Psych #4 - Attention and Consciousness Flashcards
What is selective attention?
Focusing conscious awareness on one particular stimulus
What is limited attention?
It is when you divide your attention between multiple tasks
What is an example of limited attention?
Cocktail party effect, our ability to attend to only one voice within a sea of many as you chat with a party guest
What is Inattentional blindness?
It is when we fail to perceive something when our attention is focused elswhere
What is an example of inattentional blindness?
Missing the gorilla walking by when you are focused on how many times the ball is being passed between people.
What is change blindess?
Observers’ inability to notice changes in their environment
What are examples of change blindness?
- Person swap paradigm
- Flicker paradigm
What is the person swap paradigm?
The experimenter asks someone on the street for directions halfway through they swap the experimenter with someone else. Not that many people noticed the swap
What is the flicker paradigm?
Four photos are tested in a sequence. Photo 1, blank screen, photo 2 (slightly altered photo 1), blank screen again and it usually takes a long time for someone to notice the difference.
What is the Moore and Egeth study of visual illusions and inattentional blindess?
Used visual illusions like the Muller Lyer illusion. People were susceptible to the illusion even if they did not consciously process the stimuli that caused the illusion.
When do stimuli “capture” attention and why?
It’s meaningful: your own name captures your attention
You’re expecting it: if you watch bear/gorilla video again you’ll be more likely to see it
It’s interesting/complex: a happy vs. simple geometric shapes
What is preconscious processing?
The items that currently lie outside our conscious awareness, some may be may conscious, some may never get into conscious awareness.
Much of it is easy to bring to awareness
What are het two phenomena’s about preconscious processing?
- We sometimes have difficulty raising items from preconscious to conscious. (top of the tongue phenomenon)
- Stimuli that we are not aware of can still affect us (effects of subliminal priming and blindsight)
What is the tip of the tongue phenomenon?
You know that you know the word but you cannot fully retrieve the word. Occurs about once or twice, a week for college students, more often as we get older
What is a common example of Tip of the Tongue Experience?
Often happens with people’s names, but also for common nouns. Sometimes you might know the letter their name starts with or syllables but not the actual name
What is blindsight?
Blindsight is another way in which stimuli we are not aware of can affect our behavior.
Person cannot consciously see a certain portion of their visual field but still behave in some instances as if they can see it
Being aware of perceiving something is distinguishable from just perceiving something
What is automatic processing?
- Required no conscious control
- Little effort required
- Subcomponents can be performed in parallel
- doesn’t consume much attentional resources
- Performed quickly
- Familiar, well-practiced tasks
What is controlled processing?
- Requires conscious control
- Effortful
- One step at a time (serial)
- Consumes our attentional resources
- Performed more slowly
- novel tasks
What is the Stroop task?
Interference effects between two tasks, one relatively automated and one that’s less automated.
We have difficulty selectively attending to a less automated task that competes with a more automated tasks.
Reading vs. naming colors
What is the visual search paradigm?
- Actively searching for a target in a field of distractors.
- Number of targets and distracters influence accuracy
- Contrast feature search vs. conjunctive search
What is feature search?
Find presence of one feature in the array. Find the red letter in a field of blue letters
What is a conjunctive search?
Find the conjunctions of 2 or more features together. Find a red Z in a field of red and blue Zs and Ms
What is Treisman’s Feature-Integration Theory?
Individual feature processing, conjunctive searching, Can get illusory conjunctions under some conditions (show blues squares and red triangles)
What is the individual feature processing (Trisman’s feature-integration theory)?
It is done in parallel. Simultaneous processing is done on the whole display and if feature is present – we detect it.
What is conjunctive searching (Treisman’s feature-integration theory)
Requires attention to the integration or combination of the features. Attention to particular combination of features must be done sequentially to detect presence of a certain combination.
What is an example of a feature search?
Find the red x in a sea of white x’s. This is easy and automatic.
What is an example of conjunctive search?
Find the red B in a sea of red X’s and white B’s. This is slower and more effortful
What is the prediction of Treisman’s Theory: illusory conjunctions?
You can be illusory conjunctions under some conditions. Show red square and green circle and subjects report seeing red circle.
What is parallel processing?
It is when you are processing multiple aspects of a stimulus or problem simultaneously.
What is consciousness?
The subjective awareness of ourselves and our environment. All the sensations, perceptions, memories, and feelings you are aware of in any instant.
