Psych 358-Chapter 4 Definitions

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

• Focusing on specific features, objects, or locations or on certain thoughts or activities.

Question 2

Attentional capture

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Attenuation model of attention

Answer 3

-Anne Treisman’s model of selective attention that proposes that selection occurs in two stages.

At the first stage the attenuator analyzes the incoming message and lets through the attended message—and also the unattended message, but at a lower (attenuated) strength.

Question 4

Automatic processing

Answer 4

• Processing that occurs automatically, without the person’s intending to do it, and that also uses few cognitive resources.
• associated with easy or well-practiced tasks.

Question 5

Balint’s syndrome

Answer 5

-A condition caused by brain damage in which a person has difficulty focusing attention on individual objects.

Question 6

Binding

Answer 6

-Process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create perception of a coherent object.

Question 7

Binding problem

Answer 7

-The problem of explaining how an object’s individual features become bound together.

Question 8

Bottleneck model

Answer 8

• Model of attention that proposes that incoming information is restricted at some point in processing, so only a portion of the information gets through to consciousness.
• Broadbent’s model of attention is an example of a bottleneck model.

Question 9

Change blindness

Answer 9

• Difficulty in detecting changes in similar, but slightly different, scenes that are presented one after another.
• The changes are often easy to see once attention is directed to them but are usually undetected in the absence of appropriate attention.

Question 10

Cocktail party effect

Answer 10

-The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli (ie. at a party)

Question 11

Conjunction search

Answer 11

-Searching among distractors for a target that involves two or more features, such as “horizontal” and “green.”

Question 12

Covert attention

Answer 12

-Occurs when attention is shifted without moving the eyes (ie. seeing something “out of the corner of one’s eye.”)

Question 13

Dichotic listening

Answer 13

-The procedure of presenting one message to the left ear and a different message to the right ear.

Question 14

Dictionary unit (Treisman’s attenuation model of attention)

Answer 14

• This processing unit contains stored words and thresholds for activating the words.
• helps explain why we can sometimes hear a familiar word, such as our name, in an unattended message.

Question 15

Distraction

Answer 15

-Occurs when one stimulus interferes with attention to or the processing of another stimulus.

Question 16

Divided attention

Answer 16

-The ability to pay attention to, or carry out, two or more different tasks simultaneously.

Question 17

Early selection model (Broadbent’s early selection mode)

Answer 17

• Model of attention that explains selective attention by early filtering out of the unattended message.
• filtering step occurs before the message is analyzed to determine its meaning.

Question 18

Feature integration theory (Anne Treisman)

Answer 18

• An approach to object perception (Anne Treisman)
• proposes a sequence of stages in which features are first analyzed and then combined to result in perception of an object.

Question 19

Feature search

Answer 19

-Searching among distractors for a target item that involves detecting one feature, such as “horizontal.”

Question 20

Filter model of attention

Answer 20

-Model of attention that proposes a filter that lets attended stimuli through and blocks some or all of the unattended stimuli.

Question 21

Fixation

Answer 21

-In perception and attention, a pausing of the eyes on places of interest while observing a scene.

Question 22

Focused attention stage (2nd stage of Treisman’s feature integration theory)

Answer 22

• The second stage of Treisman’s feature integration theory

- attention causes the combination of features into perception of an object.

Question 23

High-load task

Answer 23

-A task that uses most or all of a person’s resources and so leaves little capacity to handle other tasks.

Question 24

Illusory conjunctions (Anne Treisman)

Answer 24

• features from different objects are inappropriately combined.

Question 25

Inattentional blindness

Answer 25

• Not noticing something even though it is in clear view

- usually caused by failure to pay attention to the object or the place where the object is located.

Question 26

Late selection models of attention

Answer 26

-A model of selective attention that proposes that selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after the information in the message has been analyzed for meaning.

Question 27

Load theory of attention

Answer 27

• Proposal that the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on the load of the task the person is carrying out.
• High-load tasks result in less distraction.

Question 28

Low-load task

Answer 28

-A task that uses few resources, leaving some capacity to handle other tasks.

Question 29

Overt attention

Answer 29

-Shifting of attention by moving the eyes.

Question 30

Perceptual load

Answer 30

• Related to the difficulty of a task.
• Low-load tasks use only a small amount of a person’s processing capacity.
• High-load tasks use more of the processing capacity.

Question 31

Preattentive stage

Answer 31

• The first stage of Treisman’s feature integration theory

- object is analyzed into its features.

Question 32

Precueing

Answer 32

-A procedure in which participants are given a cue that will usually help them carry out a subsequent task.

Question 33

Processing capacity

Answer 33

• The amount of information input that a person can handle.

- This sets a limit on the person’s ability to process information.

Question 34

Saccadic eye movement

Answer 34

-Eye movements from one fixation point to another

Question 35

Saliency map

Answer 35

-Map of a scene that indicates the stimulus salience of areas and objects in the scene.

Question 36

Same-object advantage

Answer 36

-Occurs when the enhancing effect of attention spreads throughout an object, so that attention to one place on an object results in a facilitation of processing at other places on the object.

Question 37

Selective attention

Answer 37

-The ability to focus on one message and ignore all others.

Question 38

Shadowing

Answer 38

• The procedure of repeating a message out loud as it is heard
• Shadowing is commonly used in conjunction with studies of selective attention that use the dichotic listening procedure.

Question 39

Stimulus salience

Answer 39

• Bottom-up factors that determine attention to elements of a scene. Examples are color, contrast, and orientation.
• The meaningfulness of the images (top-down factor) does not contribute to stimulus salience.

Question 40

Stroop effect

Answer 40

• person is instructed to respond to one aspect of a stimulus, such as the color of ink that a word is printed in, and ignore another aspect, such as the color that the word names
• refers to the fact that people find this task difficult when, for example, the word RED is printed in blue ink.

Question 41

Topographic map

Answer 41

-Each point on a visual stimulus causes activity at a specific location on a brain structure, such as the visual cortex, and points next to each other on the stimulus cause activity at points next to each other on the structure.

Question 42

Visual scanning

Answer 42

-Movement of the eyes from one location or object to another.

Question 43

Visual search

Answer 43

-Occurs when a person is looking for one stimulus or object among a number of other stimuli or objects.