Psych 231 Test 2

Question 1

What are the four metaphors that are used for attention?

Answer 1

1) attention as a filter
2) attention as a spotlight
3) attention as a pool of resources
4) Attention as a glue.

Question 2

What is covert attention?

Answer 2

Attending to something, without moving the eyes?

e.g you are in a room staring straight ahead, while listening intently on a conversation to the side of you.

Question 3

What is overt attention?

Answer 3

Attending to something by moving the eyes.

Question 4

If one is not goal directed, what directs overt attention?

Answer 4

Salience.

Question 5

What type of process is non-goal directed overt attention?

Answer 5

Bottom up/Data driven.

Question 6

If one is given a goal, what sort of process is overt processing?

Answer 6

Top-down/conceptually driven.

Question 7

What is change blindness?

Answer 7

Change blindness is the finding that observers often fail to notice large changes to objects or scenes when the change coincides with a brief visual disruption, such as a blink, movement of the eyes etc.

Question 8

What is change blindness impacted by?

Answer 8

The gist of a visual scene, if a sentence description stays the same, then one may be oblivious, blind to any changes. e.g. Car in a city street, but if the backdrop change is significant, such as changes to a farm from the street, then the difference will be noticable.

Question 9

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 9

The ability to focus on one stimulus, while tuning out another.

Question 10

What is a dichotic listening test?

Answer 10

A test where the subject wears headphones and different stimuli is presented to the left and right ear.

Question 11

In a Dichotic test, what is shadowing?

Answer 11

Repeating what you hear.

Question 12

Donald’s Broadbent’s, filter model of processing, has 4 stages what are they?

Answer 12

1) sensory processing
2) filter
3) The detector
4) The output

Question 13

In the Filter model of processing, what does the sensory memory do?

Answer 13

It holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second. Then it transfers the information to the filter.

Question 14

In the Filter model of processing, what does the filter do?

Answer 14

Identifies information given attention, based upon it’s physical properties. The info paid attention to is moved to the detector, the other information is eliminated.

Question 15

In the Filter model of processing, what are the physical properties that the filter stage identifies information that is paid attention to?

Answer 15

Tone, Rapidity, accent, pitch. (T.R.A.P)

Question 16

In the Filter model of processing, what happens to the information that is not being paid atention to?

Answer 16

It is eliminated at the filter.

Question 17

In the Filter model of processing, where does the information in the filter, move on to?

Answer 17

The detector.

Question 18

In the Filter model of processing, what does the detector do?

Answer 18

Processes information that it receives, determining meaning.

Question 19

In the Filter model of processing, where does information move onto from the detector?

Answer 19

It is outputted to the short-term memory, which holds it for 10-15 seconds and then to the LTM.

Question 20

In processing, what is an early selection model?

Answer 20

A model, where info is discriminated in the first process, e.g. the filter model, or the attenuated model of attentio.n

Question 21

In Colin Cherry’s (1953) Dichotic study what aspect of the audio not paid attention to was able to be recalled by the hearer?

Answer 21

Whether the voice was male or female.

Question 22

Neville Moray’s (1959) dichotic study tried what?

Answer 22

It tried to see if repeating the same word multiple times (35 times) on the ear not paid attention to, meant that the listener picked up the word

Question 23

In 1959, Neville Moray tested whether in a Dichotic experiment, if a subject would hear a word on the side not being listened to if it was repeated 35 times, what was the result?

Answer 23

The subject still couldn’t shadow the one word.

Question 24

what was the purpose Donald Broadbent created the filter model of processing for?

Answer 24

Based Upon findings of Colin Cherry (1953), and the cocktail-party effect, Donald Broadbent wanted to make a model explaining how it is possible to focus on one message and not the other.

Question 25

What were the discoveries that led Anna Treisman to create the attenuated model of processing? (1964)

Answer 25

If all information unattended to is filtered out, we should not be conscious of the information.
However studies such as
- Neville Moray (1959) showed that if the participant’s name was given in the unattended ear, 1/3 of the participants picked it up.
- J.A Gray and A.I Wedderburn’s (1960) Aunt jane experiment, showed syntactically distinguishing crossed ears.
Showed that the information processing was fully capable of switching ears, going against the eliminatory filtering of Donald Broadbent’s filter theory.

Question 26

In Neville Morray’s (1959) Dichotic study, how many people picked up their name if presented in the unattended ear?

Answer 26

1/3 of the pariticipants.

Question 27

In J.A Gray’s and A.I Wedderburn’s (1960) Dear Aunt Jane experiment, what did they do?

Answer 27

They told participants of their Dichotic study, to shadow the left ear.
In order they presented:
Right ear; 9 aunt 6
Left ear; Dear 7 Jane.

Question 28

In J.A Gray’s and A.I Wedderburn’s (1960) Dear Aunt Jane experiment, what was the result?

Answer 28

The subjects heard the sentence, Dear Aunt Jane. showing that the information from the right ear, Aunt, was not filtered out.

Question 29

J.A Gray and A.I Wedderburn’s, (1960) Aunt Jane experiment, showed what?

Answer 29

The capability to conceptually process (top-down), for upon syntactical reasoning, from both ears, in relation to the meaning of the words.

Question 30

J.A Gray’s and A.I Wedderburn’s (1960) Aunt Jane experiment, provided evidence against Broadbents, filter model of processing, how?

Answer 30

It showed that information from both ears weren’t stopped before they got to the point of meaning interpretation.

Question 31

In J.A Gray’s and A.I Wedderburn’s (1960) Aunt Jane experiment, What stage of study were they at?

Answer 31

They were second-year psychology students. We can contribute to psychological study. :)

Question 32

In Anne Treisman’s (1964) attenuated model of processing, how many stages does selection happen in?

Answer 32

2

Question 33

In Anne Treisman’s (1964) attenuated model of processing, what are the stages that selection happens in?

Answer 33

1) attenuator

2) The Dictionary unit.

Question 34

In Anne Treisman’s (1964) attenuated model of processing, what was the filter replaced by?

Answer 34

The attenuator.

Question 35

In Anne Treisman’s (1964) attenuated model of processing, what characteristics do the stimuli get attenuated in relation to?

Answer 35

1) physical properties (Pitch, rapidity)
2) language, message grouped into syllables or words.
3) Meaning, how sequences of words create meaningful phrases.

If 2 messages presented by male or female voice, then pitch can separate the two. If the physical properties are similar 2) and 3) will be needed to seperate.