cognition and HF

Question 1

what is attention?

Answer 1

-attention determines perceptual function in both vision and audition
- reflects some fundamental limits of the brain and is though of as a process in which we engage with the external world.

Question 2

attentional isn’t unitary but interrelated operations

Answer 2

• sustained - maintain focus on relevant stimulus
• selective - select behavioural relevant information in env.
• divided - attend separate sources of information at the same time.

Question 3

what is sustained attention?

Answer 3

• vigilance decrement is seen in wwII pilots after 12 hours.
• vigilance loss is highest for low-salience tasks

Question 4

causes of vigilance decrement
(cognitive resource theory & mindlessness theory)

Answer 4

cognitive resource theory:
- task demands consume processing resources
- a cognitive deficit therefore emerges as a consequence task performance is sluggish.

mindlessness theory:
- sustaining attention is a highly effortful activity
- overtime attention switched to internal matters and low-performance occurs.
- struggle to remain focused.

Question 5

discuss what is meant by selective attention

Answer 5

• the brains ability to focus on stimuli relevant to current task goals and ignore irrelevant things.
• not everything we see, hear etc reaches our awareness so attention is therefore selective.

Question 6

what is overt selective attention?

Answer 6

• humans can move there eyes towards the visual information of interest
• human ears don’t move but people move their heads.

Question 7

what is top-down vs bottom-up control of attention

Answer 7

overt attentions moves based on the task.
- yarbus 1967 gives examples of top-down control of attention.
- this is endogenous attentional control, the organism controls where attention is focused.
- exogenous attentional control, is where humans eyes move isn’t dependent on their goals but characteristics of the env.

Question 8

what is the orienting reflex?

Answer 8

• sudden abrupt events like a flash produce an orienting reflex
• where humans move their eyes, head etc in the direction of the stimulus.

Question 9

what is salience

Answer 9

• guides eye attention and eye movement
• bottom-up salience in computers predicts the locations someones eyes would be drawn towards based on the stimulus.

Question 10

outline covert attention

Answer 10

• covert attention is an internal process of selection on where your attention goes.
• looking from the corner of your eye is covert attention.

Question 11

what is exogenous covert attention

Answer 11

• cues here are flashes of light which are automatic, they affect someones attention
• they are transient as attention is only drawn for a short period of time.

Question 12

what is endogenous covert attention

Answer 12

• these are cues such as arrows and a volitional as they only work when useful.
• they draw attention for a sustained amount of time.

Question 13

outline what is meant by failure of awareness

Answer 13

• limits of attention mean we often miss things in front of us
• there are two phenomena that indicates limits to perceptual abilities, inattentional blindness and change blindness

Question 14

what is inattentional blindness

Answer 14

• people fail to notice things even when there is nothing interrupting their vision.
• cast onto their retina but never reaches their awareness.

Question 15

what is change blindness

Answer 15

• humans fail to perceive changes even if they happen right before their eyes.

Question 16

outline what is meant by auditory selective attention

Answer 16

• air traffic control receive multiple speech signals through their headphones, but have to select the relevant messages overlapping others.
• a study made people listen to one message in one ear and another in the other ear simultaneously, to prove they listened they had to shadow the message.

Question 17

briefly outline judgement & decision making

Answer 17

• decision making occurs here someone is presented with two option and has to pick
• judgements are usually pre-cursors to decisions, reasoning is a high-level cognitive process.

Question 18

what is Homo-economicus

Answer 18

• economic models tend to be too simplistic, humans are viewed as rational and capable of assessing information accurately.
• humans thoroughly evaluate alternatives, this was modelled in financial situations.

Question 19

discuss what the subjective expected utility theory is

Answer 19

• Savage 1952, a theory of decision making
• subjective utility is based on judging outcomes
• subjective probability is someones estimate of the likelihood.
• focuses on someone should behave in decision making than how they actually do.

(picking coloured balls out of a jar probability)

Question 20

what is meant by framing effects

Answer 20

• how a question is worded determines the likelihood something is chosen.
• people choose the scenarios that are positively framed over negatively.

Question 21

what is naturalistic decision making

Answer 21

• reasoning is ill-structured and time-limited in real life.

Question 22

outline Klein’s recognition-primed decision making model

Answer 22

• experience is the main driver
• the first option is always initially deemed viable, used by commercial pilots.
• miracle on the Hudson is consistent with how the model predicts decisions to be made.
• experts initially rely on rule of thumb.

Question 23

define what is meant by anchoring

Answer 23

• its a form of priming, initial exposure influences the judgement
• anchoring effects occur when the initial information is irrelevant