What is sequential processing?
Requires focused attention on one thing at a time.
What is sequential processing best for?
Solving new problems.
Consciousness is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon–it exists on a _______
continuum
What is waking consciousness?
Normal, clear, organized, alert awareness. Focused attention
What is Altered State of Consciousness (ASC)?
Awareness that is distinctly different from waking consciousness like hypnosis, drugs, sensory deprivation, medication, hallucinations, comas, hibernation
What is the circadian rhythm?
24 hour biological clock - periodic fluctuations in physiological functioning (body temp, blood pressure, alertness wake/sleep, hormone levels, immune system)
What is the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN)?
It’s a part of the hypothalamus and is involved in maintaining circadian rhythms.
What is the general process of the Suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)?
Receives direct input from the eyes - monitoring light levels
Large lesions of hypothalamus disrupt circadian cycles of activity in rats.
Lesions specific to SCN disrupt periodicity of sleep/wake cycle
SCN displays circadian cycles of electrical, metabolic, and biochemical activity
What are the different brain waves?
Beta waves, Alpha Waves, Delta Waves
What are Alpha waves?
Larger, slower waves associated with relaxation and just before falling asleep
What are delta waves?
Very large and slow waves associated with a move to deeper sleep and further loss of consciousness
What are beta waves?
Small fast waves associated with alertness and being awake
What kind of waves do we have when we wake up?
Alpha (calm, relaxed) or Beta (more focused and active) Waves
What is stage 1 of sleep?
NREM-1
Smaller, irregular waves produced in light sleep (people may or may not say they were asleep)
What is the hypnic jerk?
Relax muscle twitch throughout body that may occur in stage 1
What is stage 2 of sleep?
NREM 2
Deeper sleep; sleep spindles (bursts of distinctive brain-wave activity) appear
What is stage 3 of sleep?
NREM 3
Deeper sleep; delta waves appear; very large and slow. Then we get deepest level of normal sleep; almost purely delta waves
What is stage 4 of sleep?
REM. Associated with dreaming; sleep is very light. Body is very still during REM sleep
How does REM sleep change with age?
Young adults spend more time in deep sleep than older adults
What is Freud’s wish-fulfillment?
Dreams preserve sleep and provide a “psychic safety valve” –expressing otherwise unacceptable feelings; contain manifest (remembered) content and a deeper layer of latent content (a hidden meaning)
What is the information - processing theory?
Dreams help us sort out the day’s events and consolidate our memories
What is the physiological function dream theory?
Regular brain stimulation from REM sleep may help develop and preserve neural pathways
What is the neural activation dream theory?
REM sleep triggers neural activity that evokes random visual memories, which our sleeping brain weaves into stories
What is the cognitive development dream theory?
Dream content reflects dreamers’ level of cognitive development –their knowledge and understanding. Dreams stimulate our lives, including worst-case scenarios
Biological and psychological explanations of behavior are ______, not _______.
partners; competitors
What is manifest content (Freud)?
Remembered story line
What is latent content (Freud)?
Underlying meaning
What are the general ideas of Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams”?
Wish fulfillment
Discharge otherwise unacceptable feelings
What are the four dream processes (mental filters) that hide true purposes of dreams?
Condensation, Displacement, Symbolization, and Secondary Elaboration
What is condensation (Freud)?
Combining several people, objects, or events into a single dream image
What is displacement (freud)?
Directing emotions or actions toward safe or unimportant dream images
What is symbolization (freud)?
Nonliteral expression of dream content
What is secondary elaboration (freud)?
Making a dream more logical and complete while remembering it
What functions have theorists proposed for dreams?
- To satisfy our own wishes
- To file away memories
- to develop and preserve neural pathways
- to make sense of neural static
- to reflect cognitive development
What is Perls dream interpretation?
Most dreams are a special message about what is missing in our lives, what we avoid doing, or feelings that we need to re-own
What are some theories as to why we sleep?
- Adaptive functions: sleep may have played a protective role in human evolution by keeping people safe during potentially dangerous periods. Also save energy/calories
- Restorative and Cognitive Functions.
- Restore immune system
- Remove toxins - free radicals
- Sleep also helps restore and repair damaged neurons
- REM and NREM2 sleep help strengthen neural connections that build enduring memories
- Sleep promotes creative problem solving the next day
- During deep sleep, the pituitary gland secretes a growth hormone necessary for muscle development
