Module 5 Flashcards
True or false.
- all tasks require the same levels of attention
False.
Different tasks will require different levels of attention
True or false.
- we do not have an endless supply of attentional resources to distribute to multiple tasks.
True
What is attention?
Taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously, possible objects or trains if thought.
Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence.
Withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.
What is the behavioural standpoint on attention?
Attention is not understood in terms if what it is but rather what it does.
What happens in its absence?
We are very unaware of a great deal about our environment if we are not actively paying attention to it.
What is called the failure to perceive an object or event that occurs in plain sight. The failure is not due to visual impairments.
Inattentional blindness
What aspects of cognition does attention most directly control?
A. Behavioural response
B. Memory
C. Information processing
D. Sensory transduction
C. Information processing
What is the inability to notice an unexpected stimulus due to attention being focused elsewhere called?
A. Divided attention
B. Lapse of attention
C. Inatentional blindness
D. Visual agnosia
C. Inattentional blindness
A form of inattentional blindness in which people have difficulty detecting the difference between two versions of a picture that are alternately presented.
Change blindness
What is called the inability to detect differences in two alternating flashed images?
Change-blindness
How can change-blindness be measured?
Researchers can measure the effects of different variables on the probability that someone will notice the change at a given point in the sequence
What is inattentional deafness?
A phenomenon in which auditory information is not perceived when a different high-load task is being performed.
What is the most common form of attentional filtering?
Selective attention
What does selective attention do?
A form of attentional control in which a single data stream is processed while others are ignored.
Paying attention to one thing at the expense of all others.
What is the cocktail party effect?
The ability to attend to a specific voice in an environment in which other competing voices are present as well.
What were the findings of the dichotic listening task experience?
Experiment when a person listens to two things, each in one ear.
Try to recall what they hear in both ears.
Using shadowing —> which is the attended message
People could only repeat (shadow) the attended message
People failed to remember what the unattended message said but could remember if it was a man or a woman
What is the process of directing your attention to chosen stimuli called?
A. Divided attention
B. Selective attention
C. Dichotic listening
D. Tunnel vision
B. Selective attention
Since she has been on vacation for a week, natalie can hardly wait to talk to her best friend. Natalie is temporarily worried because they decided to meet at a restaurant that is notoriously crowded. After meeting, she realizes that it is actually easy to focus only on her friend’s voice and block out of all of the other conversions. What is Natalie experiencing?
A. Change blindness
B. Cocktail party effect
C. Cherry effect
D. Bottlenecking
B. Cocktail party effect
How is attention a mechanism of the brain?
Ex: cocktail party effect—> our inner ears transduce the sound from all of the conversations within earshot, even if we selectively focus on only a few things
What are the early selection models for attention?
It posits that unattended information is filtered based on basic physical characteristics without processing meaning.
The conversations you are not paying attention to are processed only to the point at which you can identify that they do not have the appropriate physical properties.
Understanding the meaning of words requires additional processing
What are the late-selection models?
A model of attention that posits that unattended information is first processed in terms of its meaning, and then filtered based on irrelevance to the current task.
Things are processed in simple meanings and can be then processed in complex meaning if attention is put on it.
Why were late-selection models considered?
Because they could seem to understand key sentences in the shadow experiment, which challenged the idea that unattended information was not processed for meaning at all
Imagine that, while she is having a conversation with her friend at the restaurant, the neighbouring table is talking about Natalie Portman’s latest movie. If the early-selection models always accurately predict what attention will block, which of the following would be true?
A. When the table mentions Natalie Portman, that conversation will briefly distract Natalie from her friend’s voice.
B. When the table mentions Natalie Portman, Natalie will not be distracted from her friend’s voice unless they start shouting about the movie.
C. Natalie will hear the neighboring conversation only if she is personally interested in movies
D. Natalie will pay attention to all streams of information equally.
B.
What is the attenuator model of attention?
It offers a compromise between the early and late selection models.
This theory states that there is some filtering of the incoming stimulus based on its physical properties. However, some of the information makes its way through the filter.
Match the correct term to the appropriate theory of attention.
- early-selection model
- late-selection model
- attenuator model
- Selective attention acts as a filter and unattended information only gets through if physically distinct (louder).
- Selective attention acts as a filter that blocks most unattended information from further processing but personally relevant and meaningful information can also be processed.
- Selective attention provides a benefit for attended information and weakens the processing of unattended information.
- Early-selection model
- Late-selection model
- Attenuator model
What is the attentional load?
It is a measure of how much processing resources are needed in order to perform a task
What does attentional load suggest about unattended stimuli?
It suggests that sometimes unattended stimuli may be processed even if we are trying to filter them out. Because if you are doing a task that only requires some of your attentional resources, but not all, then you still have some attentional resources to process some other things around you.
So the less attention a task demands, then the more you can focus on other things.
What is one experimental method used to study distractions?
Eriksen flanker task
What is the Eriksen flanker task?
A technique used to study attention in which an irrelevant distracter is included alongside experimental stimuli in order to see whether the distracter is processed, increasing reaction time.
A subject is completing a flanker task. They need to press the right arrow when the target is an H or K and the left arrow when it is an S or C. Based on what you know of attentional load, which of the following should have the slowest response time?
A. H H H H H H H
B. H H H K H H H
C. S S S H S S S
D. K K K H K K K
C. S S S H S S S
What does the role of attentional load suggest in regard to the early or late theories?
It suggests that neither the early or late theories are completely right or wrong. Attention may have a moveable filter that can be applied more strictly based on the demands of a task.
When we are devoting our full concentration to completing a difficult math problem, our filter may be more strongly blocking external noise; however, during a casual conversation at a restaurant, other tables’ conversations may drift into our awareness.
