Brainscape's Knowledge GenomeTM

Browse over 1 million classes created by top students, professors, publishers, and experts.


See full index

PSY 255 > Chapter 4: External Attention > Flashcards

Chapter 4: External Attention Flashcards

1
Q

Attention

A

Refers to a family of cognitive mechanisms that combine to help us select, modulate, and sustain focus on information that might be most relevant for behavior

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

Our ability to process information is ________, meaning we can handle only ______ amounts of information at a time

A
  1. Capacity-limited
  2. Small
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

Stimuli compete for our processing resources; Attention allows us to select and prioritize some information over other information. (T or F)

A

True

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

External Attention

A

How we attend outwardly, or select and modulate (adjust the influence of) sensory information.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

In many respects, internal attention and external attention are _____ related and can influence each other

A

closely

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

Eye tracking

A

A tool researchers sometimes use in studying attention; cameras record where participants are looking

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

Because the light-sensitive part of our eyes (the retina) has relatively low acuity except at its center (the fovea), we need ______

A

To move our eyes around to piece together a high-resolution understanding of what lies before us

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

Studies have found links between _______ (eye movements) and attention

A

Saccades

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

Many neural regions associated with eye movements - such as ______, _____, _____, _____, ________ - overlap with those involved in shifts of attention

A

Superior colliculus, pulvinar, intraparietal, and post central sulci, and frontal eye field

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

Who was the first to demonstrate the role of saccades in attention?

A

Alfred Yarbus

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

Overt attention

A

Outwardly observable signs of where people are paying attention to

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

Attention is a function of the _____, not just the eyes

A

Mind

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

Covert Attention

A

You are able to direct attention in a way that could not be discerned by someone watching you

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

When you selectively attend to auditory or olfactory information, you often do so ______

A

Covertly

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

What are attention’s 3 overarching functions?

A
  1. Selection
  2. Modulation
  3. Vigilance
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

Selection

A

Singling out certain pieces of information among many

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
17
Q

Voluntary attention

A

The effort to select goal-relevant information

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
18
Q

Reflexive attention

A

Attending to a particular stimulus because it has seized your attention, instead of you actively choosing to attend to it

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
19
Q

The tension between voluntary and reflexive attention can also occur in other sensory modalities besides vision. What is an example of another one?

A

Auditory, or hearing

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
20
Q

Spatial attention

A

The ability to attend to regions in space

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
21
Q

Does attention simply enhance information at a particular location, or does attention suppress information that is not at that location?

A

Evidence suggests both

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
22
Q

Stimuli _______ to your target are particularly likely to be a source of interference, so it can be helpful to reduce processing of such stimuli

A

Adjacent

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
23
Q

Poster cueing task

A

Reveals the movement of attention in space

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
24
Q

Endogenous (central) cue

A

Engages voluntary attention and can appear in between the potential target locations and indicate symbolically where the target is likely to appear

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
25
Q

Exogenous (or peripheral) cue

A

Engages reflexive attention and can appear at one of the target locations instead of in between them

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
26
Q

Both endogenous and exogenous cues can be either _____ or _____

A

Valid or invalid

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
27
Q

What does an exogenous and endogenous cue being valid or invalid mean?

A

They either correctly or incorrectly indicate the target location. Valid cues lead to faster responses, and invalid cues lead to slower responses

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
28
Q

Reflexive attentional shifts tend to be _____, which means:

A
  1. Transient
  2. The benefits of reflexively processing stimuli at a location peak after about 150ms
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
29
Q

The short period after reflexive attentional shifts when processing at this location is actually suppressed; this phenomenon is known as an:

A

Inhibition of return

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
30
Q

Feature-based attention

A

The ability to attend to or filter out information based on features like color, shape, or motion

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
31
Q

Feature-based tuning of attention often occurs even when we’re preparing….

