Chapter 4 Exam Flashcards
ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment
attention
what are the two kinds of attention?
selective and divided
ability to focus on one message and ignoring all others
selective attention
paying attention to more than one thing at a time or doing two tasks at once
divided attention
a person listens to 2 messages presented stimultaneouly; one in the right ear and one in the left. What is this?
dichotic listening
a person repeats out loud the words that they have just heard. What is this?
shadowing task
What is the early selection model?
Broadbent’s filter model
What is the intermediate selection model?
Treisman’s attenuation model
process of selecting among multiple stimuli to get rid of the unimportant and keep the important
Filtering
What trend showed on multiple shadowing studies on attended and unattended messaging?
fewer physical differences = harder to ignore
more physical differences = easier time with shadowing task
What is the late selection model?
MacKay
What acts as a simple on-off switch (filter) that allows only one message at a time to pass?
Attention
Where is the filter in the early selection model?
eardrum
holds all incoming information for 250-300 ms
sensory memory
processes all information to determine higher-level characteristics of the message
Detector
The detector is the area of the brain that does what?
applies meaning
holds information for 10-15 seconds and may transfer to long-term memory; receives output of detector
short-term memory
Once something is in short-term memory it is what?
conscious
Broadbent’s model could not explain what?
why a participant’s name gets through the unattended channel (cocktail party phenomenon)
why participants can shadow meaningful messages that switch from one ear to another
analyzes incoming messages in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning
attenuator
attenuated acts like what?
a dial - goes up and down
unattenuated
let through at full-strength
goal/task relevant
dampens other voices when talking to a person and amplifies specific voices to hear
attended message
let through at a weaker strength
attenuated
unattended message
contains words each of which has a threshold for being activated and where you store words and meanings
dictionary unit (lexicon)
words that are common or important
low thresholds
words that are rare, hold less importance
high threshold
more times we encounter a word, the ___ it is to break through the threshold
easier
Does your name have a low or high threshold?
low threshold
