lecture week 4 Flashcards
what is attention
taking the possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains or thought
what is selective attention
a lot of information we are exposed too, but only a bit of it makes it into our awareness because we select to pay attention to it
what is attention as a resource mean
need to spend and invest attention, but it is limited
what is control vs automaticity
control requires attention but with enough practice it becomes automatic
what are the kinds of selective attention
- ignored input
- attended input
what is the dichotic listening task
when participants are told which ear to attend to, they can effectively filter out the other non-relevant message
what makes the dichotic listening task easier
if the physical characteristics of two voices differ, but when environment doesn’t give you a natural way to attend, the selection is harder
what is early selection
when the sensory input of the attended channel passes through the attentional filter, and the ignored input does not
what is late selection
when both sensory inputs pass through the perceptional analysis and generate meaning, but the attentional filter gets applied at a later stage and only the attended input makes it to awareness
what is the cocktail party effect
you are in a room of multiple conversations, and can block them out until you notice something meaningful said such as your name that catches your attention
what is the evidence for late selection
when it doesnt filter out the meaning. when the shadowed message suddenly shifted to the unattended channel. instead of continuing to repeat the attended channel, the participant repeated the unattended channel that maintains the same meaning of the sentence
what does attention act as
a spotlight, selecting a region of space for further visual processing
what does overt mean
movement of eyes toward attended regions, need to shift body slightly to veiw something in peripheral
what is convert
eyes remain stationary, shift of ‘mind eye’
what is the posner cueing paradigm
a visual test to study how quickly participants to respond to target stimulus given a specific que
what is exogeneous orienting
attract attention by presenting something rapid
what is SOA
stimulus onset asynchrony
amount of time in between onset of a cue and onset of the target
what happens when the cue is targeted
the SOA is extended in shorter
what is endogeneous orienting
need to shift attention to where the arrow is pointing
what is SOA is faster
when it is in cue position
what is object based
when we can selectively attend to either the face or the house presented when they are placed in the same spatial location
what is a pop out search
when you don’t really need to search because the distractor items don’t really matter, the target is not by combining features
what is a conjunctive search
the more distractors mean it is harder to find because you need to go by individual elements. and you need to combine features
what is a pop out search carried out in
parrallel processing
what is conjunctive search carried out in
serial processing
what is inattentional blindness
fractionally blind by virtually paying attention to something eles
what is the temporal resolution of selective attention
when attended to one moment of time we can have double attending to something else shortly after
participants are asked to identify two red letters from a rapid stream of distractors with time varied between T1 and T2, what can happen?
attentional blink, you may notice the first one but have a harder time recognizing the second one immediately because your brain needs to process T1
why is it harder to pick out T2 after T1
because we need to engage attention, then disengage that attention (T1), and then re-engage (T2) in a short window of time
is an attentional blink always present
no, there is not a blink for highly emotional words
are you able to attend to multiple things at once
you can do it more or less easily depending on the priority
what is divided attention
our complex environment often demands that we perform multiple tasks simultaneously
what is capacity limitations
the amount of attention to give is a fixed amount, and it is up to you how you want to spend it. there is a limited amount of mental energy that can be spent at any given moment
at what processing stage does the limitation arise
the response selection stage because you are unable to do parallel processing
what is the dual task paradigm
a research experiment where participants are expected to perform two different tasks simultaneously
how can we make RT2 faster in the central processing bottleneck
with time, we can shrink the black triangle.
what happens with a longer slack
the more slack between the perceptual analysis and response selection during the second task will have a longer RT2
what kind of processing is the response selection
it involves serial processing because the second task can not occur until this task is completed
what happens with a short SOA in the central processing bottleneck
- spend all attention on RT1, which causes you to need to regain energy, which makes RT2 longer
- the longer the SOA is reduces the amount of slack making RT2 quicker
why is task 1 not influenced by the SOA
because the amount of time between the tone and the triangle appearing does not delay the effect because there is no need for the energy to regain
what happens with a longer SOA in the central processing bottleneck
you will have a much longer slack, which will make the RT2 longer since you are unable to re-generate attention to make response selection until task 1 is done.
dual task performance summary
- performance on task 2 suffers with a short SOA because the response selection process in task 1 drains the resource pool, causing task 2 to have to spend more time re-generating that pool
- this force task 2 to have to wait for the stage in task 1 to complete, which prolongs the overall response time of task 2
what is sustained attention
paying attention for a long period of time
what is vigilance decrement
performance declines overtime because you have to be vigiliant for a long period of time
what is resource depletion
when you spend all your energy and resources on internal thoughts
what is controlled processing
a process that requires the conscious use of attentional resources, it allows for purposeful, goal-directed behaviour
what is automatic processing
a process that does not require attention for its execution, can be carried out unconsciously with little awareness
what is the stroop effect
a delay in naming the colour of the word when it does not represent the colour of the word (GREEN being spelt out in blue)
what happened in the stroop effect
faster RTs for congruent (GREEN) relative to incongruent (blue GREEN) items
what do you need to do in the stroop effect
suppress the automatic process of word reading in order to name ink colour - an example of a controlled process. it requires a lot of concentration; it pins automatic control because you want to read the word when, in reality, you’re supposed to say the colour
what is simons task
when you press the button when the blue shape is on the same side as the blue button, this will be quick when they are on the same side, but slightly longer when they are on opposite sides
what is placed in opposition
automatic and controlled processes
what is a mental set
a preparatory mental state that ‘tunes’ cognitive processing to achieve a particular goal
what is switch costs
the amount of time it takes to switch tasks rather than repeating
what is response stimulus interval
the amount of time between one stimulus and the next
what is the instance theory of automaticity
why can we do complex things in practice, where does it come from, and how does it develop, the more you forcefully do something, your automaticity will become automatic
how does automaticity develop
performance is initially controlled by an algorithm, overtime reliance on this algorithm dissipates, as more and more memory instances accumulate, and then performance is eventually based on the retrieval of instances from memory
how does performance improve
practice following a power law
what is the power law
most improvements happen early on, and then plateaus over time the slope will reduce; it won’t get to zero, but it will get close. they get used to the pattern instead of understanding