A

To search for a target that hasn’t appeared yet

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
32
Q

Feature-based attention appears to increase activity in neural regions sensitive to the _____ ______ across the visual field, even in the ______ of sensory stimulation

A
  1. Target feature
  2. Absence
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
33
Q

Visual neurons responsive to that feature exhibit ________ sensitivity

A

Heightened

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
34
Q

Temporal attention

A

Refers to our ability to pay attention to points in time

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
35
Q

Attentional blink

A

Is an effect in which the second of two targets in rapid succession of items is more difficult to detect than the first

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
36
Q

Object-based attention

A

Selective attention to an object rather than to a point in space

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
37
Q

Spatial neglect

A

People fail to process stimuli that fall within their left visual field

38
Q

Biased competition model of attention

A

One of the most influential and empirically supported models of attention; stimuli in a cluttered visual environment compete with each other to drive the responses of neurons in the visual system

39
Q

Receptive field

A

A given neuron’s preferred region of the visual field

40
Q

The _____ the distance among the stimuli, the _____ the overlap in the neuron populations that are activated, leading to ______ competition among the neural representations

A
  1. Smaller
  2. Greater
  3. Increased
41
Q

Selective attention _____ the competition in favor of one stimulus over the others

A

Biases

42
Q

Bottom-up selection

A

Driven by the salience of the physical features

43
Q

Top-down selection

A

In favor of items that are goal-relevant

44
Q

Ambiguity resolution theory of visual selection attention

A

The presence of multiple stimuli can lead to ambiguity about which mental representations accurately reflect the external world when neural clusters are activated. Attention, in this case, is though to help resolve this ambiguity.

45
Q

Late selection

A

We may process the meaning of everything around us before we select what will gain entry to heightened awareness

46
Q

Early Selection

A

Suggests we attentional select stimuli on the basis of physical features such as color, pitch, or location, and that we register their meaning only after we have selected them

47
Q

Preattentive processing

A

the extent we process information before attentional selecting

48
Q

Parallel processing

A

Occurs during pre attentive processing, and stimuli are analyzed at the same time

49
Q

Serial processing

A

As items get attentional selected, analysis of them proceeds via serial processing - that is, more slowly, one bit at a time

50
Q

Visual search task

A

Participants look for a target embedded in an array of non targets

51
Q

Pop out

A

when a target’s detection is quick regardless of the search array’s size

52
Q

Connection of features

A

People can’t find the target on the basis of just color or just shape - search times increases as the search array gets larger

53
Q

Feature Integration Theory

A

Focusing attention on an object binds these features together, allowing us. to perceive a meaningful object

54
Q

Binding problem

A

How do we make sense of the nearly infinite number of ways that features can be combined?

55
Q

How does the feature integration theory solve the binding problem?

A

Such features are correctly bound to each other only as needed, through the allocation of attention

56
Q

Illusory conductions

A

The incorrect combining of the features in front of us

57
Q

Dichotic listening

A

Participants listen to two different messages playing simultaneously over headphones

58
Q

Shadowing

A

When researchers ask participants to repeat the message out loud as it played

59
Q

Cocktail party problem

A

People’s ability attend to one person’s voice at a loud party

60
Q

Filter model of attention

A

Information is attended or ignored based on “early” stimulus characteristics (e.g. pitch or loudness), before the semantic meaning of the information is processed

61
Q

What did Anne Treisman suggest?

A

Attentional selection initially occurs based on early, physical properties but does not eliminate processing of unattended information. Rather, the strength of the unattended signal gets dampened, even as the attended information is fully processed.

62
Q

Attenuator Model of Attention

A

Meaningful information needs to meet a lower threshold of processing in order to reach awareness

63
Q

Load theory of attention

A

Much depends on how demanding the attended task is. If the attended task is very demanding (high load), then attentional resources will largely be occupied, with few spare attentional resources for processing unattended information. In this case, “unattended” information will be filtered out at an early stage of processing and will neither reach awareness nor interfere with the attended task

64
Q

Perceptual load

A

If load is high because the perceptual demands are difficult, and processing of non target information is diminished

65
Q

Working memory load

A

If load is high because a task taxes working memory, and processing of nontarget information appears to increase

66
Q

Modulation

A

Attention can change the way we perceive a stimulus

67
Q

A state of heightened attentional anticipation, or _______, can enable us to better respond to stimuli before they appear

A

Vigilance

68
Q

Attention ______ our perceptual sensitivity, providing benefits to how well, fast, and accurately we can perceive something.

