CHAPTER 4 - ATTENTION Flashcards
what is attention?
the mental process of concentrating effort on a location, stimulus, or mental event
what is selective attention?
attending to one thing while ignoring others
what is a distraction?
one stimulus interfering with the process of another stimulus
what is divided attention?
paying attention to more than one thing at a time
what is attentional capture ?
the rapid shifting of attention usually caused by a stimulus
what is visual scanning?
movement from the eyes from one location to another
what did Colin Cherry discover?
that participants could report messages presented to the attended ear but could not report what is being presented to the unattended ear
what technique did Cherry use in his experiments?
dichotic listening
how does dichotic listening work?
presenting different stimuli to different ears
what was Cherry’s experiment procedure?
required participants to focus on one message in one ear and repeat what they heard out loud
participants focusing on one message in one ear and repeating what they heard out loud is called..
shadowing
what is the cocktail party effect?
the ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli
what are the 4 parts of Broadbent’s Filter Model of Attention?
sensory memory
filter
detector
short term memory
what occurs in sensory memory?
the holding of all incoming information lasting a fraction of a second before transfer to the filter
what occurs in the filter?
identification of the message being attended to based on physical characteristics and only lets the attended message through
what are considered physical characteristics from the filter’s POV
speaker’s tone, pitch, speed of talking, and accent
what occurs in the detector?
the processing of information from the attended message to determine higher level characteristics
what are the higher level characteristics that the detector determines?
its meaning
what occurs in short-term memory?
the holding of information for a short time period before transferring it to long-term memory
what kind of model is Broadbent’s Filter Model of Attention
early selection model
why is Broadbent’s model considered an early selection model?
the filter eliminates the unattended ear’s message near the beginning of information flow
what significant event occurred in Neville Moray’s experiment of dichotic listening?
participants were presented their name in the unattended ear’s message
why was the detection of participants’ names in Neville Moray’s experiment significant?
does not follow Broadbent’s filter model; the filter is only supposed to let in one message
explain top-down processing in terms of attention and hearing your name
attention is going from one ear to another based on the previously known meaning of a word
who modified Broadbent’s model?
Anne Treisman
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
what are the 3 properties involving the attenuator ?
physical characteristics
language
meaning
describe physical characteristics in terms of the attenuator
how high/low pitched, and fast/slow the stimulus is
describe the language in terms of the attenuator
how the message groups syllables or words
describe the meaning in terms of the attenuator
how the sequences of the words create meaningful phrases
what was Anne Treisman’s model of attention also known as?
leaky filter model
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
what is the dictionary unit?
it contains words stored in memory in which each have a threshold of being activated
what is the threshold in the dictionary unit?
the smallest signal strength that can be barely detected
what kind of threshold do common or important words have?
low thresholds
what kind of thresholds do uncommon or unimportant words have?
high thresholds
what was Donald MacKay’s, experiment?
participants listened to ambiguous sentences that could be interpreted in more than one way
what important aspect initiated MacKay’s
biasing words
how do late selection models work?
demonstrate how incoming information is processed to the level of meaning before being selected
Nilli Lavie introduced what?
the concepts of processing capacity and perceptual load
what is processing capacity?
refers to the amount of information people can handle and sets a limit on their ability to process incoming information
what is perceptual load?
relates to the difficulty of a task; has low and high load task properties
describe how low-load tasks impact perceptual load
uses a small amount of the person’s processing capacity therefore are well practiced and easy
describe how high-load tasks impact perceptual load
take up more of a person’s processing capacity therefore are not well practiced and difficult
what is the stroop effect?
demonstrates how task-irrelevant stimuli are powerful in performing a given task
What did Daniel Kahneman propose/contribute?
related arousal and performance using attentional control
what did Daniel Kahneman propose?
as arousal increases, performance increases to an extent to which after too much arousal performance will decrease
what is central vision?
the area one is looking at
what is peripheral vision?
everything off to the side
what part of the retina functions in central vision?
fovea
what is overt attention
shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eye
in overt attention: the location of _____ is known to the ____ observer
attention; outside
what is stimulus salience?
the physical properties of a stimulus such as colour, contrast, or movement
capturing attention using stimulus salience is an example of….
bottom-up processing
what is a saliency map?
analyzing characteristics like colour, orientation, and intensity at a location
when scanning a scene involves using scene schemas, what is that an example of?
top-down processing
what is a scene schema?
an observer’s knowledge about what typically contained in a particular scene
what is covert attention?
occurs when shifting attention while keeping the eyes still and the location of attention is unknown to an outsider observer
who asked if paying attention to a location improves one’s ability to respond to stimulus presented there?
Michael Posner
what term did Posner coin?
pre-cueing
what is pre-cueing?
determines whether presenting a cue indicating where a test stimulus will appear enhances the processing of the target stimulus
what happens when a target is presented very soon after the cue?
faster reaction times to target stimulus in its valid location
what happens when a target is presented long after the cue?
inhibition of return effect, thus a slower reaction time in the valid location
what are the 2 ways attention affects physiological reasoning
increases activity in different brain regions
changes the representation of objects across the cortex
what is attentional warping?
when more space is allotted to categories that are being searched for
what is the effect of attentional warping?
large areas will respond to the desired object or things related to it
who required their participants to carry out 2 tasks simultaneously to achieve divided attention?
Walter Schneider and Richard Shiffrin
what was the procedure of Schneider and Shiffrin’s experiment?
- 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
what is automatic processing?
processing that occurs without intention and at a cost of only some cognitive resources
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
what is mind wandering?
thoughts coming from within
what is another name for mind wandering?
day dreaming
what is mind wandering associated to?
default mode network
what is inattentional blindness?
when people are unaware of clearly visible stimuli if they are not directing their attention to them
what is inattentional deafness?
when focusing on a difficult task results in impaired hearing
what is change detection?
procedure where one picture is presented followed by another and determine what is different about each one
what is change blindness?
the difficulty in detecting changes in scenes
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
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
what is the binding problem?
how individual features become bound together
what are the 2 stages of the feature integration theory?
- pre-attentive stage
2. focused attention stage
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
what occurs in the focused attention stage?
an objects independent features are combined thus attention is focused on it
Anne Treisman and Hiliary Schmidt did an experiment involving what?
illusory conjunctions
what are illusory conjunctions?
when combinations of features are from different stimuli
in what stage does illusory conjunctions occur within of the feature integration theory?
pre-attentive stage
what is Balint’s syndrome
involves the inability to focus on individual objects
what is the term exogenous related to
stimulus based attention
what is endogenous related to
goal-directed attention
what is the ventral attention network
controls attention based on salience
what is the dorsal attention network
controls attention based on top-down processing
what is effective connectivity?
how easily activity can travel along a particular pathaway
what is synchronization?
when signals from 2 different stimuli become synchronized
what is the executive attention network?
involves processes that involve controlling attention and dealing with conflicting responses
