Limits To Human Attention

Question 1

What are the main attentional limits

Answer 1

Attentional Blink
Repetition blindness
Change Blindness
Action slips

Question 2

What is attentional blink?

By Shapiro, Raymond and Arnell (1992)

Answer 2

Using the rapid serial visual presentation the observers task is to look for two possible and press a button whenever target is seen, when two decisions are make quickly, the brain still processes the first and therefore it is difficult to find the second cue

Question 3

Why might attentional blink be useful?

Answer 3

It may serve as a way to help the brain ignore distractions to efficiently process the first target

Question 4

How might we explain attentional blink theoretically

Answer 4

Inhibition theory- active suppression of second target to prevent perceptual confusion and over loading
Interference theory- competing for attentional resources

Question 5

Revlin (2013) looked into what attentional limit?

Answer 5

Repetition blindness; a decrease in the ability to perceive repeated stimuli during a rapid serial presentation of two items

Question 6

An example of repetition blindness

Answer 6

I love Paris in the the springtime
(Creates illusory word)
Revlin (2013) lake, brake and ush were presented rapidly and many participants report hearing brush

Question 7

How did Pashler (1994) explain repetition blindness

Answer 7

It is the result of memory retrieval failure; the effect disappeared if it was presented backwards

Question 8

What was the Change Blindness experiment by Simons (2000)

Answer 8

Experimenter stops a person to ask for directions on their map, a worker carries a door between them, and new experimenter emerges, more than half did not realize and were obvious to the change as there was little time to divide attention to all levels of the experiment

Question 9

What is the Flicker Paradigm? Hollingsworth et al. (2001)

Answer 9

Observers fail to notice differences introduced into an image while it flickers on and off- performed detection task of scenery, after a blank interval, a single object has changed

Question 10

What is action slip?

Answer 10

The performance of an unintended action due to attentional failure

Question 11

Reason (1979) experiment of action slip

Answer 11

Diary study of 35 participants- asked them to report action slips over 2 weeks and 400 were reported

Question 12

Why do we have action slips?

Answer 12

Failure to shift from automatic to attention
Reflects an over reliance on open-loop control rather than closed-loop as selective attention is needed
It is an absent minded error as it happeneds to use all (preoccupied and distracted)