Intro to Cognition #4

Question 1

What is attention?

Answer 1

Focusing on the perception of a selective number of stimuli.

Question 2

What are the limits of attention?

Answer 2

Attention cannot process everything simultaneously, and its effectiveness can decline as tasks become more complex or unfamiliar.

Question 3

What is priming/expectancy related to attention?

Answer 3

Familiarity with a stimulus can prime us to focus on or respond to it faster.
Ex: hearing your name in a crowded room

Question 4

What are the different meanings of attention according to Moray?

Answer 4

Processing Capacity
Selective Attention
Arousal Level
Control of Attention
Consciousness

Question 5

What is Processing Capacity

Answer 5

How much information we can process at one time.

Question 6

What is Selective Attention

Answer 6

Filtering out irrelevant stimuli and focusing on specific ones.

Question 7

What is Arousal Level?

Answer 7

Our mental state that affects our attention.
Ex. how awake we are

Question 8

What is Control of Attention?

Answer 8

How we actively direct our attention.

Question 9

What is consciousness in relation to attention?

Answer 9

Awareness of what we’re focusing on.

Question 10

What is the early selection model?

Answer 10

Attention filters out information early based on physical characteristics before processing meaning

The information flows through sensory memory, gets filtered out, we detect what the information and than it gets stored into short term memory.

Question 11

What are the limitations of the early selection model?

Answer 11

Can’t explain why we can hear our name in an unattended conversation we draw our attention to that conversation.

Question 12

What is Treisman’s Attenuation Model?

Answer 12

Modifies Broadbent’s model, suggesting that unattended stimuli aren’t fully filtered out but are weakened.

Messages go through physical, linguistic, and semantic processing, and more important information (like your name) has a lower threshold for recognition, even in unattended channels.

Question 13

What is the late selection theory by Deutsch & Deutsch

Answer 13

Argues that all stimuli are processed for meaning first, and then attention selects what is most relevant for further processing.

Question 14

Explain the dichotic listening task?

Answer 14

Participants receive different audio inputs in each ear.

The goal was to attend ot one ear and focus on what the stimuli was

The results found that the ear participants attended had a high recall and the ear that was unattended had poor recall except for highly salient info like there name.

Question 15

Explain Treisman’s experiment?

Answer 15

Participants could follow the meaning of a message even when the content switched ears, demonstrating flexible attention that isn’t fully filtered out.

Question 16

What is Serial Bottleneck

Answer 16

A limitation where the brain cannot process multiple stimuli at once, leading to selection

Question 17

What is divided attention?

Answer 17

Trying to attend to multiple stimuli/tasks simultaneously often leads to decreased performance.

Question 18

What are the two terms about attention and distraction?

Answer 18

Divided attention
Distractions

Question 19

What are distractions and how do they effect our attention?

Answer 19

Diverts attention away from important tasks (e.g., driving), increasing error rates and response time.
Ex: cell phones

Question 20

What is the spotlight metaphor?

Answer 20

Attention can be likened to a spotlight that focuses on certain areas of the visual field, enhancing perception within that spotlight.

Question 21

What is the Feature Integration Theory?

Answer 21

Objects are perceived as a combination of features (color, shape), and attention binds these features together.

Question 22

What are automatic process?

Answer 22

Learned through repetition and occur without conscious effort (e.g., reading).

Question 23

What are controlled processes

Answer 23

Require conscious attention and are less efficient with distractions.

Question 24

What was Posners experiment?

Answer 24

Showed that priming can speed up reaction times when the expected stimulus appears but slow them down if an unexpected stimulus appears, highlighting the role of expectancy in attention.

Question 25

What is the Cocktail Party Effect?

Answer 25

Ability to focus on one conversation in a noisy environment but still pick up personally relevant info (like your name) from another conversation.

Question 26

What is Inattentional Blindness?

Answer 26

Failing to notice something in your visual field because you are focused on something else.

Question 27

What is Change Blindness?

Answer 27

Difficulty noticing changes in a scene if not focusing on the area of change.