Exam 2 Flashcards
Differentiate between top-down and bottom-up processing
Top down is expectation driven while bottom up is stimulus driven
What is selective attention?
The ability to focus on one task while ignoring other stimuli
What was the dichotic listening task? What were the results?
A way to measure selective attention. Have an “attended” listening task in one ear and a “unattended” listening task in another ear. Only some things can be registered in the “unattended” ear, such as speaker gender and loudness.
What was the cocktail party effect?
describes when you notice your name, or other important information, mentioned even if you are ignoring that channel
What was the gorilla suit experiment? What did it show?
A man in a gorilla suit walks through a group of people playing basketball. We filter that information out and do not notice the man in the gorilla suit
How is filtering experience dependent?
The information that is filtered out as a “distractor” depends on your individual experience/learning
How does filtering affect a task?
Desired stimuli are enhanced while distractors are filtered out
What is inattention blindness?
failure to perceive something you weren’t attending to
Describe the experiment involving fixation, targets, and masks. What was this an example of?
Had subjects fixate on a point while their attention was on a target in the corner of the screen. The screen was then masked and the trial was repeated. After several trials 90% of subjects failed to notice if the fixation point changed. Example of inattentional blindness
Describe the role of attention in perception.
Perception is not just having a stimulus present, it requires work (attention)
What is change blindness?
an inability to detect changes in scenes
What is selective priming?
exposure to a stimulus unconsciously influences a response to a subsequent stimulus
Differentiate between stimulus-driven and expectation-driven priming
Stimulus-driven is based on what stimuli you’ve recently encountered, button-up, low effort. Expectation-driven is top down and requires effort.
Describe the Posner experiment. What did it show?
tested the effects of priming. The independent variable was the type of prime (neutral (+), correct (G), or misled (H)). The dependent variable is the response time for participants to say whether a pair of letters (Ex: GG) were the same. Indicated that even just exposure to the prime benefitted response times. Repetition priming.
Describe how the results of the Posner experiment changed based on the validity of the prime
Depending on how valid the priming was (what percent of the time the prime predicted the target) it could show the interaction between stimulus driven priming (low validity) vs expectation driven priming (high validity).
What is repetition priming?
improvements in a behavioural response when stimuli are repeatedly presented. Words you’ve seen recently are better recognized than words you haven’t seen recently
What is the issue with doing multiple tasks with divided attention?
In performing multiple tasks simultaneously you can perform concurrent tasks only if you have the cognitive resources for both.
Describe Similarity Effects (divided attention). What experiment showed this?
When performing multiple tasks simultaneously similar tasks compete for resources. (Shown through a listening task wherein the distractors where either heard, seen, or illustrated through pictures; when the distractors were heard along with the attended listening task it causes the most errors in recognition)
Describe the concept of general resources.
even very dissimilar tasks can influence attention. This means that there must be some general resources that all activities require in addition to task-specific resources
Describe the concept of executive control.
a possible explanation for the general resource that all activities require. Executive control is required for setting goals, choosing strategies, and directing cognitive function.
What is the prefrontal cortex? What does it do?
The most frontal part of the frontal lobes. Important for rational thought and behavior.
What are perseverative errors and what are they caused by?
Caused by damage to the prefrontal cortex. The continuing recurrence of an error even after feedback. (Shown through a card game with changing rules, or through the incorrect copying of a figure despite rigid planning)
What is goal neglect and what is it caused by?
Caused by damage to the prefrontal cortex. The ignoring of some task requirement despite being able to understand it. (Shown through bad planning when copying a figure)
Describe the influence of practice on performance in terms of being able to divide attention.
Practice improves performance by breaking down complex tasks into parts. These tasks go from being controlled to being automatic, and requires fewer attentional resources.