A

Increase

69
Q

What are three things attention has been found to enhance?

A

Spatial resolution with which we perceive objects, sensitivity to temporal and motion properties, and contrast

70
Q

Continuous performance task

A

Many tests of attentional vigilance ask people to engage in this; participants are required to stay “on task” for a prolonged period of time

71
Q

Inattentional blindness

A

A phenomenon in which people fail to notice an unexpected item right in front of their eyes when their attention is preoccupied

72
Q

What does inattentional blindness reveals

A

Despite what the eyes register, the things that we become aware of depend on which aspects of visual information we select for further processing - in other words, what we attend to

73
Q

Change blindness

A

Refers to the failure to notice large changes from one view to the next, and it reflects another, related failure of awareness in the absence of attention

74
Q

How does change blindness differ from inattentional blindness?

A

Whereas inattentional blindness refers to a failure to notice a stimulus at all, evidence suggests that change blindness can sometimes occur not because people fail to notice a stimulus, but because people fail to compare two views of a stimulus in memory

75
Q

Rapid serial visual presentation task

A

Participants try to find two targets in a very rapid sequence of items; they typically have difficulty reporting the second target if it appears too soon after the first target

76
Q

Attention, it appears, needs a ______ ______ before a second item can be brought to conscious awareness

A

Resetting period

77
Q

Explicit attention

A

Measures that probe people’s conscious awareness

78
Q

Implicit attention

A

Measures that rely on non-conscious measures, such as response time or eye movement

79
Q

Blindsight

A

A condition in which patients who have suffered damage to their visual cortex are sometimes able to respond to and localize visual stimuli that they report not being able to see

80
Q

Attention may be necessary for awareness, but at least some aspects of attention are sufficient (T or F)

A

FALSE (“some aspects of attention are no sufficient”)

81
Q

Our perception of the world at any given moment is a construction of the mind, which stitches together immediate sensory information with information from _______ _______ views. It also appears that we are able to rapidly process the _____, the overall idea, of a scene more quickly than we can process a scene’s details.

A
  1. Immediately preceding
  2. Gist
82
Q

Attentional capture

A

An active area of attention research focused on understanding the kinds of stimuli that can draw our attention reflexively

83
Q

An endogenous cue does not appear at the location of a subsequent target, but instead indicates symbolically where the target is likely to appear. The degree to which this type of attention shift is voluntary seems to depend on… ?

A

The nature of the cue

84
Q

An exogenous cue is one that flashes on the screen at the location of the upcoming target, and this type of cues seems to grab attention even when the person does not want it (T or F)

A

True

85
Q

Why should some stimuli grab attention more than others?

A

One suggestion is that very early in processing, the visual system computes the relative differences between visual signals across the visual field and forms a topographical representation known as a saliency map.

86
Q

Contextual cueing

A

Refers to an effect that is observed when people search for a target in an array of non-targets over and over again, across many trials

87
Q

Attentional bias

A

Refers to our tendency to direct attention to some types of stimuli over others, and when we show a preference to attend to emotional stimuli, this is known as an emotion-driven attentional bias

88
Q

Attention bias modification

A

It may be possible to train people to overcome attentional biases and that training might help people disengage from threatening stimuli, thereby imparting a therapeutic effect.

89
Q

Emotion-induced blindness

A

Even when people try to emotional stimuli, such stimuli affects our ability to consciously process other things

90
Q

Value-modulated attentional capture

A

Provides compelling evidence that the allocation of attention based on learned value occurs relatively reflexively

91
Q

Broaden-and-build theory

A

Positive emotions such as joy, contentment, interest, and love widen the range of information people readily consider and attend to, thereby facilitating individuals’ personal growth and connection to others

PSY 255 (11 decks)

Brainscape helps you reach your goals faster, through stronger study habits.
© 2024 Bold Learning Solutions. Terms and Conditions