Limits of Attention

Question 1

What does attention do?

Answer 1

It decides which information - and how much - the brain processes.

Prevents an information overload by determining what we perceive.

Question 2

What is change blindness?

Answer 2

The failure to detect a change, movement or disappearance of an object.

Question 3

What is the opposite of change blindness?

Answer 3

Change detection.

Question 4

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 4

The failure to notice an unexpected, but fully visible object or stimulus when attention is diverted elsewhere.

Question 5

What is the attentional blink?

Answer 5

The failure to identify the second of two visual targets, if it is shown soon enough after the first.

Question 6

Name 4 ways to induce change blindness (/prevent motion detection)

Answer 6

• Occlusion-contingent change
• Gap-contingent change
• Saccade-contingent change
• Blink-contingent change

Question 7

What is an occlusion-contingent change?

Answer 7

The target/changing item is covered very briefly before the change occurs.

Question 8

What is a gap-contingent change?

Answer 8

A blank screen is shown in-between the two different versions of the scene.

Question 9

What is a saccade-contingent change?

Answer 9

(saccade = rapid eye movement)

A change that occurs during a saccade away from the object

Question 10

What is a blink-contingent change?

Answer 10

A change occurring during the blink of the participants’ eye.

Question 11

What are the two types of changes?

Answer 11

• Type changes

- Token changes

Question 12

What are type changes?

Answer 12

A different kind of object replaces the target. (chair replaced by a TV).

Question 13

What are token changes?

Answer 13

A different version of the same object replaces the target. (blue chair replaced by red chair)

Question 14

Which two theories attempt to explain change blindness?

Answer 14

• Coherence Theory (Rensink, 2000, 2002)

- Scene Perception Theory (Hollingworth & Henderson, 2002)

Question 15

How many stages are there in change blindness according to Rensink’s (2000, 2002) Coherence Theory?

Answer 15

3

Question 16

What is stage 1 of Rensink’s (2000, 2002) Coherence Theory?

Answer 16

Early parallel processing.

Leads to unstable representations of objects.

Question 17

What is stage 2 of Rensink’s (2000, 2002) Coherence Theory?

Answer 17

Focused attention.

Leads to detailed and long-lasting representations of one object.

Question 18

What is stage 3 of Rensink’s (2000, 2002) Coherence Theory?

Answer 18

When focused attention is removed from the object, it’s representation disintegrates and returns to the unstable state it began with.

Question 19

What does Hollingworth and Henderson’s (2002) Scene Perception Theory suggest?

Answer 19

Detailed visual representations of objects are formed if they are the focus of attention.

The representations are incorporated into a mental map coding the spatial layout of the scene and is stored in long term memory.

Question 20

According to Hollingworth and Henderson’s (2002) experiment, are type changes or token changes easier to detect?

Answer 20

Type changes were easier to detect than token changes.

Question 21

According to Hollingworth and Henderson’s (2002) experiment, does the time after fixation of an object significantly affect detection rate?

Answer 21

No. The time after fixation did not significantly affect detection rates.

Question 22

Which theory of change blindness is supported by the results of Hollingworth and Henderson’s (2002) study?

Answer 22

Scene perception theory.

Question 23

True or false: Attention is necessary to detect changes but doesn’t have to be focused on the target at the time that the change occurs.

Answer 23

True.