Chapter 4: Paying Attention Flashcards
Selective Attention
Focus attention on one or a few tasks/events
Mentally focus our resources, shut down competing tasks
Attention usually happens before perception
Dichotic Listening Task
Person listens to a recorded message on headphones
Different messages play simultaneously in different ears
Asked to repeat out loud (shadow) one of the messages
At the end, participants are asked what they remember from either message (attended or unattended message)
Dichotic Listening Results
Most participants can report the gender of the speaker, if it was speech or noise, from the unattended recording
If message is speech playing backwards, many participants report something odd about it but not sure what
Participants don’t recall the content of the unattended message or the language it was spoken
Filter Theory (Broadbent)
There are limits on how much info a person can attend to at a given time
People use an attentional filter to let some info through and to block the rest
Explains why so little of meaning of unattended messages can be recalled (because it is not processed)
Cocktail Party Effect (Moray)
Shadowing performance is disrupted when one’s own name is embedded in the attended or unattended message
People remember hearing their name
Problems With Filter Theory
Cocktail party effect shows that people do hear their own name in unattended message, which causes their attention to switch
Conclude that only important material penetrates the filter (how the filter knows what isn’t important we don’t know)
Attenuation Theory (Treisman)
Volume of unattended messages was turned down
Some meaningful information in unattended messages might still be available, even if hard to recover
Attenuation Theory Stage 1
Attenuator instead of filter
Analyzes for physical characteristics, language, and meaning
Analysis only done to necessary level to identify which message should be attended
Unattended message is attenuated
Attenuation Theory Stage 2
Dictionary unit
Contains stored words that have thresholds
Important items, such as own name, have lower thresholds and thus even weak signal can activate the word
Attenuation Theory: Three Kinds of Analyses
Message’s physical properties
Linguistic
Semantic
Physical Properties of Message Analysis
Pitch, loudness
Linguistic Analyses
Parsing the message into syllables and words
Semantic Analyses
Processing the meaning of the message
Context & Thresholds
Context of a word in a message can temporarily lower its threshold
E.g. the dog chased the… (cat is primed)
Late Selection Theory
All messages are routinely processed for at least some aspects of meaning
Attentional selection occurs after this routine processes, later relative to other models of attentional processing
Message’s importance depends on context and personal significance, observer’s level of alertness
Evidence for Late Selection
Bulk of evidence suggests info in unattended channel sometimes receives processing for meaning
But most results demonstrate late selection can be explained through attentional lapses or special cases of particularly salient or important stimuli
Unlikely that unattended messages are processed for meaning to the same degree as attended messages
Attention, Capacity, & Mental Effort
More complex stimulus, the harder the processing, and the more attentional resources are required
People can often choose where to allocate their attentional resources
Arousal increases cognitive resources available
Some tasks increase performance with concentration
Data Limited Task
Depends entirely on the quality of the incoming data, not on mental effort or concentration
Automaticity
Over time the attentional capacity required for a given task decreases
Down side: increased susceptibility to certain types of interference
Stroop Effect
Present participants with series of colour bars or colour words printed on conflicting colours
Participants asked to name the ink colour of each item
Became difficult when word describes a different colour than the ink
Adults tend to be so literate that not reading words is hard
Effect is bigger the older you are (e.g. younger kids find this task easier, because reading is less automatic)
Automatic Response
Requires no attention and cannot be inhibited
Automatic Processing
Without intention
No conscious awareness
Not interfere with other mental activities
Parallel
Does not constrain capacity limitations
Controlled Processing
Serial
Requires attention
Capacity limited
Under conscious control
Deliberate
Used for difficult tasks and ones that involve unfamiliar processes
Divided Attention
Being able to perform multiple tasks at once
2 participants (5 days per week for 17 weeks, 1 hour sessions) learned to write words dictated while they read short stories
After 6 weeks practice, reading rates approached their normal speeches
After 6 weeks, reading comprehension tests were comparable whether they were only reading stories or reading while writing dictated words
