PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY Flashcards by Bethannie Ice

the ability to
focus on specific stimuli or
locations

Attention:

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attending to one thing

while ignoring others

Selective Attention:

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one stimulus interfering with the
processing of another
stimulus

• Distraction:

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paying
attention to more than one
thing at a time

• Divided Attention:

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a rapid shifting of attention
usually caused by a
stimulus such as a loud
noise, bright light, or
sudden movement

Attentional Capture:

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: eye
movements from one
location or object to
another

Visual Scanning

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An experiment by Colin

Cherry through the use of

dichotic listening

technique

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– shadowing

Attended ear

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Cherry found that
participants could identify if it
was a female’s voice or a
male’s voice in the
unattended ear, but could not
report what was said.

Broadbent’s Filter Model of

Attention

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participants were unaware
of a word that had been
repeated 35 times in the
unattended ear

Neville Moray (1959)

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ability to focus on one
stimulus while filtering out
other stimuli

Cocktail Party Effect:

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•holds all incoming information for a fraction of a

second and transfers to the filter

Sensory Memory:

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dentifies the message that is being attended to based on its
physical characteristics, lets attended message to pass through the
detector in the next stage

• Filter: i

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processes the information from the attended message to
determine higher-level characteristics of the message such as its
meaning

• Detector:

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Output of the detector is sent to STM which holds information for and also transfers information into LTM

10-

15 seconds

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Broadbent’s model is called an because the filter eliminates the unattended information
right at the beginning of the flow of information

early selection model

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shadow
message presented to one
ear and ignore message
presented to the other ear presented
listener’s name to the
unattended ear, about a third
of the participants detected it

• Moray (1959):

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experiment | participant’s
attention jumped from one
ear to the other and then
back again

Gray and Wedderburn

(1960): “Dear Aunt Jane”

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– participants took the
meaning of the words into
account (Dear 7 Jane, 9 Aunt
6)

Gray and Wedderburn

(1960): top-down processing

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selection occurred in two stages

and replaced Broadbent’s filter with an attenuator

Anne Treisman (1964):

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: analyzes the incoming message in terms of
physical characteristics (high or low-pitched, fast or slow),
language (how the message groups into syllables or words),
meaning (how sequences of words create meaningful phrases)

Attenuator

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• : language
and meaning can be used to separate messages
Treisman’s Attenuation Model of Attention: both messages
pass through the attenuator but the attended message
emerges at full strength and the unattended message are
attenuated (present but weaker than attended message)

Treisman’s Attenuation Model of Attention

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smallest signal strength that can barely be detected

low threshold – hearing our name from across the room

• Threshold:

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contains words, stored in memory, each of

which has a threshold for being activated

Dictionary Unit:

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``` participant listened to an ambiguous sentence in the attended ear while biasing words were presented in the unattended ear the word must have been processed to the level of meaning even though it was unattended ```

Donald MacKay (1973):

amount of information people can handle and sets a limit on their ability to process incoming information

Processing Capacity:

``` most of the incoming information is processed to the level of meaning before the message to be further processed is selected ```

• Late Selection Models of | Attention:

related to | the difficulty of a task

• Perceptual Load:

use up only a small amount of the person’s processing capacity

• Low-load Tasks:

use more of a person’s processing capacity

• High-load Tasks:

``` studied the role of processing capacity and perceptual loads in determining distraction by presenting displays (upper left) participants’ task was to respond as quickly as possible when they identified a target, either X or N | press one key for X, another key for N ```

Sophie Forster and Lavie | (2008):

``` – hard task resulting in longer reaction times than the easy task | task-irrelevant stimulus – responding slows for the easy task more than for the hard task ```

Sophie Forster and Lavie | (2008): reaction times

``` that use few cognitive resources may leave resources available for processing unattended task-irrelevant stimuli ```

Load Theory of Attention: low-load tasks

``` that use all of a person’s cognitive resources don’t leave any resources to process unattended task-irrelevant stimuli ```

• Load Theory of Attention: | high-load tasks

``` first described by J.R. Stroop in 1935 | task-irrelevant stimuli are extremely powerful – reading words is highly practiced and has become automatic ```

Stroop Effect:

``` hold information about target stimuli in memory and pay attention to a series of “distractor” stimuli to determine whether one of the target stimuli is present among these distractor stimuli ```

Walter Schneider & Richard | Shiffrin (1977):

``` practice made it possible for participants to divide their attention to deal with all of the target and test items simultaneously ```

