Lecture 9 Attention, Taking Action

Question 1

What is change blindness?

Answer 1

failing to notice a change across 2 visual stimuli that are presented one after another

Question 2

TRUE or FALSE: change blindness can be affected by bottom-up mechanisms

Answer 2

FALSE: top-down mechanisms

Question 3

_______________ errors in film are often missed by viewers, providing plenty of real-world examples of change blindness.

Answer 3

continuity

Question 4

What is the central task in Li et al.’s study?

Answer 4

determine whether letters flashed in the center of the screen are the same or different

Question 5

What are the peripheral tasks in Li et al.’s study?

Answer 5

1. picture task: determine whether picture flashed in bottom right contains an animal
2. coloured-disc task: determine whether coloured disc flashed in bottom right is ordered red-green or green-red

Question 6

What is the load theory?

Answer 6

• people have a particular perceptual capacity
• different tasks require different amounts of perceptual processing, which can be said to differ in their PERCEPTUAL LOADS

Question 7

What is a low-load task?

Answer 7

use relatively little of our total perceptual capacity, leaving some/lots of residual resources to process other things

Question 8

What is a high-load task?

Answer 8

use most/all of our total perceptual capacity, leaving no/few residual resources to process other things

Question 9

What does load theory predict about task-irrelevant stimuli (e.g. distractors)?

Answer 9

will be processed to greater extent under conditions of LOW LOAD (and vice versa)

Question 10

What is ecological validity?

Answer 10

the degree to which the conditions, stimuli, and procedure used in experiments match those present in the natural world

Question 11

What is self-produced information?

Answer 11

information that we generate ourselves by acting in the environment

Question 12

What is invariant information?

Answer 12

information that remains constant regardless of what the observer is doing or how they are moving in the environment

Question 13

What is multimodal integration?

Answer 13

the way our senses work together

Question 14

What is optic flow?

Answer 14

the pattern of apparent
motion perceived by an observer as they
move through space (i.e. relative motion)

Question 15

What is gradient of flow?

Answer 15

difference in flow rates as a function of distance from the observer

Question 16

TRUE or FALSE: flow is slower nearer to the moving observer, and faster father away from the moving observer

Answer 16

FALSE:
- flow is faster nearer to the moving observer
- flow is slower father away from the moving observer

Question 17

Gibson argued the gradient of flow can be used to estimate ____________.

Answer 17

speed

Question 18

What is focus of expansion (FOE)?

Answer 18

• absence of flow at destination point in distance
• indicates where one is directly headed (and thus where the observer will end up if maintaining the present course)

Question 19

What is an example of invariant information?

Answer 19

optic flow (FOE)

i.e. this info does not depend on the specifics of the scene

Question 20

What is action affordance?

Answer 20

action-based information is automatically activated during early stages of processing