Quiz 4: Attention and Consciousness Flashcards
The means by which we actively select and process a limited amount of information from all of the information captured by our senses, our stored memories, and our other cognitive processes; includes both conscious and unconscious processes.
Attention
Includes both feeling of awareness and the content of awareness, which may be under the focus of attention.
Consciousness
4 main functions of attention.
Signal detection and Vigilance
Search
Selective Attention
Divided Attention
We try to detect the appearance of a particular stimulus.
Signal detection and Vigilance
People pick out the important stimuli embedded in a wealth of irrelevant, distracting stimuli; often used to measure sensitivity to target’s presence.
Signal detection theory
4 possible outcomes of signal detection.
Hits - “true positives”
False alarms- “false positives”
Misses-“false negatives”
Correct rejections -“true negatives”
Ability to attend a field of stimulation over a prolonged period; watchfully waits to detect a signal stimulus that may appear at an unknown time; needed in setting in which a given stimulus occurs rarely but requires immediate attention as soon it occurs.
Vigilance
Refers to a scan of the environment for particular features—actively looking for something when you are not sure where it will appear; involves using our attentional resources to actively and often skillfully seek out a target.
Search
Nontarget stimuli that divert our attention away from the target stimulus.
Distracters
2 different kinds of search.
Feature search
Conjunction search
We look for just one feature that makes our search object different from all others (ex. color, shape, size).
Feature search
We have to combine two or more features to find the stimulus we’re looking for.
Conjunction search
A theory that explains why it is relatively easy to conduct feature searches and relatively difficult to conduct conjunction searches.
Feature integration theory
Who proposed the feature integration theory?
Anne Treisman (1986)
2 stages when we perceive objects.
Color and size
Connecting 2 or more features with some “mental glue”.
A stage when we perceive objects that is automatic and does not need for cognitive processing.
Color and size
A stage when we perceive objects that requires conscious attention; have to combine the features we are searching one by one.
Connecting 2 or more features with some “mental glue”.
A theory which states that the more similar target and distracter are, the more difficult it is to find the target; the difficulty of search tasks depends on how different distracters are from each other, but it does not depend on the number of features to be integrated.
Similarity theory
We choose to attend to some stimuli and ignore others.
Selective attention
The process of tracking one conversation while distracted by other conversation.
Cocktail party problem
Presenting a separate message to each ear.
Dichotic Presentation
3 filter models.
Early filter model
Selective filter model
Late filter model
We filter information right after we notice it at the sensory level; all the incoming information is being perceived and stored in sensory memory; sensory memory only stores the information for a split second and then forwards it to a filter that allows only one message to move forward to be processed in more detail.
Early filter model
The filter blocks out most information at the sensory level but some personally important
messages are so powerful that they burst through the filtering mechanism.
Selective filter model
Instead of blocking out stimuli, the filter merely weakens the strength of all stimuli other than the target stimulus.
Attenuation model
Stimuli are filtered out only after they have been analyzed for both their physical properties and their meaning; would allow people to recognize information entering the unattended ear.
Late filter model
We engage in more than one task at a time, and we shift our attentional resources to allocate them as needed.
Divided attention
When you shift your focus from one thing to another, a tiny gap in attention is created; psychological refractory period (PRP) effect.
Attentional blink
4 factors that affect our ability to pay attention.
Anxiety
Arousal
Task difficulty
Skills
A factor where being anxious by nature or by situation, places constraints on attention.
Anxiety
Being anxious by nature.
Trait-based anxiety
Being anxious by situation.
State-based anxiety
A factor where its overall state affects attention; you may be tired, drowsy, or drugged, which may limit attention; being excited sometimes enhances attention.
Arousal
A factor where working on task that is difficult or novel needs more attentional resources than when you work on an easy or highly familiar task.
Task difficulty
A factor where the more practiced and skilled you are in performing a task, the more your attention is enhanced.
Skill
Being “prepared” to attend to some incoming event, and maintaining this attention.
Alerting
The selection of stimuli to attend to; this kind of attention is needed when we perform a visual search.
Orienting
Includes processes for monitoring and resolving conflicts that arise among internal processes.
Executive attention
2 things we acquire when our attention fails us.
ADHD
Change/Inattentional blindness
3 primary symptoms of ADHD.
Inattention
Hyperactivity
Impulsiveness
An inability to detect changes in objects or scenes that are being viewed.
Change blindness
A phenomenon in which people are not able to see things that are actually there.
Inattentional blindness
An attentional dysfunction in which participants ignore the half of their visual field that is contralateral to the hemisphere of the brain that has a lesion.
Spatial neglect (hemineglect)
When stimuli are present in both sides of the
visual field, people with hemi-neglect suddenly ignore the stimuli that are contralateral
to their lesion.
Extinction
Performed without conscious awareness; require little or no intention or effort; multiple automatic processes may occur at once, or at least quickly, and in no particular sequence; also termed as parallel processes.
Automatic processes
Accessible to conscious control and even
require it; performed serially; occur sequentially, one step at a time; take a relatively long time to execute.
Controlled processes
Tasks that start off as controlled processes eventually become automatic ones as a result of practice.
Automatization (proceduralization)
A theory which suggested that automatization occurs because we gradually accumulate knowledge about specific responses to specific stimuli.
Instance theory
Who proposed instance theory?
Gordon Logan (1988)
A phenomenon that demonstrates the psychological difficulty in selectively attending to the color of the ink and trying to ignore the word that is printed with the ink of that color.
Stroop effect
Who proposed the stroop effect?
John Ridley Stroop
Are errors in choosing an objective or in specifying a means of achieving it.
Mistakes
Are errors in carrying out an intended means for reaching an objective.
Slips
Information that is available for cognitive processing but that currently lies outside conscious awareness.
Preconscious processing
Occurs when recognition of certain stimuli is affected by prior presentation of the same or similar stimuli; participants are presented with a first stimulus, and then they are presented with a second stimulus and make judgement.
Priming
In which you try to remember something that is stored in memory but that cannot readily be retrieve.
Tip of the tongue phenomenon
Traces of visual perceptual ability in blind areas.
Blindsight
Two forms that partially overlapping sets.
Attention & Consciousness
