Cog Psych Ch. 3 Key Terms

Question 1

Action slip

Answer 1

absent minded mistake caused by lack of conscious awareness of an automatic behavior; no conscious control, no monitoring

Question 2

Active mod of attention (Goal-driven attention)

Answer 2

perceiver initiating switches in attention based strictly on internally driven goal.
top-down processing

Question 3

Associative activation error

Answer 3

occurs when your intention to do or say something activates strongly related, but inappropriate, schema. (i.e. “not much” when asked how you are.)

Question 4

Attention

Answer 4

processes used to monitor incoming events.

active cognitive processing of a limited amount of information

Question 5

Attentional blink

Answer 5

period of time after detection of one visual stimulus when another visual stimulus cannot be detected

Question 6

Attentional set

Answer 6

mindset we have when watching a visual scene; what we are focused on in a scene.

Question 7

Automaticity

Answer 7

idea that we are able to perform tasks without attending to them

Question 8

Bottleneck approach (attention)

Answer 8

traffic jam of attention. we can only focus on a limited number of things at once, too many sensory inputs cause a traffic jam

Question 9

Capture error

Answer 9

when an intended action (schema) is similar to one that is familiar and well practiced. (i.e. entering password instead of PIN)

Question 10

Change blindness

Answer 10

similar to inattentional blindness in that some aspect of the visual environment goes unnoticed

Question 11

Cocktail-party phenomenon

Answer 11

ability to recognize a meaningful, unattended stimulus.

Question 12

Coherence

Answer 12

visual attention is necessary to hold elements of the visual scene together; “perceptual glue”

Question 13

Conjunction Search

Answer 13

reaction time slowed with more distractions, takes more processing.

Question 14

Control (automatic processing)

Answer 14

monitor, alter, change, stop. a matter of degree

Question 15

Data-driven error

Answer 15

external events cause the (inappropriate) activation of a schema & force some type of unwanted behavior. (i.e. texting a friend while listening to music = texting song lyrics.)

Question 16

Description error

Answer 16

carry out action you wanted to do but on another object

Question 17

Dichotic listening task

Answer 17

different message presented in each ear. researchers also had participants repeat input from one of the ears word-for-word.
-forced participants to ignore one ear. allowed researchers to see if participants noticed or processed anything from the ignored ear.

Question 18

Divided attention

Answer 18

involves the processing of and responding to multiple inputs.

Question 19

Dual task interference

Answer 19

when multitasking, one or both tasks suffer

Question 20

Early selection theory

Answer 20

information selected without deep processing taking place

Question 21

Feature/object based attention

Answer 21

reaction time will be faster for valid trials

object based: reation time to respond to the target that is on the same object as the prime should be faster

Question 22

Feature search

Answer 22

easier, takes less time, less feature overlap. always easier to find, didn’t matter how many distractors

Question 23

Flexibility

Answer 23

attention is pliable and dynamic, allowing us to easily shift our attention based on demands of the current moment

Question 24

Flicker paradigm

Answer 24

participants are presented with 2 versions of a scene that alternate rapidly with one another

Question 25

Gateway metaphor (attention)

Answer 25

only some information can get through the gate

Question 26

Inattentional blindness

Answer 26

failure to notice some obvious but unexpected event. happens when we are focusing on another task

Question 27

Late selection theory

Answer 27

all incoming info identified. from that, only some moves on to conscious awareness

Question 28

Limited capacity

Answer 28

we can only attend to a limited number of things at one time

Question 29

Load theory

Answer 29

how we process task-irrelevant information is dependent upon the nature of the perceptual demands presented by the main attentional task

Question 30

Loss of activation

Answer 30

going to do something and forgetting what it was you wanted to do. Occurs because of interference

Question 31

Passive mode of attention (stimulus-driven attention)

Answer 31

switches attention based on externally driven factors (aspects of a specific stimulus.) bottom-up processing

Question 32

Post-attentive processing

Answer 32

occurs once attention has been focused on a stimulus

Question 33

Pre-attentive processing

Answer 33

occurs before the focus of attention is brought to the stimulus

Question 34

Psychological refractory period paradigm

Answer 34

second stimulus cannot be dealt with because the first stimulus is still being processed.

Question 35

Qualitative account of automaticity

Answer 35

an automatic behavior is qualitatively different

Question 36

Quantitative account of automaticity

Answer 36

an automatic behavior is simply faster

Question 37

Rapid serial visual presentation

Answer 37

scientific method for studying the timing of vision

Question 38

Schemata

Answer 38

organized body of knowledge that guides motor activities

Question 39

Selective attention

Answer 39

gateway analogy used to describe auditory selection attention tasks. some info must be processed, some must be ignored

Question 40

Space-based attention

Answer 40

focusing attention on a particular spatial location in front of you

Question 41

Speech shadowing

Answer 41

experimental technique where subjects repeat speech at a delay to the onset of hearing the phrase

Question 42

Spotlight metaphor (attention)

Answer 42

information in center is the fastest to be seen.

Question 43

Enumeration

Answer 43

ability to accurately count instances of an object

Question 44

Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)

Answer 44

the time that lapses between the presentation of 2 stimuli

Question 45

Subitizing

Answer 45

quick and effortless enumeration of a small number of objects

Question 46

The Stroop effect

Answer 46

finding that the ability to name the ink color in which a word is printed is inhibited if that word happens to name a conflicting color

Question 47

Visual search task

Answer 47

people presented with visual display and asked to determine whether a particular target is present or absent

Question 48

Voluntary control

Answer 48

ability to direct our attention based on interests, goals, or other aspects of the situation. we can deploy our attention strategically