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
What were the results of the Visual Memory Search Task? (Shriffin & Schneider)
Consistent Condition
- After much practice, the search became automatic
- Participants reaction time for multiple letter sets was just as fast as for single letter sets (parallel processing)
Varied Condition
- Participants never developed an automatic response to the targets
What was Cohen and Ivry’s study?
- Two white digits were briefly presented on a computer screen
- Participants were asked to identify which digit was larger.
What was the 100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study and its results?
Video recorders placed on cars
- Results: Accident risks are 4x higher when the driver is using a cell phone*
What was Strayer and Johnston’s Study
and its results?
Simulated driving
- Results: Participants on the phone missed 2x as many red lights and took longer to hit the brakes while using a cell phone.
- The same result using a “hands-free” cell phone
What was the Inattentional Blindness Experiment and its results?
- Participants were asked to identify which arm was longer (horizontal or vertical)
- On the last trial a small square was presented on the image
- Results: Participants were not able to see the square
What was the Gorilla Suit Study and its results?
- Participants were asked to focus on the white team
- A person in a gorilla suit entered the scene
- Results: Participants do not report seeing the gorilla because they are so focused on the white team
What was Triesman and Schmidt’s Study and its results?
- Flashed the stimulus objects for 200 ms
- Once the stimulus had disappeared, participants had to report the two black numbers and then report what they saw at the four shape locations.
- Results:
- In 20% of trials, participants reported illusory conjunctions.
What happened to patient R.M and how did that affect them?
- Patient R.M had Balint’s syndrome
- Damage to the parietal lobe
- Had a hard time binding and focusing attention on individual objects
Illusory conjunctions are mostly _______
Bottom-up
Top-down processing combines with ___________ to help one perceive things accurately
Feature analysis
What was Datta & DeYoe’s study?
- Participants are asked to fixate their eyes while fixing their attention on certain segments of the display.
- Area A, B, and C.
What were the results of Datta & DeYoe’s study?
A= heightened activity appeared near the center
B= heightened activity appeared a bit further away from the center
C= heightened activity appeared far away from the center
Retaining, retrieving, and using information.
Memory
Anything that lasts in our brain beyond the point in which it existed in our environment is a _________
Memory
Who developed the Modal Model of Memory
Atkinson & Shiffrin
- Initial memory stage that holds all incoming information for seconds or fractions of a second
- Retention, for brief periods of time of the effects of sensory stimulation
Sensory memory (Modal Model)
Holds five to seven items for about 15-20 seconds
- Includes new information received from the sensory stores (bottom-up) and information retrieved from long-term memory
Short-term memory (Modal Model)
Can hold a large amount of information for years or even decades
Long-term memory (Modal Model)
What is the “input” in the modal model?
- Input= important stimuli being taken in from the environment
What is the “output” in the modal model?
Output= Unimportant stimuli being taken in from the environment
Which type of stimuli is received simultaneously?
Visual Stimuli
Active processes that a person can control
Control Processes
- Strategies used to make a stimulus more memorable
- Strategies of attention that help you focus on specific stimuli
- Primary control process for prolonging trace life in short-term memory
Rehearsal
What is the term for retention of the perception of light?
Persistence of vision
What is an example of persistence of vision?
A trail of light from a sparkler
What are the characteristics of sensory memory?
1) Short duration & erasable
2) Large capacity
3) Precategorical
4) Veridical (Truthful & Accurate)
Information that has not been sent to the brain yet
Precategorical
Visual sensory memory is also called?
Iconic memory
What was Robert Sperling’s size and duration experiment?
- Presented a 3x4 array of letters under two conditions
- Condition 1: Whole report
- Participants were asked to recall as many letters as they could
- Condition 2: Partial report
- Participants were only asked to recall one row of letters depending on the tone of a sound
- Condition 1: Whole report
What were the results of Robert Sperling’s size and duration experiment?
- Whole report condition: Average correct = 3.5/12
- Partial report condition: Average correct = 3.3/4
- Results found that in the partial report condition, all 12 letters had to be retained completely in the sensory register
What was the delayed partial report method in Robert Sperling’s size and duration experiment and it’s result?
- Delayed presentation of the report cue and measure recall performance until it is no better than the whole report performance?
- Result: There was a decrease in performance due to the rapid decay of iconic/visual sensory memory
Visual sensory memory duration
250-300 ms on average
What is the shortest time that something can exist and we can have a visual record of it?
50 ms
- Brief sensory memory of what we see
- Responsible for persistence of vision
Visual sensory memory (Iconic Memory)
- Brief sensory memory of what we hear
- Responsible for the persistence of sound
Auditory sensory memory (Echoic Memory)
What was the Brown-Peterson Task?
- Read three CVCs, then a three-digit number
- Begin counting backward by threes
- After a set time, recall three CVC’s
What were the results of the Brown-Peterson task?
- After 3 seconds of counting, participants performed at 80%
- After 18 seconds of counting, participants performed at 10%
- Performance dropped because of the passage of time and competing stimuli
Repeating of material
Rote/Matainence Reahersal
Meaningful rehearsal
Elaborative rehearsal
The amount of digits a person can remember
Digit Span
What is the average number of digits a person can remember?