Schneider & Shiffrin:

processing that occurs without intention and at a cost of only some of a person’s cognitive resources

Automatic Processing:

``` In 80% of the crashes and 67% of the near crashes, the driver was inattentive in some way BBB seconds beforehand ```

``` simulated driving task that required drivers to apply the brakes as quickly as possible in response to a red light ```

David Strayer and William | Johnston (2001):

``` simulated driving task that required drivers to apply the brakes as quickly as possible in response to a red light participants talking on a cell phone missed twice as many of the red lights compared to when they weren’t talking on the phone : same decrease in performance occurred regardless of whether participants used a hands-free or a handheld device ```

• David Strayer and William | Johnston (2001):

``` concluded that talking on the phone uses mental resources that would otherwise be used for driving the caR ```

Strayer and coworkers | (2013):

``` 92% of college students report they have texted, browsed the web, sent pictures, or visited social networks during class time ```

Tindall & Bohlander (2012):

``` checked college students’ phone bills and determined that the students send an average of 58 text messages a day ```

Judith Gold and coworkers | (2015):

``` • showed that during a 15-minute study session, students averaged less than 6 minutes on-task before interrupting studying to stretch, watch TV, access websites, or use technology ```

Rosen and coworkers | (2013):

``` method of determining ongoing daily behaviors such as texting | “what percentage of the time during the day are people engaged in a specific behavior ```

Experience Sampling:

constant switching from | one activity to another

Continuous Partial | Attention: Rose (2010) |

``` “the solution is not to bemoan technology, but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life” ```

Steven Pinker (2010):

``` thoughts coming from within; daydreaming | extremely prevalent, distracting enough to disrupt an ongoing task ```

• Mind Wandering:

``` used experience sampling technique to contact people at random intervals during the day and ask them “ What are you doing right now? ``` ``` mind wandering occurred 47% of the time and occurred when people were involved in a wide range of activities ```

``` Matthew Killingsworth & Daniel Gilbert (2010): ```

``` what happens while reading when one suddenly realizes that he has no idea what he has just read because he was thinking of something else ```

• Mindless Reading or | Zoned-Out Reading:

becomes activated when a person is not involved in a task

Default Mode Network | (DMN):

occurs before we focus attention on an object | researchers argue that this stage is automatic, unconscious, and effortless because attention is not involved

Preattentive Stage:

features of objects are analyzed independently in separate areas of the brain and are not yet associated with a specific object

• Preattentive Stage:

attention is focused on an object and the independent features are combined, causing the observer to become consciously aware of the rolling red ball

• Focused Attention Stage:

• The idea that an object is automatically broken into features may seem counterintuitive because we always see whole objects, not objects that have been divided into individual features • The reason we aren’t aware of this process of feature analysis is that it occurs early in the perceptual process, before we have become conscious of the object.

Feature Integration Theory

``` presented displays Fig 4.31 | flashed for 1/5 of a second, followed by a random-dot masking field designed to eliminate any residual perception that might remain after the stimuli were turned off ```

Evidence for Feature Integration Theory • Treisman and Schmidt

``` • Report black numbers first and then to report what they saw at each four locations where the shapes had been • Participants had to divide their attention across two tasks • On about 1/5 of the trials, participants recorded seeing shapes that were made up of a combination of features from two different stimuli ```

Evidence for Feature | Integration Theory

``` combinations of features from different stimuli | can occur even if the stimuli differ greatly in shape and size ```

Illusory Conjunctions:

``` occur because in the preattentive stage, each feature exists independently of the others – free floating (not attached to a particular object) ```

• Treisman: illusory | conjunctions

``` R.M.’s case who had his parietal lobe damaged | an inability to focus attention on individual objects ```

Balint’s Syndrome:

lack of focused attention would make it difficult for R.M. to combine features correctly

• Feature Integration | Theory:

involves mostly bottom-up processing because knowledge is usually not involved

Feature Analysis | Approach:

``` using Fig 4.33, asked participants to identify the objects | an interchange in color and shape when participants were told that they were being shown a carrot, a lake, and a tire, illusory conjunctions were less likely to occur participants’ knowledge of the usual colors of objects influenced their ability to correctly combine the features of each object ```

Treisman and Schmidt | (1982):

``` a visual search task | useful for studying binding because finding the target in a conjunction search involves scanning a display in order to focus attention at a specific location attention to a location is required for a conjunction search | Fig 4.34b • Feature Search: Fig 4.34a ```

Conjunction Search: