CHAPTER 4 - ATTENTION Flashcards

1
Q

what is attention?

A

the mental process of concentrating effort on a location, stimulus, or mental event

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2
Q

what is selective attention?

A

attending to one thing while ignoring others

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3
Q

what is a distraction?

A

one stimulus interfering with the process of another stimulus

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4
Q

what is divided attention?

A

paying attention to more than one thing at a time

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5
Q

what is attentional capture ?

A

the rapid shifting of attention usually caused by a stimulus

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6
Q

what is visual scanning?

A

movement from the eyes from one location to another

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7
Q

what did Colin Cherry discover?

A

that participants could report messages presented to the attended ear but could not report what is being presented to the unattended ear

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8
Q

what technique did Cherry use in his experiments?

A

dichotic listening

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9
Q

how does dichotic listening work?

A

presenting different stimuli to different ears

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10
Q

what was Cherry’s experiment procedure?

A

required participants to focus on one message in one ear and repeat what they heard out loud

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11
Q

participants focusing on one message in one ear and repeating what they heard out loud is called..

A

shadowing

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12
Q

what is the cocktail party effect?

A

the ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli

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13
Q

what are the 4 parts of Broadbent’s Filter Model of Attention?

A

sensory memory
filter
detector
short term memory

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14
Q

what occurs in sensory memory?

A

the holding of all incoming information lasting a fraction of a second before transfer to the filter

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15
Q

what occurs in the filter?

A

identification of the message being attended to based on physical characteristics and only lets the attended message through

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16
Q

what are considered physical characteristics from the filter’s POV

A

speaker’s tone, pitch, speed of talking, and accent

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17
Q

what occurs in the detector?

A

the processing of information from the attended message to determine higher level characteristics

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18
Q

what are the higher level characteristics that the detector determines?

A

its meaning

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19
Q

what occurs in short-term memory?

A

the holding of information for a short time period before transferring it to long-term memory

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20
Q

what kind of model is Broadbent’s Filter Model of Attention

A

early selection model

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21
Q

why is Broadbent’s model considered an early selection model?

A

the filter eliminates the unattended ear’s message near the beginning of information flow

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22
Q

what significant event occurred in Neville Moray’s experiment of dichotic listening?

A

participants were presented their name in the unattended ear’s message

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23
Q

why was the detection of participants’ names in Neville Moray’s experiment significant?

A

does not follow Broadbent’s filter model; the filter is only supposed to let in one message

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24
Q

explain top-down processing in terms of attention and hearing your name

A

attention is going from one ear to another based on the previously known meaning of a word

