Chapter 4 - Attention and Consciousness Flashcards
Attention
The means by which we actively select and process a limited amount of information from all of the information captured by our senses, our stored memories, and our other cognitive processes. Includes both conscious and unconscious processes.
Consciousness
Includes both the feeling of awareness and the content of awareness, some of which may be under the focus of attention. Helps us monitor our environment, link past memories with present sensations, and plan for future actions.
Signal detection
We try to detect the appearance of a particular stimulus.
Search
We engage our attentional resources in an active and skilful search for particular stimuli.
Selective attention
We choose to attend to some stimuli and ignore others. This helps us execute other cognitive processes.
Divided attention
We engange in more than one task at a time, and shift our attentional resources to allocate them as needed.
Vigilance
A person’s ability to attend to a field of stimulation over a prolonged period, during which the person seeks to detect the appearance of a particular target stimulus.
Signal-detection theory (SDT)
A framework to explain how people stick out the important stimuli from the wealth of irrelevant stimuli. Can be discussed in terms of attention, perception, and memory.
Feature searches
We look for just one feature that makes our target different from all others.
Conjunction searches
we combine two or more features to find the target. These are thus more difficult than feature searches, and the difficulty varies with the number of targets and distractors.
Treisman’s feature-integration theory
In stage 1 (feature search) we analyze individual features of an object preattentively, and then in stage 2 (conjunction search) we integrate the features into the object by using attentional resources. Stage 1 can work in parallel, while stage 2 works serially.
Similarity theory
The more similar target and distracters are, the more difficult it is to find the target. Search difficulty depends on how different distracters are from each other, but it does not depend on the number of features to be integrated.
The cocktail party problem
The process of tracking one conversation while distracted by other conversations.
Dichotic presentation
Each ear is presented a separate message.
Broadbent’s early filter model of selective attention
We filter information right after we notice it at the sensory level - prior to perception.
Selective filter model
A modification of the early filter model: messages of high importance break through the filter of selective attention
Treisman’s attenuation model
At least some information about unattended signals is being analyzed. Instead of blocking out stimuli, the filter/attenuator merely weakens the strength of all stimuli other than the target stimuli.
Late filter model
Stimuli are filtered out only after they have been analyzed for both their physical properties and their meaning, allowing people to recognize information entering the unattended ear.
Neisser’s two-step model
Ulric Neisser proposed a synthesis of early- and late-stage models, where preattentive processes occur automatically and rapidly, but they only notice physical sensory characteristics of the message, not meaning or relationships. Attentive processes also exist, and occur later, consuming time and attentional resources to process information in a more detailed manner. This model does not explain the continuum of processes from fully automatic ones to fully controlled ones.
Single-pool model of divided attention
One single pool of attentional resources can be divided freely, across modalities.
Multiple-pool model of divided attention
Multiple sources of attentional resources are available, one for each modality (verbal, visual, etc).
Three functions of attention found in neuroscientific research
- Alerting (being prepared to attend some incoming event and maintaining the attention)
- Orienting (the selection of stimuli to attend to)
- Executive attention (processes for monitoring and resolving conflicts that arise among internal processes).
Change blindness
An inability to detect changes in objects or scenes.
Inattentional blindness
An inability to see things that are actually there.
Spatial neglect
An attentional dysfunction that cause participants to ignore the half of their visual field that is contralateral to the side of the brain with the lesion.
Automatic processes
Processes that involve no conscious control, but you may still be aware that you are performing them. Multiple processes can take place at the same time (in parallel).
Controlled processes
Processes that require conscious control, and are performed serially.
Automatization
When controlled processes gradually become automated due to practice.
Instance theory of automatization
Automatization occurs because we gradually accumulate knowledge about specific responses to specific stimuli.
Practice theory of automatization
In automatization, a person gradually combines individual effortful steps into integrated components (chunks) that are further integrated until the whole process is one single operation.
Priming
The presentation of a stimulus may, even if you are not conscious of the stimulus, activate related concepts in memory that are then more easily accessible.
The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
Trying to remember something that is stored in memory, but can not be readily retrieved. This is seen in many different languages, and bi-lingual speakers experience the phenomenon more than monolingual speakers, maybe because bi-linguals use one of their languages less. Taken as evidence of unconscious processing.
Blindsight
Traces of visual perceptual ability in blind areas. Some visual activity seems to occur even when the person is not conscious of them. Taken as evidence of unconscious processing.
The Stroop effect
The Stroop effect is a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task. When the name of a color is printed in a color which is not denoted by the name, naming the color of the word takes longer and is more prone to errors than when the color of the ink matches the name of the color.
Forcing functions
Physical constraints that make it difficult or impossible to carry out an automatic behavior that may lead to a slip.
