Cog 1-5

Question 1

Sensory memory

Answer 1

Brief or literal copy of event: iconic memory, echoic memory

Question 2

Focused/selective attention

Answer 2

A situation in which individuals try to attend to only one source of information while ignoring other stimuli

Question 3

Divided attention

Answer 3

A situation in which two tasks are performed at the same time (multitasking)

Question 4

Cocktail party problem

Answer 4

The difficulties involved in attending to one voice when two or more people are speaking at the same time

Question 5

What is sound segregation?

Answer 5

From a mixture of sounds reaching someone’s ear, the listener has to decide which sounds belong together and which do not

Question 6

Which is harder: auditory segmentation or visual segmentation?

Answer 6

Auditory segmentation

Question 7

What is motion induced blindness?

Answer 7

When you focus on one thing and something else in your vision disappears

Question 8

What is a dichotic listening task?

Answer 8

The listener hears two different messages coming through each headphone and is asked to repeat the ‘shadow’ one of them

Question 9

How does Cherry explain that we can follow one conversation when everyone is talking at the same time?

Answer 9

We use selection; only crude information from unattended ear is encoded (e.g. sex of speaker); when voices are physically similar they are hard to distinguish; very little complex information is encoded

Question 10

Define locus of selection

Answer 10

The point at which some material is accepted or selected for further processing, and some material is rejected and no longer processed; ‘your decision point’

Question 11

What is early locus of selection?

Answer 11

Making your decision based on physical characteristics and filtering things out on this physical basis

Question 12

What is late locus of selection?

Answer 12

All information in front of you gets processed to a high degree of processing level of meaning, and then important things are further processed from there

Question 13

What is Broadbent’s filter theory?

Answer 13

Proposes an early locus of selection; multiple inputs are coded in parallel; one is selected on the basis of its physical characteristics; unattended stimuli not processed further

Question 14

What is the problem with Broadbent’s filter theory?

Answer 14

Some information from the unattended ear is processed beyond the physical level

Question 15

What did Moray find?

Answer 15

Looked at switching during shadowing experiments; found that people still recognised their name when it was presented in the unattended ear (cocktail part effect); when we direct our attention to a message from one ear and reject a message from the other ear, almost none of the verbal content of the rejected message is able to get through this block (EXCEPT important messages like our name)

Question 16

Define attenuating

Answer 16

Things with a lower threshold (hearing your name) you are more likely to hear it

Question 17

What is Treisman’s attenuation theory?

Answer 17

Designed to account for breakthroughs that can occur in Broadbent’s filter theory; words that are expected are more likely to be processed

Question 18

What theory is evidence against Broadbent?

Answer 18

Treisman’s attenuation theory; because in the dichotic listening task subjects did switch to the unattended channel if the speech made sense, but quickly switched back

Question 19

Define leaky filter

Answer 19

Explains why some unattended items receive further analysis (you can’t actually focus your attention)

Question 20

Define slippage

Answer 20

Where attention suddenly shifts (your attention actually moves); attentional shift takes approximately 50ms

Question 21

What is Lavie’s load account?

Answer 21

We are more likely to be distracted when the task we are doing has a low perceptual load (as if we have spare attentional capacity which can be captured by irrelevant things)

Question 22

What did Normad, Bouget & Croziet find in relation to evaluative pressure?

Answer 22

Pressure increased distraction caused by task related features, and reduced distraction by irrelevant features

Question 23

Define Feature Integration Theory

Answer 23

Suggests that when perceiving a stimulus, features are registered early, automatically, and in parallel, while objects are identified separately and at a later stage in processing

Question 24

Define ‘feature search’

Answer 24

Things stand out well when they are unique in a single element

Question 25

Define ‘conjunction search’

Answer 25

Found using serial search (having to individually scan through every shape till you find the one you are looking for)
E.g. “Where’s Wally?”

Question 26

Define ‘texture segregation’

Answer 26

The effortless division of a visual stimulus into distinct segments based on spatial gradients in local feature properties

Question 27

What are problems with Feature Integration Theory?

Answer 27

There is no clear distinction between parallel and serial searches in data

Conjunction search may be slower because targets are less easy to discriminate (they share features with the distractors)

Question 28

What is Guided Search Theory?

Answer 28

Suggests that attention is directed to an object or location through a pre-attentive process

Question 29

Define pre-attentive processes

Answer 29

The subconscious accumulation of information from the environment; the brain filters and processes what is important

Question 30

Are pre-attentive processes innate? And what is evidence for it

Answer 30

Yes. Pop-out is evidence for pre-attentive processes

Question 31

Define automatic processes

Answer 31

Does not require us to pay attention, nor do we have to deliberately put in effort to control automatic processes

Question 32

Logan’s Instance Theory Automaticity

Answer 32

It’s NOT about the connections being strengthened (that’s learning theory)

It’s about every time you do something a MEMORY TRACE IS LAID DOWN (it’s a memory based theory; this is why you can retrieve things faster, because you have more memory traces

Question 33

What are the 4 features associated with automatic processes?

Answer 33

Fast
Efficient
Goal-unrelated
Unconscious

Question 34

What does poor dual task performance suggest?

Answer 34

Suggests that both tasks draw from a common pool of ‘resources’

Question 35

What are the 4 theories of dual-task performance?

Answer 35

Capacity theories
Bottleneck theories
Crosstalk and task similarity
Neutral theories

Question 36

Pashler’s PRP paradigm is an example of what dual-task performance?

Answer 36

Bottleneck theory

Question 37

What is Pashler’s Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm?

Answer 37

The slowing of the response to the second of two stimuli when they are presented close together in time

Question 38

Main finds of Pashler’s PRP paradigm

Answer 38

The ability to switch your attention between tasks; the PRP effect can get smaller but can never fully disappear; not all processes are occurring in parallel, and instead being done one at a time in a series of processes (e.g. driving a car)

Question 39

Define split attention

Answer 39

Allocation of attention to two (or more) non-adjacent regions of visual space

Question 40

Define covert attention

Answer 40

Attention to an object or sound in the absence of other movements of the relevant receptors (looking at an object in the periphery of vision)

Question 41

Define zoom-lens theory

Answer 41

Targets were detected fastest when the attended region was small and slowest when it was large

Question 42

Define spotlight theory

Answer 42

Shows visual attention to be even more flexible than assumed within the zoom-lens model

Question 43

Define inhibition of return

Answer 43

A reduced probability of visual attention returning to a previously attended location or object; ‘attention drifts away’

Question 44

Why do sudden onsets capture attention?

Answer 44

Big perceptual change and new perceptual object which needs to be encoded

Question 45

Define inattentional blindness

Answer 45

Failure to detect an unexpected object appearing in a visual display; there is no perception without attention

Question 46

Define change blindness

Answer 46

Failure to detect changes in the visual environment