Chapter 4

Question 1

Dichotic listening

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Selective attention

Answer 2

Attending to relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information.

Question 3

Cocktail party phenomenon

Answer 3

The ability to attend to one conversation when many other conversations are going on around you.

Question 4

Shadowing task

Answer 4

A task in which the subject is exposed to two messages simultaneously and must repeat one of them.

Question 5

Filter

Answer 5

A hypothetical mechanism that would admit certain messages and block others.

Question 6

Selective looking

Answer 6

Occurs when we are exposed to two events simultaneously, but attend to only one of them.

Question 7

Early selection

Answer 7

The hypothesis that attention prevents early perceptual processing of distractors.

Question 8

Late selection

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

Stroop task

Answer 9

A naming task in which colour names are printed in colours other than the colours they name.

Question 10

Controlled vs automatic processes

Answer 10

Processes that demand attention if we are to carry them out properly versus processes that operate without requiring us to pay attention to them.

Question 11

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

Spatial attention

Answer 13

The process of selecting visual information for conscious awareness in specific regions of space.

Question 14

Spotlight metaphor

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

Endogenous shifts

Answer 15

Voluntary movements of attention.

Question 16

Exogenous shifts

Answer 16

Involuntary movements of attention triggered by external stimuli.

Question 17

Attention capture

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

Peripheral cueing paradigm

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

Catch trials

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

Cueing effect

Answer 20

Faster responses on cued compared to uncued trials in the cueing task.

Question 21

Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)

Answer 21

The time difference between the onset of one stimulus and the onset of a subsequent stimulus.

Question 22

Inhibition of return (IOR)

Answer 22

Slower responses to cued than to uncued trials in the cueing paradigm.

Question 23

Central cueing paradigm

Answer 23

An experimental method in which a central cue (e.g. arrow) points to a location in which a target might subsequently appear.

Question 24

Inattentional blindness

Answer 24

Failure to attend to events that we might be expected to notice (Gorilla in basketball video).

Question 25

Flanker task

Answer 25

An experiment in which participants may be influenced by an irrelevant stimulus beside the target (picture of Clinton).

Question 26

Deja vu

Answer 26

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.

Question 27

Domain-specific modules

Answer 27

The hypothesis that parts of the brain may be specialized for particular tasks, such as recognizing faces.

Question 28

Capacity model

Answer 28

The hypothesis that attention is like a power supply that can support only a limited amount of attentional activity.

Question 29

Structural limits

Answer 29

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).

Question 30

Central bottleneck

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

Divided attention

Answer 31

The ability to attend to more than one thing at a time.

Question 32

Mind wandering

Answer 32

A shift of mental resources away from the ask at hand and towards internal thoughts.

Question 33

Sustained attention to response task (SART)

Answer 33

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.

Question 34

Commission error

Answer 34

Failure to withhold a response to the infrequent digit in the SART.

Question 35

Default network

Answer 35

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.

Question 36

Attentional blink (AB)

Answer 36

Failure to notice the second of two stimuli presented within 550 milliseconds of each other. The AB lessens as time passes.

Question 37

Action slips

Answer 37

The kind of behavioural errors that often occur in everyday life... eg. milk in the cupboard, etc.

Question 38

Parallel mental activity

Answer 38

Thinking about something other than the task at hand.

Question 39

Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP)

Answer 39

The presentation of a series of stimuli in quick succession.

Question 40

Set

Answer 40

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.

Question 41

Task switching

Answer 41

Changing from working on one task to working on another; usually studied in situations in which the switch is involuntary.

Question 42

Switch cost

Answer 42

The finding that performance declines immediately on switching tasks.

Question 43

Sustained attention

Answer 43

The act of maintaining attention focused on a single task for a prolonged period of time.

Question 44

Vigilance

Answer 44

Sustained attention as an externally imposed requirement (meeting at work).

Question 45

Vigilance decrement

Answer 45

The decline in performance over time in vigilance tasks.

Question 46

Overload view

Answer 46

The view that performance on vigilance tasks declines over time because such tasks are so demanding.

Question 47

Resource depletion account

Answer 47

A version of the overload view according to which performance declines over time as attentional resources become depleted.

Question 48

Underload view

Answer 48

The view that performance on vigilance tasks declines over time because such tasks are not stimulating enough to hold people's attention.

Question 49

Embodied

Answer 49

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.

Question 50

Overt attention

Answer 50

Attending to something with eye movement.

Question 51

Covert attention

Answer 51

Attending to something without eye movement.

Question 52

Sequential attention hypothesis

Answer 52

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.

Question 53

Saccades

Answer 53

The rapid, jerky movements made as the eye scans an image.

Question 54

Fixation

Answer 54

Holding the eye relatively still in order to maintain an image on the fovea.

Question 55

Nystagmus

Answer 55

Small but continuous eye movements during fixation.

Question 56

Regressions

Answer 56

Right to left movements of the eyes during reading, directing them to previously read text.

Question 57

Moving window technique

Answer 57

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.

Question 58

Entry points

Answer 58

The locations to which we direct our eyes before starting to read a section in a piece of complex material such as a newspaper.

Question 59

Smooth pursuit movements

Answer 59

Movements of the eye that, because they are not jerky, enable the viewer to maintain fixation on a moving object.

Question 60

Task-related knowledge

Answer 60

An observer's knowledge of the goals and the task at hand as it guides the eyes during a visual task.

Question 61

Quiet eye

Answer 61

Sustained and steady eye gaze prior to an action or behaviour.

Question 62

Location-suppression hypothesis

Answer 62

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.