Five to Nine
Packaging information into meaningful units
Chunking
A collection of elements strongly associated with one another but weakly associate with elements in other chunks
Chunk
How many chunks of information = the capacity of short term memory?
7+/-2
What was Luck and Vogel’s study?
- Participants see the first display and then indicate whether the second display is the same or different.
- Varied in difficulty by increasing the number of squares in the images.
What was the results of Luck and Vogel’s Study?
- Performance began to decrease once there were four or more squares on the display
What was Ericcson and coworkers study?
- Trained a college student to use chunking
- The student had an initial digit span of 7
- After 230 one-hour training sessions, the student could remember up to 79 digits
- The studentwas able to chunk the information by relating the digits to something in his daily life
What was Alvarez & Cavanagh’s study?
- Used colored squares as well as complex objects
- Used the change detection procedure
- Participants were asked to recall as many of the stimuli as they could
- Results: The more complex the symbol was, the less time it was held in short-term memory
A limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as learning, comprehension, and reasoning
Working memory
What is the function of working memory?
To hold task-relevant information for cognitive work
Who created the model of working memory?
Baddeley and Hitch
What are the three components of working memory?
1) Central Executive
2) Phonological Loop
3) Visuospatial Sketch Pad
Which component of working memory is being described?
- Acts as the attention controller
- Nothing is stored here
Central Executive
Which component of working memory is being described?
- Holds verbal and auditory information
Phonological loop
Which component of working memory is being described?
- Holds visual images and spatial relationships
- Creation of visual images in the mind at the absence of a physical visual stimulus
Visuospatial Sketch Pad
What are the main differences between working memory and short-term memory?
- Short-term memory holds information for a brief period of time
- Working memory is concerned with the storage, processing, and manipulation of information and is active during complex cognition
Occurs when letters or words that sound similar are confused
Phonological similarity effect
Occurs when memory for lists of words is better for short words than long words
Word-length effect
Occurs when speaking prevents one from rehearsing items to be remembered (Talking in out heads)
Articulatory suppression
What was Shepard and Metzler’’s study and its results?
- Participants were asked to identify the targets that were the same shape as the original stimuli (Target A) as quickly as possible
- Mental rotation task
- Results: The further out of rotation a 3D object is, the longer it takes to respond to it.
Where in the brain is the central executive located?
Frontal lobes
Repeatedly performing the same action or thought, even if it is not achieving the desired goal
- Occurs when a person has damage to the frontal lobe
Preservation
People with damage to the frontal lobe have problems controlling their ______
Attention
- Backup storage area that communicates with long-term and working memory components
- Holds information longer and has greater capacity than the phonological loop or visuospatial sketch pad
Episodic Buffer
What is an example of the episodic buffer?
Reading a novel and being able to imagine visuals while still processing the words
What was the reading-span task and its results?
- Read a list of sentences
- Each sentence ends with an irrelevant word
- Participants were asked to recall irrelevant words after reading sentences & to determine if the sentence was coherent
- Results: Most people with an average memory capacity were in the 4-5 sentence range
What was the operation-span task and its results?
- Solve equations
- Each equation ends with an irrelevant word
- Participants were asked to recall irrelevant words after solving equations
- Reuslts: People with higher working memory capacities have higher general fluid intelligence.
The ability to use knowledge to solve problems
General fluid intelligence
People with higher _________ are better able to control their cognitive focus/inhibition
Working memory capacities
What part of the brain is responsible for processing incoming visual & auditory information?
Prefrontal cortex
What was Funahashi and coworker’s study?
- Monkey trained to stay fixated on the fixation point (x) in the middle of the screen.
- 1) While fixated on the x, a square is presented in the 1 of 4 corners of the screen
- 2) Square disappears, and a delay period begins; the monkey remains fixated on the x
- 3) The fixation point disappears, and the monkey’s eyes move to where the square was.
Information to be remembered causes neurons to fire
Activity state
Neuron firing stops, but connections between neurons are strengthened (long-term potentiation)
Synaptic state
What did Stokes believe about memory?
Information stored in short-term memory changes in neural networks
What was Vogel and coworker’s study about working memory capacity?
- The participants were asked to pay attention to the left side of the screen
- The task is to indicate whether the red rectangles on the attended side are the same or different in the two displays
- Participants repeat the tasks but with added distractions.
- Results: High-capacity participants were not affected by the distractions **
A high threshold in Treisman’s model of attention implies that
It takes a strong signal to cause activation.
Based on the research of Strayer and Johnston, talking on your cell phone while driving increases your chance of having an accident by
50%
In which concept is an individual’s knowledge most important?
Schema
Each time you briefly pause on one face, you are making a(n)
Fixation
Broadbent’s model is called the early selection model because
The filter eliminates the unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information
Which type of attention to a location increases the activity at the place in the brain that corresponds to that location?
Covert Attention
The “filter model” proposes that the filter identifies the attended message based on
Physical characteristics
The ease of a person driving their car from work to home on a highway and the traffic is flowing smoothly is an example of…
Effective connectivity
Attentional warping is an extension of ________
Brain maps
The analysis and combination of colors, orientations, and characteristics of each location within a scene are used to create a
Saliency Map
