P/S: Attention, Memory, Cognition

Question 1

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 1

being able to focus one’s auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, much the same way that a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.

Question 2

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 2

also known as perceptual blindness, is a psychological lack of attention that is not associated with any vision defects or deficits. It may be further defined as the event in which an individual fails to recognize an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight

Question 3

What is change blindness?

Answer 3

Change blindness is a surprising perceptual phenomenon that occurs when a change in a visual stimulus is introduced and the observer does not notice it. For example, observers often fail to notice major differences introduced into an image while it flickers off and on again.

Question 4

Distinguish between Broadbent’s, Treisman’s (1964) Deutsch and Deutsch’s selective attention theories.

Answer 4

1. Broadbent’s: early structural bottleneck, which acts as a gateway between early sensory analysis and later processes of stimulus identification
2. Treisman’s (1964) attenuated filter theory: revised Broadbent’s (1958) idea and argued that sometimes information on unattended channels could be processed to a semantic level, such that meaning was derived.
3. Deutsch and Deutsch (1963): argued for a late structural bottleneck in that attentional selection takes place at a post-categorical stage, wherein all items are identified and selection is now carried out on the basis of meaning.

Question 5

What is priming?

Answer 5

Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences the response to another stimulus.

For example, NURSE is recognized more quickly following DOCTOR than following BREAD.

Question 6

The Information processing model proposes our brains are similar to computers. We get input from environment, process it, and output decisions.

Name two types of sensory memory. How long do they last?

Answer 6

• iconic - what you see, lasts half a second
• echoic - what you hear, lasts 3-4 seconds memory