chapter four

Question 1

attention

Answer 1

concentrating on information that is either internal or external to oneself

Question 2

selective attention

Answer 2

attending to one thing and ignoring the other

Question 3

divided attention

Answer 3

paying attention to more than one thing at a time

Question 4

dichotic listening task

Answer 4

involves participation of 2 different messages at the same time (message #1 in left ear and message #2 in right ear)

Question 5

“filter”

Answer 5

attention serves as a filter in which only some of the incoming info passes to the detector for higher-level recognition

Question 6

“detector”

Answer 6

processes all incoming information for higher-level characteristics (meaning)

Question 7

“sensory memory”

Answer 7

holds incoming unanalyzed sensory stimuli for a brief duration

Question 8

iconic memory

Answer 8

holds visual stimuli for 0.24-0.50 seconds

Question 9

echoic memory

Answer 9

holds auditory stimuli for 1-3 seconds

Question 10

short-term memory

Answer 10

• incoming information from the detectors is held here for 10-15 seconds without rehearsing the information
• 7+/-2 chunks of information
• can transfer information to long-term memory which can hold unlimited amounts of information for an unlimited duration

Question 11

early selection model

Answer 11

• information selected before its meaning is analyzed
• selection is based on physical properties of the message

Question 12

broadbent’s filter model

Answer 12

attention acts as a filter that blocks to-be-ignored information

Question 13

problem with broadbent’s filter model

Answer 13

it does not explain why the meaning of the ignored message can still be processed

Question 14

dear aunt jane study

Answer 14

• dichotic listening experiment
• participant instructed to shadow left ear (dear, 7, jane) and to ignore right ear (9, aunt, 6)
• participants would report “dear aunt jane”
• indicated that the to-be-ignored information was still processed

Question 15

treisman’s attentuation model

Answer 15

• attention acts as an attentuator that attentuates (weakens) ignored information
• contains a dictonary unit that consists of words in memory
• words with low activation thresholds (i.e. meaningless words) are likely to be detected

Question 16

lavie’s load theory of attention

Answer 16

focuses on the amount of information that can be processed at one time

Question 16

mackay’s late selection model

Answer 16

information selected for further processing occurs after the meaning of the message is analyzed

Question 17

processing capacity

Answer 17

amount of information one can process at a time

Question 18

processing load

Answer 18

difficulty of the task (high-load tasks vs low-load tasks)

Question 19

visual scanning

Answer 19

eye movement from one stimulus to another

Question 20

overt attention

Answer 20

shift of attention with eye movement

Question 21

fixation

Answer 21

short pauses on points of interest

Question 22

saccadic eye movement

Answer 22

rapid movements of the eyes between fixations

Question 23

stimulus salience

Answer 23

bottom-up processes in which physical properties of the stimuli captures attention

Question 24

attentional capture

Answer 24

rapid shift of attention to a stimulus

Question 25

saliency map

Answer 25

map of a scene that indicates points of stimulus salience (lighter areas are highly salient)

Question 26

scene schema

Answer 26

- knowledge of what is in a particular scene - guides fixations from one area of a scene to another

Question 27

visual search

Answer 27

- scanning a scene to find an object - eye movements determined by task demands - eye movements typically precede a motor action

Question 28

covert attention

Answer 28

shift of attention without eye movement

Question 29

precueing

Answer 29

providing a cue to help participants complete a subsequent task

Question 30

same-object advantage

Answer 30

cueing attention to part of an object facilitates responding to all parts of the object

Question 31

mind wandering

Answer 31

- thoughts from within/daydreaming happens frequently - can distract you from a task and impair performance

Question 32

distraction

Answer 32

stimulus that interferes with the processing of another stimulus

Question 33

inattentional blindness

Answer 33

stimulus that is not perceived even if a person might be looking at it

Question 34

inattentional deafness

Answer 34

impaired hearing when focused on a difficult visual task

Question 35

change detection

Answer 35

if shown two version of a picture, differences between them are not immediately apparent

Question 36

binding

Answer 36

the process by which features are combined to create our perception of an object

Question 37

binding problem

Answer 37

how do features (colour, form, motion, location) combine for object perception?

Question 38

illusory conjunctions

Answer 38

inappropriately combining features of different objects

Question 39

feature search

Answer 39

search for a single object based on a single feature (ie. searching for a horizontal line)

Question 40

conjunction search

Answer 40

search for an object based on two or more of its features (ie. searching for a horizontal line that is green)