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25
who modified Broadbent's model?
Anne Treisman
26
how did Anne Treisman modify Broadbent's model?
proposed selection occurs in 2 stages occurring in the placement of the filter portion and replaced it with the attenuator and dictionary unit
27
what are the 3 properties involving the attenuator ?
physical characteristics language meaning
28
describe physical characteristics in terms of the attenuator
how high/low pitched, and fast/slow the stimulus is
29
describe the language in terms of the attenuator
how the message groups syllables or words
30
describe the meaning in terms of the attenuator
how the sequences of the words create meaningful phrases
31
what was Anne Treisman's model of attention also known as?
leaky filter model
32
what would occur after the messages have been identified in the attenuator?
the attended messages passes through at full strength unattended messages are still present but weaker
33
what is the dictionary unit?
it contains words stored in memory in which each have a threshold of being activated
34
what is the threshold in the dictionary unit?
the smallest signal strength that can be barely detected
35
what kind of threshold do common or important words have?
low thresholds
36
what kind of thresholds do uncommon or unimportant words have?
high thresholds
37
what was Donald MacKay's, experiment?
participants listened to ambiguous sentences that could be interpreted in more than one way
38
what important aspect initiated MacKay's
biasing words
39
how do late selection models work?
demonstrate how incoming information is processed to the level of meaning before being selected
40
Nilli Lavie introduced what?
the concepts of processing capacity and perceptual load
41
what is processing capacity?
refers to the amount of information people can handle and sets a limit on their ability to process incoming information
42
what is perceptual load?
relates to the difficulty of a task; has low and high load task properties
43
describe how low-load tasks impact perceptual load
uses a small amount of the person's processing capacity therefore are well practiced and easy
44
describe how high-load tasks impact perceptual load
take up more of a person's processing capacity therefore are not well practiced and difficult
45
what is the stroop effect?
demonstrates how task-irrelevant stimuli are powerful in performing a given task
46
What did Daniel Kahneman propose/contribute?
related arousal and performance using attentional control
47
what did Daniel Kahneman propose?
as arousal increases, performance increases to an extent to which after too much arousal performance will decrease
48
what is central vision?
the area one is looking at
49
what is peripheral vision?
everything off to the side
50
what part of the retina functions in central vision?
fovea
51
what is overt attention
shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eye
52
in overt attention: the location of _____ is known to the ____ observer
attention; outside
53
what is stimulus salience?
the physical properties of a stimulus such as colour, contrast, or movement
54
capturing attention using stimulus salience is an example of....
bottom-up processing
55
what is a saliency map?
analyzing characteristics like colour, orientation, and intensity at a location
56
when scanning a scene involves using scene schemas, what is that an example of?
top-down processing
57
what is a scene schema?
an observer's knowledge about what typically contained in a particular scene
58
what is covert attention?
occurs when shifting attention while keeping the eyes still and the location of attention is unknown to an outsider observer
59
who asked if paying attention to a location improves one's ability to respond to stimulus presented there?
Michael Posner
60
what term did Posner coin?
pre-cueing
61
what is pre-cueing?
determines whether presenting a cue indicating where a test stimulus will appear enhances the processing of the target stimulus
62
what happens when a target is presented very soon after the cue?
faster reaction times to target stimulus in its valid location
63
what happens when a target is presented long after the cue?
inhibition of return effect, thus a slower reaction time in the valid location
64
what are the 2 ways attention affects physiological reasoning
increases activity in different brain regions changes the representation of objects across the cortex
65
what is attentional warping?
when more space is allotted to categories that are being searched for
66
what is the effect of attentional warping?
large areas will respond to the desired object or things related to it
67
who required their participants to carry out 2 tasks simultaneously to achieve divided attention?
Walter Schneider and Richard Shiffrin
68
what was the procedure of Schneider and Shiffrin's experiment?
1. holding information about target stimuli in memory | 2. paying attention to a series of distractor to determine if the target stimuli is present among the distractor stimuli
69
what is automatic processing?
processing that occurs without intention and at a cost of only some cognitive resources
70
what are the 4 properties of automatic processing?
occurs without intention one is unaware of it does not interfere with other processes unaffected by practice
71
what is mind wandering?
thoughts coming from within
72
what is another name for mind wandering?
day dreaming
73
what is mind wandering associated to?
default mode network
74
what is inattentional blindness?
when people are unaware of clearly visible stimuli if they are not directing their attention to them
75
what is inattentional deafness?
when focusing on a difficult task results in impaired hearing
76
what is change detection?
procedure where one picture is presented followed by another and determine what is different about each one
77
what is change blindness?
the difficulty in detecting changes in scenes
78
what is considered an adaptive feature in terms of the perceptual system?
focusing on small portions of the environment makes optimal use of the limited processing resources
79
what is binding?
the process in which features such as colour, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object
80
what is the binding problem?
how individual features become bound together
81
what are the 2 stages of the feature integration theory?
1. pre-attentive stage | 2. focused attention stage
82
what occurs in the pre-attentive stage?
features of the object are analyzed independently in separate areas of the brain and are not yet associated with the specific object
83
what occurs in the focused attention stage?
an objects independent features are combined thus attention is focused on it
84
Anne Treisman and Hiliary Schmidt did an experiment involving what?
illusory conjunctions
85
what are illusory conjunctions?
when combinations of features are from different stimuli
86
in what stage does illusory conjunctions occur within of the feature integration theory?
pre-attentive stage
87
what is Balint's syndrome
involves the inability to focus on individual objects
88
what is the term exogenous related to
stimulus based attention
89
what is endogenous related to
goal-directed attention
90
what is the ventral attention network
controls attention based on salience
91
what is the dorsal attention network
controls attention based on top-down processing
92
what is effective connectivity?
how easily activity can travel along a particular pathaway
93
what is synchronization?
when signals from 2 different stimuli become synchronized
94
what is the executive attention network?
involves processes that involve controlling attention and dealing with conflicting responses