Quiz 4 (Attention) Flashcards
What is attention?
The ability to focus on a specific stimuli or location in our environment.
What is selective attention?
Attending to one things while ignoring others.
What is divided attention?
Paying attention to more than one thing at a time. It is thought to be impossible, rather what happens is that we shift our attention between stimulus. We have a limited capacity which is why we can’t pay attention to everything.
What is happening when we select information?
We are filtering out the other stimulus.
Explain what is dichotic listening and what is tells us about attention.
Dichotic listening was an experiment in which one message was played in one ear of the participant and another message was played in the other ear. Participants were asked only to listen to one message and verbally repeat what the message is saying. Results showed that participants couldn’t recall unattended message, they could only recall certain basic aspects about it. This suggests that unattended stimulus are attended to some basic degree.
What is the cocktail party effect?
Imagine that you are at a cocktail having a conversation with people, focusing your attention on the conversation. Despite not paying attention to other stimulus you will hear your name or other information that is of relevance to you. This suggests that on some level we are processing unattended stimulus. –> contradicts idea of early level processing.
What does Broadbent’s filter model suggest? and what are some problems with it?
It’s an early selection model that suggests 4 stages: message–> sensory memory –> filter –> detection (analysis) –> memory.
It proposes that we filter the message before analyzing the information. Hence, unattended messages get very little processing. Supported by dichotic listening task.
Problems:
- meaningful unattended information seems to get through
-dear aunt jane experiment (people interpret things so that they make sense)
What does Treismans’s Attenuation Theory propose?
Intermediate (flexible) selection model. Selection can happen early or later. It depends on info needed to successfully select. Messages –> Attenuator –> Dictionary unit –> memory
Attended and unattended messages are passed from the attenuator to the dictionary unit. In the dictionary unit important things get a boost.
Explain the Late Selection model
Proposed by Mckay. Most stimlu are processed at high level before selection.
Attended message: ambiguous sentences
Unattended message: disambiguating words
Meaning of sentences were influenced by the unattended words despite them claiming not to remember what was said (unconscious attention effect).
Suggests that unattended stimulus can be analyzed to complex levels.
Explain Lavie’s perceptual load theory
Lavie proposes that we have limited processing capacity but that if the task we are doing doesn’t use it all (low load primary task), the left over space can be used for other tasks. We can’t do this if the primary task is highly demanding (high load primary task).
Not suggesting that we can multitask.
Can we multitask?
There is no tru multitasking. What we see is task switching. Primary task suffers when combined with additional task. This is true even for trained multitaskers (they are worse at sustaining attention).
What is automaticity? Explain Schneider and Shriffrin’s (1977) expeiment.
Refers to the idea that with practice certain things are done automatically and requires less effort.
Automaticity is only possible with simple circumstances. is tasks change we can’t do it anymore.
Schneider and Shiffrin did a series of experiments to explore automaticity. Divided automatic and controlled activities. Divide attention between remembering target and monitoring rapidly presented stimuli.
As participants kept going for many trials they got to a point in which they reported the task automatically.
What is the stroop effect?
Sometimes automaticity can be bad. It’s difficult not to attend to stimuli involving highly practiced activities (e.g., reading).
Task –> identify the color of the word and not the meaning. RT increases when color doesn’t match meaning.
Discuss concsiousness and attention
We are not aware of much info about unattended stimulus.
Inattentional blindness–> unattended stimulus appear not to be consciously noticed. Eg., Ignoring gorilla while counting basketball passes.
What is change blindness?
If shown 2 versions of a picture with a brief blank gap in between, observers often don’t detect change. This doesn’t occur if you were specifically attenting to part that changed. It also doesn’t occur if the gist of the scene changes.
