Chapter 5: Paying Attention Flashcards
Selective attention
Skill through which we focus on 1 input/task while ignoring other stimuli
Dichotic listening
Tasks in which participants hear one audio input through the right headphone and another through the left
Attended channel
Stimulus (or group of stimuli) that a person is trying to perceive
Information is typically well understood/remembered
Unattended channel
Stimuli the person is trying not to perceive
Information is typically not well understood/remembered
Shadowing
Participant is asked to repeat what they hear in the attended channel word-for-word to ensure they are listening
Filter
Hypothetical mechanism for blocking potential distractors from being further processed
Fixation target
Visual marker a participant is asked to focus on to control eye movement in research studies
Inattentional blindness
Pattern in which perceivers fail to see stimuli right in front of them due to a focus on other stimuli
Change blindness
Pattern in which perceivers do not see a large-scale change in a visual stimulus
Reveals how little we perceive if we fail to attend to target information
Early selection vs Late selection hypothesis
Early selection states that selective attention operates at an early stage of processing, so unattended inputs receive little analysis
Late selection states that selective attention operates at a late stage of processing, so unattended inputs receive significant analysis
Biased competition theory
A proposal that attention functions by shifting neurons’ priorities so that neurons are more responsive to inputs that have properties associated with the desired input
Spatial attention
Mechanism through which people allocate processing resources to particular positions in space so that they more efficiently process any inputs from that region
Limited-capacity system
Group of processes in which mental resources are limited, so that extra resources supplied to one process must be balanced by a withdrawal of resources elsewhere
We can’t exceed the limit (of resources available)
Mental resources
Processes/capacity needed for performance but limited in supply
Endogenous control of attention
Mechanism through which a person chooses where to focus attention
Exogenous control
Mechanism through which the decision of where to focus attention is automatically controlled
Feature integration theory
Proposal about the function of attention as the glue between elements and features that are in view
Divided attention
Skill of multitasking
Perseveration error
Pattern of responding in which a person produces the same responce over and over, even though the task requires a change
Goal neglect
A person fails to remember their goal and relies instead on irrelevant, habitual responses
Automaticity
State achieved by some tasks and some forms of processing, in which the task can be performed with little or no attention
Mental reflexes
Stroop interference
Stroop task!
BLACK written in blue is confusing
