Chapter 6

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

The process of focusing on some objects while ignoring others. Attention can enhance the processing of the attended object.

Question 2

Attentional Capture

Answer 2

Occurs when stimulus salience causes an involuntary shift of attention. For example, attention can be captured by movement.

Question 3

Autism

Answer 3

A serious developmental disorder in which one of the major symptoms is the withdrawal of contact from other people. People with autism typically do not make eye contact with others and have difficulty telling what emotions others are experiencing in social situations.

Question 4

Balint’s syndrome

Answer 4

A condition resulting from damage to a person’s parietal lobe. One characteristic of this syndrome is an inability to focus attention on individual objects.

Question 5

Binding

Answer 5

The process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object. Binding can also occur across senses, as when sound and vision are associated with the same object.

Question 6

Binding problem

Answer 6

The problem of how neural activity in many separated areas in the brain is combined to create a perception of a coherent object.

Question 7

Change blindness

Answer 7

Difficulty in detecting differences between two visual stimuli that are presented one after another, often with a short blank stimulus interposed between them. Also occurs when part of a stimulus is changed very slowly.

Question 8

Conjunction search

Answer 8

A visual search task in which it is necessary to search for a combination (or conjunction) of two or more features on the same stimulus to find the target. An example of a conjunction search would be looking for a horizontal green line among vertical green lines and horizontal red lines.

Question 9

Covert attention

Answer 9

Attention without looking. Seeing something “out of the corner of your eye” is an example of covert attention.

Question 10

Dishabituation

Answer 10

An increase in looking time that occurs when a stimulus is changed. This response is used in testing infants to see whether they can differentiate two stimuli.

Question 11

Dual-task procedure

Answer 11

An experimental procedure in which subjects are required to carry out simultaneously a central task that demands attention and a peripheral task that involves making a decision about the contents of a scene.

Question 12

Feature integration theory

Answer 12

A theory proposed by Treisman to explain how an object is broken down into features and how these features are recombined to result in a perception of the object.

Question 13

Feature search

Answer 13

A visual search task in which a person can find a target by searching for only one feature. An example would be looking for a horizontal green line among vertical green lines.

Question 14

Fixation

Answer 14

The brief pause of the eye that occurs between eye movements as a person scans a scene.

Question 15

Focused attention stage (of perceptual processing)

Answer 15

The stage of processing in feature integration theory in which the features are combined. According to Treisman, this stage requires focused attention.

Question 16

Habituation

Answer 16

Paying less attention to the same stimulus that is presented repeatedly. For example, infants look at a stimulus less and less on each successive trial. See also dishabituation.

Question 17

High-load task

Answer 17

Task that involves more processing resources and that therefore uses more of a person’s perceptual capacity.

Question 18

Illusory conjunction

Answer 18

Illusory combination of features that are perceived when stimuli containing a number of features are presented briefly and under conditions in which focused attention is difficult. For example, presenting a red square and a blue triangle could potentially create the perception of a red triangle.

Question 19

Inattentional blindness

Answer 19

A situation in which a stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though the person is looking directly at it.

Question 20

Load theory of attention

Answer 20

Lavie’s proposal that the amount of perceptual capacity that remains as a person is carrying out a task determines how well the person can avoid being distracted by task-irrelevant stimuli. If a person’s perceptual load is close to perceptual capacity, the person is less likely to be distracted by task-irrelevant stimuli. See also high-load tasks; low-load tasks; perceptual capacity; perceptual load.

Question 21

Low-load task

Answer 21

A task that uses only a small amount of the person’s perceptual capacity.

Question 22

Overt attention

Answer 22

Attention that involves looking directly at the attended object.

Question 23

Perceptual capacity

Answer 23

The resources a person has for carrying out perceptual tasks.

Question 24

Perceptual completion

Answer 24

The perception of an object as extending behind occluding objects.

Question 25

Perceptual load

Answer 25

The amount of a person’s perceptual capacity needed to carry out a particular perceptual task.

Question 26

Preattentive stage (of perceptual processing)

Answer 26

An automatic and rapid stage of processing, proposed by Treisman’s feature integration theory, during which a stimulus is decomposed into individual features.

Question 27

Precueing

Answer 27

A procedure in which a cue stimulus is presented to direct an observer’s attention to a specific location where a test stimulus is likely to be presented. This procedure was used by Posner to show that attention enhances the processing of a stimulus presented at the cued location.

Question 28

Saccadic eye movement

Answer 28

Rapid eye movement between fixations that occurs when scanning a scene.

Question 29

Saliency map

Answer 29

A “map” of a visual display that takes into account characteristics of the display such as color, contrast, and orientation that are associated with capturing attention.

Question 30

Same-object advantage

Answer 30

The faster responding that occurs when enhancement spreads within an object. Faster reaction times occur when a target is located within the object that is receiving the subject’s attention, even if the subject is looking at another place within the object.

Question 31

Scene schema

Answer 31

An observer’s knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes. An observer’s attention is affected by knowledge of what is usually found in the scene.

Question 32

Scene statistics

Answer 32

The probability of various things occurring in the environment.

Question 33

Spatial attention

Answer 33

Attention to a specific location.

Question 34

Stimulus salience

Answer 34

Characteristics such as bright colors, high contrast, and highly visible orientations that cause stimuli to stand out and therefore attract attention.

Question 35

Task-irrelevant stimuli

Answer 35

Stimuli that do not provide information relevant to the task at hand.

Question 36

Visual scanning

Answer 36

Moving the eyes to focus attention on different locations on objects or in scenes.

Question 37

Visual search

Answer 37

A procedure in which a person’s task is to find a particular element in a display that contains a number of elements.