Cognitive Proceses Lectures 1-3 Flashcards
What is Attention?
Attention involves focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events. Attention is like a filter that only allows certain stimuli to pass into conscious awareness.
What are attentional limits?
Attentional limits refer to the fact that we can only pay attention to a limited amount of the information available at any one time.
Why is attention limited? What is limited?
→All information is briefly registered but the amount of information that is reported is limited
→Limited resources
What is inattentional blindness?
When you focus on one thing but do not process anything else.
What is the difference between early selection versus late selection filters in attention? Which one is proposed to be the one that actually occurs?
Early selection filter: suggests that input is filtered before the meaning of this input is processed
→Broadbent: early selection filter attends to a single physical channel (such as a voice, or location) and rejects other inputs
Late-selection filter: suggests that input is filtered after the meaning is processed
→Treisman: Late selection filter suggests that we process many channels of different inputs and select the one we attend to based on meaning
BUT the cocktail party effect (Cherry, 1957) demonstrates that we actually can process the meaning of unattended inputs (e.g. things we weren’t actually concentrating on but we are aware of their meanings→holding a conversation with one person but being able to respond when you hear your name in another conversation.
What is the dichotic listening task?
Dichotic listening:
→Evidence for early filter: If someone is only aware of crude information in the unattended ear (such as the gender of the voice)
→Evidence for late filter: If someone is processing the meaning of the information in the unattended ear.
What is exogenous control over attention?
→Exogenous control is involuntary and stimulus driven→when an object just pops out and catches our attention→parallel search
What is endogenous control over attention?
→Endogenous control is voluntary and goal-directed→when we try to find an object or feature→requires a serial search
What is change blindness?
→Our eyes make a saccade movement (eye makes a jumping movement)→when our eyes are open but we are not processing→occurs when the eye is searching and the input washes out motion sensors
What does the resource model of attention suggest?
→Limitations on processing are not due to a filter but to a limitation on the attentional resources available for all cognitive processes.
Cognitive Processes Lecture 3
What is iconic and echoic memory? What is the capacity and duration of storage of sensory memory?
Both are types of sensory memories→literal copies of visual and auditory events→preserved for a very short duration within seconds Iconic: visual memories Echoic: auditory memories Capacity: unlimited capacity Storage duration: very short duration Iconic: 50-500 milliseconds Echoic: 8-10 seconds
What is short term and long-term memory? What is the storage duration and capacity for short-term and long-term memory?
Short term memory: limited capacity store (4+ or – 1) with unrehearsed information that can be maintained for 10-20 seconds.
Long-term memory: rehearsed information→facts, episodes, procedures→can be maintained for long periods of time
How do the short-term and long-term memory systems differ?
Short-term memory→worse for phonologically confusable information
Long-term memory→ worse for semantically confusable information
What is the primacy and recency effect?
The serial position effects in short-term recall means that often people are able to recall the first and last items most accurately due to the primacy and recency effect.
Primacy effect: the first item in a list is most important and thus is transferred to long-term memory
Recency effect: the last item is the most recent in short-term memory storage.
What is working memory? What is the role of the phonological loop, visuo-spatial scratch pad, and central executive systems?
→Shows that short-term memory is not just a simple rehearsal buffer→shows short-term memory is not limited to phonemic encoding
→Working memory is responsible for the ability to hold and manipulate information in conscious attention.
Working memory model consists of:
Phonological loop: →stores a number of speech-based sounds for brief periods
→rehearses information in speech code
→memory span depends on how long it takes to repeat the words.
Central Executive: →problem solving and decision-making
→planning and synthesizing information
→also has a role in attention control
Visuo-spatial scratch pad: →stores visual and spatial information
→can be though of as an ‘inner eye’
