Focused attention

Question 1

What is focused attention?

Answer 1

A situation in which individuals try to attend to only one source of information, while ignoring other stimuli.
Also known as selective attention.

Question 2

What is divided attention?

Answer 2

A situation in which two tasks are performed at the same time.

Also known as multitasking.

Question 3

What is the cocktail party problem?

Answer 3

Two separate sentences are read in each different ear. One stream is instructed to be attended to.

Question 4

Which two things must occur to allow an individual to focus on only one conversation?

Answer 4

• Sound segregation: using physical differences to decide which sounds belong together.
• Focusing attention: on a chosen stream.

Question 5

What did Broadbent’s (1958) theory suggest?

Answer 5

An early selection filter of processing. The filter generally selects the most prominent stimuli.

Question 6

What is a limitation of Broadbent’s model?

Answer 6

Semantic processing occurs in the unattended ear, e.g name heard in unattended stream.

Question 7

What did Treisman’s (1960) leaky filter suggest?

Answer 7

• Bottleneck occurs much later in processing sequence.
• The precise location of the bottleneck is more flexible.
• Partially processed stimuli sometimes exceed the threshold and ‘breakthrough’.

Question 8

What did Deutsh and Deutsch postulate about the bottleneck of processing?

Answer 8

Late bottleneck - before the response.

Question 9

What is the perceptual load theory (Lavie, 1995)?

Answer 9

When the capacity is reached for target processing, there are no resources left to process the distractors. (There is limited capacity)

Question 10

What is the limitation of load theory?

Answer 10

Perceptual load manipulation is confounded by set-size - results can be explained by dilution rather than attentional resources.

Question 11

What is internal attention?

Answer 11

The selection, modulation and maintenance of responses, long term and working memory (internal processes)

Question 12

What is external attention?

Answer 12

The selection of sensory information (external stimuli)

Question 13

What is cognitive load?

Answer 13

The total amount of mental activity imposed on working memory at any instant

Question 14

What is perceptual load?

Answer 14

The idea that there is a maximum number of stimuli that we can perceive at once.

Question 15

What is working memory?

Answer 15

The conscious process of information that is held on a short term basis.

Question 16

What is long term memory?

Answer 16

The permanent store of information in schemas, which we can access at any time. Has an unlimited capacity.

Question 17

What are Posner’s attentional systems?

Answer 17

Endogenous and exogenous systems.

Question 18

What is the endogenous system?

Answer 18

Controls the individual’s intentions and expectations. (top down)
Involved when central cues are presented.

Question 19

What is the exogenous system?

Answer 19

Automatically shifts attention and is involved uninformative peripheral cues are presented. (bottom up)

Question 20

What is the spotlight metaphor?

Answer 20

Posner (1980) suggested that attention is like a spotlight - so a small area of the visual field illuminates and this is the area where attention lies.

Question 21

What is the zoom-lens model (Eriksen and St James, 1986)?

Answer 21

Attention is a flexible lens and the scope is expandable at will.

Question 22

What evidence is there in favour of the zoom lens model?

Answer 22

LaBerge (1983) - 5 letter strings presented. PPS attend to whole string or only the middle word.

Question 23

What did O’Craven et al (1999) find about attentional selection?

Answer 23

Attentional selection acts on the whole object, meaning attending to one feature increases activity to irrelevant features of the same object.