Practical 3 - Attention and Control Flashcards
What is the purpose of a lexical decision task?
To measure how quickly participants can decide whether a string of letters is a word or a non-word.
How does word frequency influence lexical decision tasks?
More common words are recognized faster because they are more familiar, which affects visual recognition.
Why might the lexical decision task not be a pure measure of word recognition?
Because the decision between word and nonword is influenced by the familiarity of the letter string, not just word recognition itself.
What is the difference between lexical decision tasks and semantic categorization tasks?
Lexical decision tasks measure word recognition, while semantic categorization tasks focus on assigning words to categories (e.g., living vs. non-living things).
How does word frequency affect the semantic categorization task?
Frequency influences performance on lexical decision tasks, but it doesn’t bias decisions in semantic categorization tasks since meaning, not familiarity, is being assessed.
Which brain areas are activated during word recognition and pronunciation?
The Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), Broca’s Area, Wernicke’s Area, and the Angular Gyrus.
What role does the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) play in reading?
It recognizes written words as familiar symbols and processes orthographic patterns (letter sequences).
How do PET and fMRI scans contribute to our understanding of word reading?
They show where brain activity occurs during word recognition and pronunciation but do not explain what specific functions these areas are performing.
What does the N400 ERP component indicate?
It signals that a word is semantically incongruent with the preceding context, showing that meaning has been accessed and integrated.
How are event-related potentials (ERPs) useful in studying lexical and semantic processing?
ERPs help detect brain activity patterns related to word recognition and meaning retrieval during tasks.
What does TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) do?
It temporarily disrupts brain activity to investigate how certain brain areas contribute to specific cognitive functions, like letter recognition.
How can TMS be used in studying word recognition?
By applying TMS to disrupt activity in specific brain regions (e.g., visual cortex), researchers can determine the role of those areas in recognizing written words.
What is the difference between feature search and conjunction search?
Feature search is faster and occurs in parallel when detecting a target defined by a single feature, while conjunction search is slower and occurs serially when a target shares features with distractors.
What does Feature Integration Theory suggest about attention?
It suggests that simple features (like color or shape) are processed pre-attentively, but attention is required to combine features into a coherent object.
What are illusory conjunctions?
They occur when attention is divided or overloaded, leading to the incorrect combination of features (e.g., mixing up the color or shape of objects).
How does Feature Integration Theory explain illusory conjunctions?
It suggests that attention is required to bind features together, and when attention is not focused, features from different objects may be miscombined.
What is the task-switching experiment designed to measure?
It measures how long it takes the brain to reconfigure itself to perform a different task, focusing on the cost of switching tasks.
What are the expected results of a task-switching experiment?
Longer reaction times (RT) during switch trials compared to non-switch trials, due to task-set reconfiguration and task-set inertia.
What does the Flanker Task measure?
It measures how well selective attention works when focusing on a target while ignoring distractors (flankers).
What are the expected results for the Flanker Task in congruent, incongruent, and neutral conditions?
Faster RTs for congruent trials, slower RTs for incongruent trials due to interference, and minimal RT effect for neutral trials.
