Unit 2 (Chapters 4 & 5) Flashcards
How is attention organized?
Short-term & Working memory
The ability to focus on one message and ignore all others
Selective Attention
Paying attention to more than one thing at a time
Divided Attention
Four interrelated ideas about attention
- We are constantly confronted with more info than we can attend to
- There are limits on how much we can attend to at one time
- We can respond to some info and perform some tasks with little if any, attention
- With sufficient practice and knowledge, some tasks become less attention-demanding.
Selecting among multiple stimuli to filter out the unimportant and keep the important
Filtering
In early attention studies, what were researchers looking for?
The location of the filter
Occurs when a person listens to 2 messages presented simultaneously, one in the right ear and one in the left.
Dichotic listening
Occurs when a person repeats the words they have just heard out loud in real-time.
Shadowing task
What were the findings of Colin Cherry’s shadowing studies?
Participants could only report the gross physical characteristics of the unattended message
- High or low-pitched, High or low volume, Gender of speaker
Across multiple shadowing studies, a trend occurred, what was the trend?
- The fewer the “physical” differences between the attended and unattended messages, the harder the unattended message was to ignore.
- The more physical differences between the attended and unattended messages, the easier the shadowing task became
What theory?
- Attention acts as a simple on-off switch (filter) that allows only one message at a time to pass
- Filter is controlled by the simple physical characteristics of the message
- Attention acts at the auditory mechanism itself; very early selection
- Filters message before incoming info is analyzed for meaning
Broadbent’s Early Selection Model
The ability to focus on one thing to the exclusion of other things
Attention
The model that states the attentional filter acts as an attenuator rather than a simple on-off switch.
Intermediate Selection Model (Triesman Attenuated Filter Model)
Analyzes incoming messages in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning
Attenuator
Contains words, each of which has a threshold for being activated
- Words that are common or important have low thresholds - Uncommon words have high thresholds
Dictionary Unit (Lexicon)
Triesman’s Ear Switching Study
Theorized that participants could pay attention to the meanings of messages and could be able to separate them based on contexts.
- Example: Recording of an English lecture vs. recording of a news report
If Broadbent’s theory about attention is correct, what would be the results of Triesman’s ear-switching study?
Participants should shadow the mixed content
- Repeating nonsense
If Triesman’s theory about attention is correct, what would be the results of Triesman’s ear-switching study?
Participants should violate instructions and switch ears to stay with the meaning
- Make sense of the mixed message unconsciously
What model states that…
- Short term memory is the bottleneck
- The selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after all the information has been fully analyzed for meaning. - Selecting a specific meaning for a word based on the context & threshold of each meaning.
MacKay’s Late Selection Model
What was McKay’s experiment?
- In the attended ear, participants heard ambiguous sentences like:
They were throwing stones at the bank.” - In the unattended ear, participants heard either “river” or “money.”
- Participants chose which sentence was closest to the meaning of the attended message.
What were the results of McKay’s Experiment?
- The meaning of the biasing words (river or money) affected participants’ choices.
Which theory states…
- Low-load tasks that use few cognitive resources may leave resources available for processing unattended task-irrelevant stimuli
- High-load tasks that use all of a person’s high cognitive resources don’t leave any resources to process at any given moment
Load Theory of Attention
How much information a person can process at any given moment
Processing Capacity
The difficulty of processing any given task
- High-load & Low-load
Perceptual Load
Attention is a “_______” resource
Limited
What was Foster and Lavie’s task?
Participants had to indicate the identity of a target ( X or N) as quickly as possible.
- Easy condition = target surrounded by lowercase “o’s”
- Hard condition = target surrounded by random letters
- Cartoon faces were placed onto both conditions.
What were the results of Foster and Lavie’s task?
Flashing a distracting cartoon face near the target increases the reaction time for the easy task more than the hard task.
Our tendency to experience difficulty naming a physical color when it is used to spell the name of a different color
Stroop Effect
The act of physically directing the eyes to a stimulus
Overt Attention
Rapid movements of the eyes from one place to another
Sacades
Short pauses on points of interest
- The ends of saccades
Fixations
How are fixations and saccades studied?
Eye tracker
Areas that stand out and capture attention
Stimulus Salience
What does stimulus salience depend on?
- Bottom-up characteristics of the stimuli
- Light & Dark
- Color & Contrast
Top-down determinants of eye movement
- Expectations dictate where the eyes go
- Scheme schemata
Knowledge about what is usually contained in particular contexts
Schene Schemata
Attention without the use of eye movements
Covert Attention/Precueing
Processing that occurs obligatorily when a specific eliciting stimulus is present
Automatic Processing
Characteristics of _________ processing
- Occurs without intent
- Once initiated, it runs to completion
- Not available for conscious monitoring
- It does not require any of the limited cognitive capacity ( attention)
- Results from parallel processing
Automatic
The ability of the brain to simultaneously process incoming stimuli of differing quality
- Top-down
Parallel Processing
Intentional processing that focuses on achieving a specific goal
Conscious/Controlled Processing
Characteristics of __________ processing
- Occur only with intent
- Open to awareness
- Requires use of limited cognitive resources (attention)
- Results from serial processing
Conscious/Controlled
How did William James describe attention?
“Taking possession of the mind, in clear, vivid form.”
Stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though a person might be looking directly at it
Intentional Blindness
If two versions of a picture are shown, their differences are not immediately apparent.
Change Blindness
The process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object
Binding
What are the three interrelated attention systems?
1) Alerting Attention System
2) Orienting Attention System
3) Executive Attention System
Which attention system is responsible for the direction of attention in space?
Orienting Attention System
Which attention system is responsible for general arousal & alerting us to significant changes in the environment?
Alerting Attention System
What is the most basic attention system?
Alerting Attention System
What is the most advanced attention system?
Executive Attention System
Which attention system is responsible for sustained attention, inhibition of distracting items, controlled attention switching based on long-term goals, etc.. ?
Executive Attention System
Name the attention system:
- Activity in the anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex, & the basal ganglia
- Dopamine-inhibitory neurotransmitter
- Neural circuitry predominantly in the frontal lobes
Executive Attention System
Name the attention system:
- Activity in the midbrain (tectum), superior parietal lobe, & the temporal parietal junction.
- Acetylcholine-excitatory neurotransmitter
- Based in the parietal lobes
Orienting Attention System
Name the attention system:
- Primarily sub-served by relatively primitive subcortical areas of the brain
- Activity in the brainstem, right frontal & parietal lobes
- Norepinephrine (excitatory neurotransmitter)
Alerting Attention System
What was the Visual Memory Search Task? (Shriffin & Schneider)
- Hold 1, 2, 3, or 4 target letters in memory
- Present a letter on-screen; the task is to determine as quickly as possible whether the letter is among the target set.
- Consistent Condition
- Over thousands of trials, the target stimuli are always the same
- Varied Condition
- The target set was changed regularly
- Consistent Condition