in situations in which the switch is involuntary.
Switch cost
The finding that performance declines immediately on switching tasks.
Sustained attention
The act of maintaining attention focused on a single task for a prolonged period of time.
Vigilance
Sustained attention as an externally imposed requirement (meeting at work).
Vigilance decrement
The decline in performance over time in vigilance tasks.
Overload view
The view that performance on vigilance tasks declines over time because such tasks are so demanding.
Resource depletion account
A version of the overload view according to which performance declines over time as attentional resources become depleted.
Underload view
The view that performance on vigilance tasks declines over time because such tasks are not stimulating enough to hold people’s attention.
Embodied
Existing within a body; the term reflects the general view that cognition depends not only on the mind but also on the physical constraints of the body in which the mind exists.
Overt attention
Attending to something with eye movement.
Covert attention
Attending to something without eye movement.
Sequential attention hypothesis
The hypothesis about the relationship between overt and covert attention that posits a tight relationship between the two, whereby covert attention is shifted first and overt eye movement follows.
Saccades
The rapid, jerky movements made as the eye scans an image.
Fixation
Holding the eye relatively still in order to maintain an image on the fovea.
Nystagmus
Small but continuous eye movements during fixation.
Regressions
Right to left movements of the eyes during reading, directing them to previously read text.
Moving window technique
A method of determining how much visual information can be taken in during a fixation, in which the reader is prevented from seeing information beyond a certain distance from the current fixation. We need about 17-20 characters visible.
Entry points
The locations to which we direct our eyes before starting to read a section in a piece of complex material such as a newspaper.
Smooth pursuit movements
Movements of the eye that, because they are not jerky, enable the viewer to maintain fixation on a moving object.
Task-related knowledge
An observer’s knowledge of the goals and the task at hand as it guides the eyes during a visual task.
Quiet eye
Sustained and steady eye gaze prior to an action or behaviour.
Location-suppression hypothesis
A two-stage explanation for the quiet eye phenomenon: in the preparation stage, the quiet eye maximizes information about the target object; then during the location stage, vision is suppressed to optimize the execution of an action or behaviour.
